All are satisfied that I and my people are not wishful to find fault with any religious body whatever, but to spend all our time and energy in combating the great evils of godlessness and selfishness which threaten to sweep away all the people everywhere from any thought above material things.
"Yet we have had to forbid our people to accept too often the pressing invitations that pour upon them from all sides to hold Meetings in Church buildings, lest they should lose touch with the masses outside, and begin to be content with audiences of admirers.
"The thirty-six years of my life whilst I was groping about in vain for a home and fellowship amongst Churches gave me to understand, as only experience can, what are the thoughts and feelings of the millions in Christian lands, who not only never enter a church, but who feel it to be inconceivable that they ever should do so.
"If this experience has been invaluable to us in Christian lands, how much more so is it in the far vaster countries of Asia and Africa, where our work is only as yet in its beginnings.

When I went to Japan, the entire missionary community everywhere united to uphold me as the exemplar of true Christlike action for the good of all men.

But the leaders of all the five sects of Buddhism were no less unanimous in their welcome to me, or in their expressions of prayerful desire for the success of my work.
"In India and Africa I have repeatedly seen supporting me in my indoor and outdoor demonstrations the leaders of the Hindu, Parsee, Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish, and Mohammedan communities, who had never met with the Christians in so friendly a way before.

I cannot think this would have been the case had I ever become settled amongst any Christian body in this country.
"Can any one wonder then that I see in all the unpleasant experiences of my early days the hand of God Himself, leading me by a way that I knew not--that I could scarcely believe indeed at the time to be His way.

Why should it have been so difficult for a man, who only wished to lead the lost ones to the great Shepherd who seeks them all to get or to remain within any existing fold, if it was not that there lay before me and my Soldiers conquests infinitely greater and more important than had ever yet been made?
"Oh, with what impatience I turn from the very thought of any of the squabbles of Christian sects when I see all around me the millions who want to avoid any thought of their great Friend and Father, and of the coming Judge before whom we must all, perhaps this very day, appear." How easily excuses, which sound most plausible, are found for every sort of negligence in the service of God--indeed, for not serving Him at all! "It is not my way, you see," says some one, who does not like to make any open profession of interest in Jesus Christ, as though our own preferences or opinions were to be the governing consideration in all that affects the interests of "our Lord"! The General has proved that the old ideas connected with "the Master" can not only be revived but acted up to in our day, and the sense of shame for idle excuses drive out all the paltry pleas set up for indifference to the general ruin.
"At this season, nothing can be done" is as coolly pleaded to-day as if "in season, out of season" had never been written in our Divine Order-Book.
How often our forces in the midst of fairs, and race-days, and "slack times," have demonstrated that real soldiers of Christ can snatch victory, just when all around seems to ensure their defeat! When The General began to form his Army, it was ordinarily assumed as a settled principle that Open-Air Work could only be done in fine weather, and the theory is still existent in many quarters.