Protestantism in its Full Development. The Wandering of Religious Thought. Rationalism – The Unlimited Arbitrary Will of Preachers and the Degeneration of Preaching. – The Sectarian Insularity of Parish Churches and Their Inaccessibility to the Common People. – Helpless Victims of Religious Demagogues. – Dark Sectarianism With an Admixture of Charlatanism – “Independent Catholic” and “Physiological” Churches. – The Salvation Army. (Cont.) (2)

In such a state of things it becomes quite understandable that any more energetic religious movement is able to spread rapidly among the dark masses and draw them into the crudest forms of sectarianism, provided only that it gives some satisfaction to religious feeling. The most striking exposer of the abnormality of such a state of the popular masses in church-religious respects is the very significant success of the notorious sect known by the name of the ‘Salvation Army.’ It originated in England, but by its character found a living correspondence in the conditions of the church-religious state of the poor classes in America, so that it can serve as a characteristic of purely American life. The secret of this monstrous, militarily caricatured community’s success lies in the fact that it set itself the task of addressing religious gospel precisely to those classes of population that are forsaken and neglected by existing churches. And the wretched people are seized with their whole soul even by such a monstrous movement, being content that here Christ and Christ’s love are preached to them, however crude and repellent the forms. I shall never forget the piercing, heavy feeling that I experienced when I first encountered the ‘Salvation Army.’ Setting out one Sunday to Brooklyn, a wealthy suburb of New York, to listen to a sermon by one popular preacher, I suddenly heard some choir loudly singing some songs to the measured beats of a drum. Learning that this was the ‘Salvation Army,’ I immediately abandoned my previous intention, turned toward where the songs were heard, and there presented itself to me an almost incredible spectacle: along the broad sidewalk stretched a long procession of men and women in distinctive military uniforms with epaulettes, chevrons and various military insignia, and in measured cadence, marching in pairs, led by a ‘captain’ and drummer. The whole party sang a sacred hymn with a constant refrain: ‘O, I love Christ,’ and the captain, turning from time to time to the procession, interspersed his singing with loud commands—one-two, one-two—‘O, I love Christ!’ The procession headed into a building serving as the sect’s usual meeting place, and there began such a wild, frenzied scene, more horrible and abominable than anything I could have imagined. The whole party fell to their knees and began making frenzied swayings with frenzied howling, and finally achieved what they call the ‘outpouring of the Holy Spirit.’ This outpouring was granted to some fat, elderly man, who positively stretched out on the floor and under the maddening refrain of the ‘army’ and the captain’s exclamations raised an unbearable, hoarse, shattered howl, literally a howl, terrible and abominable. An old woman rushed at him with all her might, and her feeble, aged, whining, shrill voice even more intensified the horrifying ugliness of the scene. Meanwhile the captain, with a wildly grinning face, kept leaning toward them, saying: ‘O bliss, O sweetness!..’ In conclusion everyone rose and those present were offered pamphlets about the great regenerative significance of the ‘Salvation Army,’ as well as separate issues of the newspaper it publishes: ‘The War Cry,’ one copy of which I have preserved out of curiosity to this day. Such then is the notorious ‘Salvation Army,’ and it makes considerable conquests among those dregs and refuse of our civilization, with which all great cities both in America and in Europe are overflowing.

Thus from the foregoing it is evident to what abnormal, one might say sickly phenomena Protestantism leads when its fundamental principle is applied without restriction—the denial of the church’s authority and the provision to each individual person to build his own salvation by his own reason and according to the conclusions of that reason to arrange his own life. Thanks to this principle, people with highly developed speculative ability drown in a sea of nebulous transcendentalism; middle-class and materially secure classes shut themselves within narrow church circles, inaccessible to the common people, and the simple, dark people become helpless victims of religious charlatanism or frenzied sectarianism. Such a state of affairs could be ruinous for the religious-moral life of any other people who possessed a less strong religious spirit. But the American people, as we demonstrated in the previous reading, is a very religious people, and its healthy nature not only does not perish under the corrupting influence of extreme Protestantism, but on the contrary boldly and forcefully struggles against this influence and even manages to a significant extent to overcome this phenomenon or to deprive it of much of its corrupting power. To a characterization of this struggle we now turn.