and periodicals
published by the Army--generally weekly--in twenty-one languages,
would show any one how variously our people everywhere are seeking to
meet the different habits of life in each country, and how constantly
new plans are being tried to attain the supreme object of all our
multitudinous agencies--the arousing of men's attention to the claims
of God and their ingathering to His Kingdom.
The original plan adopted in this country of going to the people by
means of meetings and marches in the streets, is in many lands not
legally permissible, while in others it is almost useless. Our
leaders, therefore, have always to be finding out other means of
attaining the same end. This has resulted in very great gains of
liberty in several ways. On the Continent, for example, though it is
not possible to get a general permission to hold open-air meetings in
the streets, it is becoming more and more usual to let our people hold
such gatherings in the large pleasure-grounds, provided within or on
the outskirts both of the great cities and the lesser towns. In some
cases the announcements of further meetings, made somewhat after the
style of the public crier, develops into a series of short open-air
addresses. In other cases, conspicuously in Italy, where our work is
only as yet in its infancy--the sale of our paper, both by individual
hawkers and by groups of comrades singing the songs it contains in
marketplaces, largely makes up for the want of the more regularized
open-air work.
And in the courts of the great blocks of buildings which abound in
cities like Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and elsewhere, meetings are
held which are really often more effective in impressing whole
families of various classes than any of our open-air proceedings in
countries like England and the United States.
But everywhere the Army seeks especially, though not by any means
exclusively, for those who are to be found frequenting the
public-houses, cafes, beer gardens, dives, saloons, and other
drinking-places of the world. In all countries our people sell our
papers amidst these crowds, as well as at the doors of the theatres
and other places of amusement, and the mere offer of these papers, now
that their unflinching character as to God and goodness is well known,
constitutes an act of war, a submission to which in so many million
cases is no slight evidence of confidence among the masses of the
people in our sincerity, and, so far,
|