already referred to was taken from my side.  We had been like David and Jonathan in the intensity of our union and fellowship in our work for God.  He had a fine appearance, was a beautiful singer, and possessed a wonderful gift in prayer.  After I had spoken in our Open-Air Meeting he would kneel down and wrestle with God until it seemed as though he would move the very stones on which he knelt, as well as the hearts of the people who heard him.  Of how few of those men called ministers or priests can anything like this be said!

“But the unexpected blow came.  He fell into consumption.  His relations carried him up and down the country for change of air and scene.  All was done that could be done to save his life, but in vain.  The last change was to the Isle of Wight.  In that lovely spot the final hope fled.  I remember their bringing him home to die.  He bade farewell to earth, and went triumphantly to Heaven singing—­

And when to Jordan’s flood I come,
Jehovah rules the tide,
And the waters He’ll divide,
And the heavenly host will shout—­
“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