ollowing pages tell a fragment of the story of as wonderful a
work, of its kind, as this generation has seen. No doubt it is open
to the same kind of criticism as the sculptor's chisel might award
to the excavator's pick; but I do not hesitate to believe that for
every essential Christian virtue--faith, zeal, self-denial, love,
prayer, and the like--numbers of the Converts of this Mission will
bear not unfavourable comparison with the choicest members of the
most cultivated Churches.

"There is not in this kingdom an agency which more demands the
hearty and liberal support of the Church of Christ. In the East of
London are crowded and condensed a large proportion of the poorer
labouring population of London. The ruined, the unfortunate, the
depraved, the feeble ones, outrun in the race of life, gravitate
thither and jostle one another in the daily struggle for bread;
thousands remain on the edge of starvation from day to day, and the
bulk of these teeming multitudes are as careless of eternity as the
heathen, and far more uncared for by the great majority of the
professed people of God. Mr. Booth's operations are unparalleled in
extent, unsectarian in character, a standing rebuke to the apathy
of Christians, and a witness of the willingness of God to show His
work unto His servants and to establish the work of their hands
upon them."

From the beginning, The General had taught his people to come together
for an hour's prayer early each Sunday morning, and to delight in prayer
at all times, looking ever to God to deliver them personally from "all
evil" and to "make and keep them pure within." These phrases were
familiar to all English people; but that their real meaning might not
only be taken in but kept ever before his people The General had
established two weekly Holiness Meetings in the Mission Halls, one on
Sunday morning and the other on Friday evening. These practices, kept up
wherever The Army has gone all these forty-five years, have resulted in
the cultivation of ideals far above those usual even in the most refined
Christian circles.

Nothing has more astonished me, amongst all the torrents of eulogy
passed upon The General and his Army since his death, than the almost
invariable silence amongst Christian as well as secular papers about
these Holiness Meetings, and that teaching of Holiness which were the