Adaptation of Measures

To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. 1 CORINTHIANS 9:22

The Salvation Army scandalised Victorian England long before it had that name. Its preachers were costermongers, factory girls and converted prize-fighters. Its meetings were held in theatres, music halls and the open street. It used brass bands, popular tunes, uniforms, flags, military titles and posters on the walls, and its services were loud, spontaneous and, to many observers, indecent. Catherine Booth spent a good deal of her public life defending all this, and her fullest defence is the address she called Adaptation of Measures.

The message fixed, the methods free

Her argument rested on a distinction she drew with great care. The gospel itself, she said, is above all adaptation. She would not alter its matter or even change its order; she would not take a dot off an i. Repentance, faith, the new birth, holiness, judgement — all of it must be preached exactly as the New Testament preaches it. But the modes and measures by which the gospel is brought to people are another matter entirely. There, she said, the New Testament lays down one law only. “The law of adaptation is the only law laid down in the New Testament with respect to modes and measures,” she said, and she challenged anyone to find another.

Her evidence was the New Testament itself. It gives no fixed order of service and no single form of church government; if it did, she observed, the denominations would not have spent centuries quarrelling over which form it gives. Paul became a Jew to the Jews and weak to the weak. The only detailed glimpse we have of an apostolic meeting, in the fourteenth chapter of First Corinthians, is of something much livelier and less orderly than the typical Victorian service.

But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth. 1 CORINTHIANS 14:24–25

She added, with some satisfaction, that people had said unkind things about the Army because people fell on their faces in its meetings. But this, she said, is apostolic.

Driven by necessity

She was frank that the Army’s methods had not come from any love of novelty. She had been brought up as conventionally as anyone. God, she said, had driven her to them “as at the point of the bayonet,” as well as leading her by the pillar of cloud. The people in the slums would not come to the churches. They would not listen to learned divines. What was to be done? Jesus, she pointed out, had faced the same problem and solved it by calling fishermen rather than scribes: men of the people, who thought and spoke as the people did. If the masses will not have your polished preachers, she said, get hold of fishermen and costermongers and send them.

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. 2 TIMOTHY 4:2

And of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire. JUDE 22–23

Her sharpest line was aimed at those who objected on grounds of dignity. “While we have been standing upon our dignity, whole generations have gone to hell!” — she added, if the Bible is true. The whole work of redemption, she said, is a work of humiliation. If Christ had stood on His dignity, He would never have died between two thieves.

Forms and ceremonies

Beneath all this lay a principle that she applied more widely than many of her hearers realised. She held that “forms and ceremonies are nothing except as they embody and express real spiritual life and truth.” She took this from Paul’s words about circumcision.

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. GALATIANS 6:15

And in the same address she applied it, explicitly, to the sacraments. Under circumcision, she said, Paul embraces all outward forms: baptism is nothing, and being unbaptised is nothing; the Lord’s Supper is nothing, and abstaining from it is nothing, in itself, as a matter of form. What matters is keeping the commandments of God and the faith that works by love.

The sacraments: weighing it fairly

This is where most readers must part company with her, and it should be done honestly. In 1883 The Salvation Army, with her support, ceased to observe baptism and the Lord’s Supper in its own meetings. The reasons were several. The churches were bitterly divided over the sacraments, and the Army did not want to be drawn into the quarrel. Communion wine was a real danger to converted drunkards. There was the question of whether its women officers could administer them. And she and William were deeply convinced, from long experience, that great numbers of people trusted in having been baptised or taking communion while knowing nothing of Christ. The Army has held the same position since, while insisting that it does not condemn others for observing them.

Her concern was real. The sacraments can be, and often have been, treated as magic, and her warning against resting in the form without the grace is one every church needs. But her argument has a weakness that should be named plainly. Circumcision was not commanded of Gentile believers; baptism and the Lord’s Supper were commanded by Christ Himself, to be kept until He comes.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. MATTHEW 28:19

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. 1 CORINTHIANS 11:26

Nothing in her own principle of adaptation — which she herself said applies to methods, not to the message — gives a church liberty to set aside ordinances the Lord appointed. The great majority of Christians have therefore judged that the right answer to the abuse of the sacraments is their right use, not their disuse. A reader can honour her concern, admire the Army’s evident fruit, and still believe that on this point she was mistaken.

What remains

The rest of her teaching remains a powerful rebuke to a church that loves its habits more than its neighbours. Much of what she fought for is now taken for granted: services in ordinary halls, popular music in worship, lay preaching, women in leadership. She would have warned that those forms too can harden into a new traditionalism. Her principle was not that any particular method is sacred, but that none is. The message is fixed. Everything else is free, and must serve the saving of souls.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. List the habits of your church that exist mainly because they have always existed. Which of them actually help people outside to hear the gospel?

2. Ask whether you have ever objected to a lawful method of reaching people because it offended your taste rather than your conscience.

3. Name one group of people near you whom your church’s ordinary methods do not reach. What would it take to go to them?

4. Examine your own attitude to baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Do you rest in the form, or receive the grace? Come to the Lord’s Table next time with deliberate faith.

5. Guard the message as carefully as she did. Is there anything in the gospel you have softened to make it acceptable?

A PRAYER

Lord, You became a servant to reach us. Forgive me for standing on my dignity while others went without hearing of You.

Keep Your gospel pure in my mouth. Do not let me change a word of it to please anyone.

But set me free from the habits that serve my comfort and not Your kingdom. Make me willing to be all things to all people, that I may by all means save some.

Let every form I keep be full of Your life. Amen.