“The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”
–just quoted by Bishop Ken Clarke at the South Carolina Clergy Conference
Prescient words.
William Booth of the Salvation Army was a great social worker. But his charitable and social works were always based on a foundation of evangelism – the fundamental realisation that whilst physical needs are very great, yet the spiritual need of all mankind is greater still.
General Booth wrote:
[blockquote] “I have no intention to depart in the smallest degree from the main principles on which I have acted in the past. My only hope for the permanent deliverance of mankind from misery, either in this world or the next, is the regeneration or remaking of the individual by the power of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ. But in providing for the relief of temporal misery I reckon that I am only making it easy where it is now difficult, and possible where it is now all but impossible, for men and women to find their way to the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” [/blockquote]