The prosecutions of our people by the police also helped us not only to attain notoriety locally, but to gain a much higher standing generally.  As soon as The General could find legal ground for appealing against the magistrates’ decisions he did so, and this not only obtained for us judgments that made our pathway clear in the future, but caused the then Lord Chancellor, the late Earl Cairns, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Archbishop Tait of Canterbury, Bishop Lightfoot of Durham, and other men of wide influence to speak out in the House of Lords or elsewhere for us.

And yet, throughout his entire career, right down to his last days, The General was at times personally assailed with a malevolence and bitterness that could hardly have been exceeded.  It has constantly been suggested, if not openly stated, that he was simply “making a pile” of money for himself; and yet, as will be seen in our chapter on Finance he made the most comprehensive arrangements to render suspicion on this score inexcusable.

But try, if you can, at every turn throughout all this life, whenever you hear of General Booth, to realise what it means for such a man, struggling to carry on and extend such a work, to know every minute, day and night, that he is being accused and suspected of seeking only his own, all the time.  Remember that his nature was perhaps abnormally sensitive about any mistrust or suspicion, and about the confidence of those nearest to him.  And then you may have some conception of the cross he had always to bear, and of the wounded heart that went about, for years, inside that bold and smiling figure.

And yet there is, thank God! much of the humorous to relieve our tensions in The Army.  A brother Commissioner of mine remembers seeing The General sail for the United States for the first time.  As the steamer swung off, a bystander remarked, “So he’s off?” “Yes.”  “And when do you go?” “Go?  What do you mean?” “Well, you will never see him again now, will you?” And then my comrade fairly took in that the man was alluding to the continual prophecy of those days that The General, once he had got enough, would disappear with all the money he had raised.  So that man went down to his house laughing, and has been laughing over it now for twenty-six years!

Perhaps The General gained more than can ever be calculated from having to begin and to carry on his warfare, for a long time, in the very teeth of public opinion.

    We’re marching on to war, we are, we are, we are! 
    We care not what the people think, nor what they say we are,

was one of the favourite choruses which, in his greatest public demonstrations in this country, as well as in his ordinary Meetings, he taught us to sing.

Only in this spirit of utter disregard for public opinion have God’s prophets, in all ages, been able to do their work, and only whilst they remain indifferent to men’s scorn and opposition, can the Soldiers of The Salvation Army properly discharge their task of “warning and teaching every man,” in all wisdom.