Wilson Carlile, Founder of the Church Army
26 September -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Missionaries, page 503
Wilson Carlile was born in 1847 in Brixton. He suffered
from a spinal weakness all his life, which hampered his
education. He entered his grandfather's business at the age
of thirteen but soon moved on and learned French fluently,
which he used to good advantage in France trading in silk.
He later learned German and Italian to enhance his business
but was ruined in the slump of 1873. After a serious
illness, he began to treat his religion more seriously and
became confirmed in the Church of England. He acted as
organist to Ira D Sankey during the Moody and Sankey
missions and, in 1881, was ordained priest, serving his
curacy at St Mary Abbots in Kensington, together with a
dozen other curates. The lack of contact between the Church
and the working classes was a cause of real concern to him
and he began outdoor preaching. In 1882, he resigned his
curacy and founded the Church Army, four years after the
founding of the Salvation Army. Under his influence it
thrived and he continued to take part in its administration
until a few weeks before his death on this day in 1942.