Nottingham, I had to move away.  I was loath, very loath, to leave my dear widowed mother and my native town, but I was compelled to do so, and to come to London.  In the great city I felt myself unutterably alone.  I did not know a soul excepting a brother-in-law, with whom I had not a particle of communion.

“In many respects my new master very closely resembled the old one.  In one particular, however, he differed from him very materially, and that was he made a great profession of religion.  He believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and in the Church of which he was a member, but seemed to be utterly ignorant of either the theory or practice of experimental godliness.  To the spiritual interests of the dead world around him he was as indifferent as were the vicious crowds themselves whom he so heartily despised.  All he seemed to me to want was to make money, and all he seemed to want me for was to help him in the sordid selfish task.

“So it was work, work, work, morning, noon, and night.  I was practically a white slave, being only allowed my liberty on Sundays, and an hour or two one night in the week, and even then the rule was ’Home by ten o’clock, or the door will be locked against you.’  This law was rigidly enforced in my case, although my employer knew that I travelled long distances preaching the Gospel in which he and his wife professed so loudly to believe.  To get home in time, many a Sunday night I have had to run long distances, after walking for miles, and preaching twice during the day.”

The contrast between those days and ours can hardly be realised by any of us now.  We may put down almost in figures some of the differences that steam and electricity have made, linking all mankind together more closely than Nottingham was then connected with London.  But what words can convey any picture of the development of intelligence and sympathy that makes an occurrence in a London back street interest the reading inhabitants of Germany, America, and Australia as intense as those of our own country?

What a consolation it would have been to the apprentice lad, could he have known how all his daily drudgery was fitting him to understand, to comfort, and to help the toiling masses of every race and clime?

In the wonderful providence of God all these changes have been allowed to leave England in as dominating a position as she held when William Booth was born, if not to enhance her greatness and power, far as some may consider beyond what she deserved.  And yet all the time, with or without our choice, our own activities, and even our faults and neglects, have been helping other peoples, some of them born on our soil, to become our rivals in everything.  Happily the multiplication of plans of intercourse is now merging the whole human race so much into one community that one may hope yet to see the dawn of that fraternity of peoples which may end the present prospects of wars unparalleled in the past.  How very much William Booth has contributed to bring that universal brotherhood about this book may suffice to hint.