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Mere common ‘revivalism’! the critic will say, and it may be so.  Still such revivalism, if that is the term for it, must be judged by its fruits.  I am informed that of those who kneel here experience shows that but a small percentage relapse.  The most of them become what in the Salvation Army cant—­if one chooses so to name it—­is known as ‘saved.’

This means that from drunkards and wastrels stained with every sort of human fault, or even crime, they are turned into God-fearing and respectable men who henceforward, instead of being a pest to society and a terror to all those who have the misfortune to be connected with them, become props of society and a comfort and a support to their relatives and friends.

Thus is the mesh of mercy spread, and such is its harvest.

The age of miracles is past, we are told; but I confess that while watching this strange sight I wondered more than once that if this were so, what that age of miracles had been like.  Of one thing I was sure, that it must have been to such as these that He who is acknowledged even by sceptics to have been the very Master of mankind, would have chosen to preach, had this been the age of His appearance, He who came to call sinners to repentance.  Probably, too, it was to such as these that He did preach, for folk of this character are common to the generations.  Doubtless, Judea had its knaves and drunkards, as we know it had its victims of sickness and misfortune.  The devils that were cast out in Jerusalem did not die; they reappear in London and elsewhere to-day, and, it would seem, can still be cast out.

I confess another thing, also; namely, that I found all this drama curiously exciting.  Most of us who have passed middle age and led a full and varied life will be familiar with the great human emotions.  Yet I discovered here a new emotion, one quite foreign to a somewhat extended experience, one that I cannot even attempt to define.  The contagion of revivalism! again it will be said.  This may be so, or it may not.  But at least, so far as this branch of the Salvation Army work is concerned, those engaged in it may fairly claim that the tree should be judged by its fruits.  Without doubt, in the main these fruits are good and wholesome.

I have only to add to my description of this remarkable service, that the number netted, namely, about 10 per cent of those present, was, I am told, just normal, neither more nor less than the average.  Some of these doubtless will relapse; but if only one of them remains really reformed, surely the Salvation Army has vindicated its arguments and all is proved to be well worth while.  But to that one very many ciphers must be added as the clear and proved result of the forty years or so of its activity.  Whatever may be doubtful, this is true beyond all controversy, for it numbers its converts by the thousand.

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