you will find only laughter and war. A man cannot pay that kind
of reverence to truth solid as marble; they can only be reverent
towards a beautiful lie. And the Salvation Army, though their voice
has broken out in a mean environment and an ugly shape, are really
the old voice of glad and angry faith, hot as the riots of Dionysus,
wild as the gargoyles of Catholicism, not to be mistaken for a philosophy.
Professor Huxley, in one of his clever phrases, called the Salvation
Army "corybantic Christianity." Huxley was the last and noblest
of those Stoics who have never understood the Cross. If he had
understood Christianity he would have known that there never has been,
and never can be, any Christianity that is not corybantic.

And there is this difference between the matter of aims and
the matter of methods, that to judge of the aims of a thing like
the Salvation Army is very difficult, to judge of their ritual
and atmosphere very easy. No one, perhaps, but a sociologist
can see whether General Booth's housing scheme is right.
But any healthy person can see that banging brass cymbals together
must be right. A page of statistics, a plan of model dwellings,
anything which is rational, is always difficult for the lay mind.
But the thing which is irrational any one can understand.
That is why religion came so early into the world and spread so far,
while science came so late into the world and has not spread at all.
History unanimously attests the fact that it is only mysticism
which stands the smallest chance of being understanded of the people.
Common sense has to be kept as an esoteric secret in the dark temple
of culture. And so while the philanthropy of the Salvationists and its
genuineness may be a reasonable matter for the discussion of the doctors,
there can be no doubt about the genuineness of their brass bands,
for a brass band is purely spiritual, and seeks only to quicken