BOOTH'S DARKEST ENGLAND.                   405

much, and his memory was prodigious; and we advance the
opinion that, if there have existed philosophers who have thrown
greater light upon metaphysics, political economy, legislation
and morals, there is none that has treated with an equal success
So large an array of opinions as Condorcet, and that, under this
point of view, his name must be placed amongst those of the
most illustrious savants of the eighteenth century, and will be
reclaimed with pride by the friends of liberty of all countries.


                            IX.
         GENERAL BOOTH'S DARKEST ENGLAND AND THE
                      WAY OUT OF IT.

      BY REV. HENRY L. PHILLIPS, RECTOR, CHURCH OF THE
                   CRUCIFIXION, PHILADELPHIA.

  GENERAL BOOTH has given to the world a most remarkable
book, no matter who wrote it. It is remarkable, because it
seeks to grapple with the greatest evils of modern days-poverty
and crime-and their cure. It is remarkable becauseit will force
many to think who would otherwise be content to pass through
this world dreaming of fatherhood and brotherhood, without
even asking whether they really exist. It will help to open the
eyes of many who expect to live hereafter with other people, in
the happiest manner possible, while here they do not even wish
to know of their existence. It is remarkable because it shows
the folly of having overcrowded cities simply because somebody
wants to say, " We have the largest city."
   The book reveals a condition of affairs that cries "shame"
on modern civilization. It tells of things which make one ask
himself, again and again, how much better off are these over-
grown cities for being in Christian and civilized countries ?
   The writer has read Stanley's " Darkest Africa," and compares
London to it. He says: " What a slough it is no man can gauge
who has not waded therein, as some of us have done, up to the
very neck, for long years. Talk about Dante's Hell and all the
horrors and cruelties of the torture-chambers of the lost! The
man who walks with open eyes and with bleeding heart through
the shambles of our civilization, needs no such fantastic images
of the poet to teach him horror. Often and often, when I have
seen the young and the poor and the helpless go down before
my eyes into the morass, trampled under foot by beasts of prey
in human shape that haunt these regions, it seemed as if God
were no longer in His world, but that in His stead reigned a fiend,
merciless as hell, ruthless as the grave!"




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 07, Num. 4

General Booth's Darkest England and the Way Out of It

L.

Volume:  07
Issue Number:  04
Page Number:  405
Date:  04/1891