“Thanks for your letter, and your catechisms sent here.

“The particular catechisms you send I already had—­not that the church affair could be of any advantage to me, and I should imagine it would not be of much use to any one else, especially to children.

“I am trying to produce something that will be a boon to The Army by being blessed to hundreds of thousands of children for years to come.  You do not seem to think it is a very important task.  I count it the most important work I have had my hands on for years.

“I had a proper day at——.  I got at the peasantry for once, although I have often had that privilege before, and we had a mighty day.  Oh, the joy of leading those simple souls into the light and power and freedom of the Kingdom!  I am keeping better.  Praise the Lord!”

Whether The General’s hopes for the use of his writings to the good of children will be fully realised, remains to be seen; but it is a great thing to have established even the purpose of making the way to Heaven plain enough for the youngest feet to find.

The other day I heard a Captain explaining how he was “conscripted” into The Army at ten years of age.  He was standing outside the door of one of our Halls on an evening when children were not admitted.  He had tried, in vain, boylike, to dodge through the doorkeeper’s legs—­but a drunken woman came up and not only insisted on getting in, but on dragging him in “to keep her company.”  Once inside, she went right up to the Penitent-Form with her prisoner, and made him kneel with her there.  He had never seen so many grown-up people kneeling before, and, as they prayed, he felt what a naughty boy he had been, and began both to weep and pray.  However little any older people might think of him that night, God heard and saved him, and he is now fighting under our Flag in the West Indies.

And others, who in their early years came to Christ, are now occupying leading positions all over the world.  One of them remembers, when a lad of fifteen, hearing The General, whilst giving out the verse, “Sure, I must fight, if I would reign; Increase my courage, Lord,” say, “I would like to alter it, to—­’Sure, I will fight, and I shall reign.’” The lad shouted, “Hallelujah!” and, as he was on the front seat in the theatre, The General both heard and noticed him, and remarked:  “I hope you will make as good a fighter as you are a shouter.”  Thirty-three years of faithful warfare have replied to The General’s encouraging challenge.

And we have no means as yet of calculating how many such youthful disciples have been equally helped by The General into a conquering life.  May this record help to multiply the number, for it is the will of God to make all His children “strong in the power of His might.”

It is, indeed, this bringing all, whether old or young, forward, in the development of all their powers for God, which constitutes everywhere a great part of The Army’s work.