CHAPTER IX.
Army Leading We have seen Mr.Booth beginning on the spot, now marked with a stone, near the site of "The Vine" public-house (since happily pulled down, the site being turned into a public garden) on July 5, 1865, scrambling through the first six years' difficulties until he marched the beginnings of an Army of saved drunkards, infidels, and sinners into a People's Market, transformed into a public Hall and Headquarters.
He called all that "The Christian Mission," with only a slowly dawning consciousness that it was an Army, for six years more.
But he was leading it on, in humble dependence upon God, with increasing speed and force.

He was really hindered by many things, amongst them his own ministerial habits of thought and plan.

That nothing lasting could be achieved without system and organisation he had always seen.

But he had never yet known a formation equal to that of some of the Churches around him which depended upon more or less skilled preachers, and a complete network of elected assemblies.

For all purposes of conquest he had got preachers enough out of the public-houses; but he could not imagine their holding regular congregations, or developing the work, without having years for study and just such plans as the Churches had established.