The Ethics Centre keeps a collection of books, periodicals, audio/visual and internet-accessible materials whose operations are maintained by Maria Ducharme. The book collection catalogue is accessible on-line at www.boothcollege.ca/library/

• Ethics Centre recent aquisitions pdf
• September 2005 aquisitions pdf
• April 2005 acquisitions pdf

In 1910, General William Booth gave an address. Where and when this took place is unknown, but in this rare audio clip we can hear the 81-year-old founder as he articulates challenges which continue to be foundational even in today's Army.

Parts of the audioclip are a bit unclear so a transcript of the short speech appears below:

I am glad you're enjoying yourselves. The Salvationist is the friend of happiness. Making heaven on earth is our business. "Serve the Lord with gladness" is one of our favourite mottos. So I am pleased that you are pleased.

But amidst all of your joys, don't forget the sons and daughters of misery. Do you ever visit them? Come away and let us make a call or two.

Here is a home, six in family. They eat and drink and sleep and sicken and die in the same chamber.

There is a drunkard's hovel, void of furniture, wife a skeleton, children in rags, father maltreating the victims of his neglect.

Here are the unemployed wandering about seeking work and finding none.

Yonder are the wretched criminals, cradled in crime, tracking in and out of the prisons all the time.

There are the daughters of shame, deceived and wronged and ruined, travelling down the dark incline to an early grave.

There are the children, fighting in the gutters, going hungry to school, growing up to fill their parents' places.

Brought it all on themselves do you say? Perhaps so, but that does not excuse our assisting them. You don't demand a certificate of virtue before you drag the drowning creature out of the water. Nor the assurance that a man has paid his rent before you deliver him from the burning building.

But what shall we do? Content ourselves by singing a hymn, offering a prayer or giving a little good advice?

No, ten thousand times, no.

We will pity them, feed them, reclaim them, employ them. Perhaps we shall fail with many -quite likely. But our business is to help them all the same and that in the most practical, economical and Christ-like manner.

So let us haste to the rescue for the sake of our own peace, the poor wretches themselves (seen as the children) and the Saviour of us all.

But you must help with the means. And as there is nothing like the present, who in this company will lend a hand by taking up a collection?