uture labour, raising up men and women to go out into
the world as missionaries of one kind or another, and doing it all
while carrying on vigorous efforts to bring to those who are most
needy in every locality both material and spiritual support.
Like all aggressive movements, the Army is, of course, peculiarly
subject to loss of one kind or another. That arising from the removals
of its people alone constitutes a serious item. Any one who knows
anything of religious work amongst the working-classes will understand
how great a loss may be caused--even where the population is,
generally speaking, increasing--by the removal of one or two zealous
local leaders. But such losses are trifling compared with those which
follow from some stoppage of employment when large numbers of workmen
must either migrate or starve.
Similar results often occur from the change of leadership. The removal
of our Officers from point to point, and even from country to country,
is one of our most indispensable needs; but, of course, we have to pay
for it, chiefly in the dislocation and discouragements and losses
which it often necessarily entails.
So far from such variations being in any way discreditable to us, we
think them one of the most valuable tests of the vitality and courage
of our people, both Officers and Soldiers, that they fight on
unflinchingly under such circumstances--fight on happily, to prove
that while fluctuations of this character are very trying, they often
also open the way both to the wider diffusion of our work elsewhere
and to the breaking up of entirely new ground in the old centres.
In brief, it is with us at all times a real warfare wherein triumphs
can only be secured at the cost of struggles that are very often
painful and unpleasant. You cannot have the aggression, the advance,
the captures of war without the change, the alarms, the cost, the
wounds, the losses, which are inseparable from it.
A very striking and thoughtful description of some of the work done at
one of our London Corps has recently been issued by a well-known
writer. I refer to 'Broken Earthenware,' by Mr. Harold Begbie. No one
can read the book without being impressed by the sense of personal
insight which it reveals. But how few take in its main lesson, that
the Army is in every place going on, not only with the recovery but
with the development of broken men and women into more and more
capable and efficient servants and rescuers of th
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