[The Authoritative Life of General William Booth by George Scott Railton]@TWC D-Link bookThe Authoritative Life of General William Booth CHAPTER VI 10/13
During the second week, the Wesleyans opened a large room for united Prayer Meetings at noon; since then, by their invitation, we have on several occasions spoken in their chapels to densely crowded audiences; services being simultaneously conducted in the chapel where the movement originally commenced.
One remarkable and gratifying feature of the work is the large number of men who are found every night amongst those who are anxious.
Never have I seen so many men at the same time smiting their breasts, and crying, 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' Strong men, old men, young men, weeping like children, broken-hearted on account of their sins.
A number of these are sailors, and scarcely a ship has gone out of this port the last few days without taking among its crew one or more souls newly-born for Heaven." Can it be believed that just such victories as these led to the closing of almost all the Churches against him? "In these days," The General has more recently written, "it has become almost the fashion for the Churches to hold yearly 'revival' or 'special' services, but forty years ago they were as unanimously opposed to anything of the kind, and compelled me to gain outside every Church organisation the one liberty I desired--to seek and save the lost ones, who never enter any place of worship whatever. "Let nobody suppose that I cherish any resentment against any of the Churches on account of their former treatment of me, or that I have a desire to throw a stone at any of them.
From any such feelings I believe that God has most mercifully preserved me all my life, and I rejoice in the kindness on this account with which they load me now in every land, as testimonies to that fact. "But I want to make it clear to readers in lands far away from Christendom why I was driven into the formation of an Organisation entirely outside every Christian Church in order to accomplish my object, and why my people everywhere, whilst having no more desire than myself to come into dispute, or even discussion, with any Church near them, must needs act as independently of them all as I have done, no matter how friendly they may now be to us. "Nothing could be more charming than the present attitude towards us of every religious community in the United States, from the Roman Catholics, whose Archbishop has publicly commended us, to the Mormons, who are generally regarded as enemies of all Christianity, and the Friends (commonly called Quakers) whose ideas of worship seem to be at the uttermost extreme from ours.
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