men and women out of their miseries and their sin, and of my responsibility to go in for that with all my might.  In obedience to the heavenly vision, I made a consecration of the present and future, of all I had, and hoped to have, to the fulfilment of this mission, and I believe God accepted the offering.

     “I continued my public efforts in line with my new experience.”

Happily and freely as William Booth had been allowed to lead his people, however, he and his intended wife both saw that there could be no permanent prospect of victory amongst these “Reformers.”  The very popularity of a preacher was sure to lead to contention about the sphere of his labours.

“The people,” he writes, “with whom I had come into union were sorely unorganised, and I could not approve of the ultra-radicalism that prevailed.  Consequently, I looked about for a Church nearer my notions of system and order, and in the one I chose, the Methodist New Connexion, I found a people who were, in those days, all I could desire, and who received me with as much heartiness as my Lincolnshire friends had done.

“Ignorance has different effects on different people.  Some it puffs up with self-satisfaction.  To others it is a source of mortifying regret.  I belonged to the latter class.  I was continually crying out, ’O God, how little I am, and how little I know!  Give me a chance of acquiring information, and of learning how more successfully to conduct this all-important business of saving men to which Thou hast called me, and which lies so near my heart.’

“To gratify this yearning for improvement, the Church with which I had come into union gave me, at my request, an opportunity of studying under a then rather celebrated theologian.  But instead of better qualifying me for the work of saving men, by imparting to me the knowledge necessary for the task, and showing me in every-day practice how to put it to practical use, I was set to study Latin, Greek, various Sciences, and other subjects, which, as I saw at a glance, could little help me in the all-important work that lay before me.  However, I set to work, and, with all the powers I had, commenced to wrestle with my studies.

“My Professor was a man of beautiful disposition, and had an imposing presence.  The books he wrote on abstract and difficult theological problems were highly prized in those days.  Moreover, he belonged to a class of preachers, not altogether unknown to-day, who have a real love for that order of preaching which convicts and converts the soul, although unable to practise it themselves. He knew a good thing when he saw it.

“The first time he heard me preach was on a Sunday evening.  I saw him seated before me, at the end of the church.  I knew he was going to judge me, and I realised that my future standing in his estimation, as well as my position in the Society I had now made my home,