“In Tipton one of the Converts was called the ‘Tipton Devil.’  He once sold his dead child’s coffin for drink.  When we got him, a week later, to the Penitent-Form, and I said to him, ‘Now you must pray,’ he said, ‘I can’t pray.’  ‘But you must,’ I said.  After waiting a moment, he just clapped his great rough hands together and said, ’O God, jump down my throat and squeeze the Devil out.’  And then he said the old child’s prayer:—­

    Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
    Look upon a little child;
    Pity my simplicity,
    Suffer me to come to Thee.

If ever a big rough fellow came ‘like a little child’ to Jesus he did, for his life from that day was absolutely new.

“Another of those men’s wives sent for me, and said she feared he was going mad, for he had hung up his old ragged clothes on the wall.  But we soon heard him come singing up the street, and he said, ’I’ve hung them up to remind us all what I was like when Jesus set me free.  A lot of our blokes have turned respectable, and gone and joined the chapel, and I thought if ever the Devil comes to tempt me that way I’ll show him those clothes, and say, “The hand that was good enough to pick me up will be good enough to lead me on to the finish."’

“So I said to his wife, ’He might do a worse thing:  let them hang there, if it helps him any.’”

How The Army won so many of its worst opponents to be its Soldiers comes out beautifully in a more recent story.

“When I was a drunkard,” says a poor woman, “I used just to hate The Army.  But one day, as I was drinking in the ‘King George’ public-house, I heard them singing to an old tune of my childhood, and that brought me out.  I stood and listened, and the Sergeant of the Cadets, who was leading, came over to me and said:—­

“‘Isn’t it very cold?  Hadn’t you better go home?  Don’t go back to them,’ she said, nodding towards the public-house.  And she started to walk with me, and put her jacket round my shoulders.  In that moment I felt that The Salvation Army was something for me.”

Not only did this woman get saved, but her husband and children, too, as a result of that loving act.

There came times in many cities, both in England and elsewhere, when our opposers were formally organised against us, under such names as “Opposition and Skeleton Armies,” etc.  These were organisations, in some instances so formidable, especially on Sunday afternoons, that at one time, in 1882, there would be 1,500 police on extra duty to protect us from their attack.  This, of course, we much disliked, and we gave up our marches entirely for a few weeks, so that when we began again the police might get proper control.  They never allowed the formation of these bands again, for they had learned their lesson by that time.  But how marvellously God helped The General by means of those very oppositions!  They brought us into close touch with bodies of young fellows, many of whom have since become leaders amongst us.