In many of the side streets and back lanes, where there was little wheel traffic, groups of men and women might have been seen bargaining; for the most dilapidated and greasy articles of old clothing that could still be worn, whilst lads and even children gambled with half-pence, or even with marbles, as if they could not early enough learn how fully to follow the evil courses of their elders.  There were, and are still, streets within ten minutes’ walk of the Whitechapel Road where dogs and birds were traded in, or betted on, competitions in running and singing being often indispensable to the satisfaction of the buyers and sellers.

By the side of the road along which there was, and is, a continuous stream of waggon and omnibus, as well as foot traffic, was a broad strip of unpaved ground, part of it opposite that Sidney Street which a few years ago became world-renowned as the scene of the battle of the London Police with armed burglars.  This was called the Mile End Waste, and was utilised for all the ordinary purposes of a fair ground.  The merry-go-rounds, and shows of every description, which competed with the unfailing Punch and Judy, and wooden swings, kept up a continuous din, especially on Saturday nights and Sundays.

Amidst all this the vendors of the vilest songs and books, and of the most astounding medicines, raised their voices so as to attract their own little rings of interested listeners.  There, too, men spoke upon almost every imaginable evil theme, denouncing both God and Government in words which one would have thought no decent workman would care to hear.  But all who have seen a fair will have some idea of the scene, if they can only imagine all the deepest horrors of appearance and demeanour that drunkenness and poverty, illness and rags, can crowd together within a few hundred yards of space.

Once you can place all that fairly before your imagination you can form some conception of the mind that could look upon it all and hunger to find just there a battlefield for life, as well as of the faith that could reckon upon the victory of the Gospel in such a place.  We have all read accounts of missionaries approaching some far-away island shore and seeing the heathen dance round some cannibal feast.  But such feasts could not have been very frequent, amidst such limited populations, whereas the ever-changing millions of London have furnished all these years tragedies daily and nightly numerous enough to crowd our memories with scenes no less appalling to the moral sense than anything witnessed on those distant pagan shores.  To those who take time to think it out, the marvel of both the eagerness and the reluctance of Mr. and Mrs. Booth to plunge into this human Niagara will appear ever greater.  As we look nowadays at the world-wide result of their resolve so to do, despite all their consciousness of ignorance and unfitness for the task, we cannot but see in the whole matter the hand of God Himself, fulfilling His great promise:  “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, the prey of the terrible shall be delivered, for I will contend with them that contend with thee, and I will save thy children.  And all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”