“Can any one wonder then that I see in all the unpleasant experiences of my early days the hand of God Himself, leading me by a way that I knew not—­that I could scarcely believe indeed at the time to be His way.  Why should it have been so difficult for a man, who only wished to lead the lost ones to the great Shepherd who seeks them all to get or to remain within any existing fold, if it was not that there lay before me and my Soldiers conquests infinitely greater and more important than had ever yet been made?

“Oh, with what impatience I turn from the very thought of any of the squabbles of Christian sects when I see all around me the millions who want to avoid any thought of their great Friend and Father, and of the coming Judge before whom we must all, perhaps this very day, appear.”

How easily excuses, which sound most plausible, are found for every sort of negligence in the service of God—­indeed, for not serving Him at all!

“It is not my way, you see,” says some one, who does not like to make any open profession of interest in Jesus Christ, as though our own preferences or opinions were to be the governing consideration in all that affects the interests of “our Lord”!

The General has proved that the old ideas connected with “the Master” can not only be revived but acted up to in our day, and the sense of shame for idle excuses drive out all the paltry pleas set up for indifference to the general ruin.

“At this season, nothing can be done” is as coolly pleaded to-day as if “in season, out of season” had never been written in our Divine Order-Book.

How often our forces in the midst of fairs, and race-days, and “slack times,” have demonstrated that real soldiers of Christ can snatch victory, just when all around seems to ensure their defeat!

When The General began to form his Army, it was ordinarily assumed as a settled principle that Open-Air Work could only be done in fine weather, and the theory is still existent in many quarters.  As if the comfort and convenience of “the workers,” and not the danger and misery of the people, were to fix the times of such effort!

“But the people will not come,” is even now pleaded as an excuse for the omission or abandonment of any imaginable attempt to do good.  As if the people’s general disinclination for anything that has to do with God were not the precise reason for His wish to “send out” His servants!

“Such a plan would never succeed here,” is an almost invariable excuse made for not undertaking anything new.  The General was never blind to differences between this and that locality and population.  But he insisted that no plan that could be devised by those on any given spot, and especially no plan that has manifestly been blessed and used by God elsewhere should be dismissed without proper, earnest trial.