mental godliness. To the spiritual interests of
the dead world around him he was as indifferent as were the vicious
crowds themselves whom he so heartily despised. All he seemed to me
to want was to make money, and all he seemed to want me for was to
help him in the sordid selfish task.

"So it was work, work, work, morning, noon, and night. I was
practically a white slave, being only allowed my liberty on
Sundays, and an hour or two one night in the week, and even then
the rule was 'Home by ten o'clock, or the door will be locked
against you.' This law was rigidly enforced in my case, although my
employer knew that I travelled long distances preaching the Gospel
in which he and his wife professed so loudly to believe. To get
home in time, many a Sunday night I have had to run long distances,
after walking for miles, and preaching twice during the day."

The contrast between those days and ours can hardly be realised by any
of us now. We may put down almost in figures some of the differences
that steam and electricity have made, linking all mankind together more
closely than Nottingham was then connected with London. But what words
can convey any picture of the development of intelligence and sympathy
that makes an occurrence in a London back street interest the reading
inhabitants of Germany, America, and Australia as intense as those of
our own country?

What a consolation it would have been to the apprentice lad, could he
have known how all his daily drudgery was fitting him to understand, to
comfort, and to help the toiling masses of every race and clime?

In the wonderful providence of God all these changes have been allowed
to leave England in as dominating a position as she held when William
Booth was born, if not to enhance her greatness and power, far as some
may consider beyond what she deserved. And yet all the time, with or
without our choice, our own activities, and even our faults and
neglects, have been helping other peoples, some of them born on our
soil, to become our rivals in everything. Happily the multiplication of
plans of intercourse is now merging the whole human race so much into
one community that one may hope yet to see the dawn of that fraternity
of peoples which may end the present prospects of wars unparalleled in
the past. How very much William Booth has contributed to bring that
universal brotherhood about this book may s