"Welcome Home!"

"What a trial that loss was to my young heart! It was rendered all
the greater from the fact that I had to go forward all alone in
face of an opposition which suddenly sprang up from the leading
functionaries of the church."

The consecration which William Booth made of himself to this work, with
all the zeal and novelty with which it was characterised, was due, no
doubt, to the teaching, influence, and example of James Caughey, a
remarkable American minister who visited the town. Largely free from
European opinions and customs in religious matters, and seeking only to
advance the cause of Jesus Christ with all possible speed, this man to a
very large extent liberated William Booth for life from any one set of
plans, and led him towards that perfect faith in God's guidance which
made him capable of new departures to any extent.

The old-fashioned representatives of officialdom grumbled in vain at
novelties which have now become accepted necessities of all mission
work.

"But just about this time," The General has told us, "another
difficulty started across my path in connexion with my business. I
have told you how intense had been the action of my conscience
before my conversion. But after my conversion it was naturally ever
increasingly sensitive to every question of right and wrong, with a
great preponderance as to the importance of what was right over
what was wrong. Ever since that day it has led me to measure my own
actions, and judge my own character by the standard of truth set up
in my soul by the Bible and the Holy Ghost; and it has not
permitted me to allow myself in the doing of things which I have
felt were wrong without great inward torture. I have always had a
great horror of hypocrisy--that is, of being unreal or false,
however fashionable the cursed thing might be, or whatever worldly
temptation might strive to lead me on to the track. In this I was
tested again and again in those early days, and at last there came
a crisis.

"Our business was a large one and the assistants were none too
many. On Saturdays there was always great pressure. Work often
continued into the early hours of Sunday. Now I had strong notions
in my youth and for long after--indeed, I entertain them now--about
the great importance of keeping the Sunday, or Sabbath as we always
c