“Left Copenhagen the next morning at 8.30 a.m.”

We who have since seen some of The General’s greatest triumphs in that city, and have watched the steady growth of The Army in Denmark till it has won the sympathy of the Royal Family and of every other decent family in the country, must rejoice in this record of his first desperate battles there, and can guess how much of all the subsequent victory is due to what his people learned in those days.

But the record has a far wider interest, for it lets us see, as we have little opportunity ordinarily, the inward conflicts through which The General passed in so many places where, out of his weakness, or the weakness of his forces, he, or they, were “made strong.”

Few achievements of The General’s lifetime will, I fancy, impress future generations more than his establishment of The Army in Finland at the very time when all the former liberties of that country were gradually being taken away.

Formerly recognised by treaties as a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, with its own Parliament and laws, which were supposed to be permanently guaranteed, Finland found itself looked upon with a growing jealousy just when a new constitution was slowly changing the governmental arrangements of Russia.  It is, as yet, too early for outsiders to understand how it came to pass that the country was regarded as a centre of disaffection, or why, ever and anon some new step was taken to nullify its Parliament, and to place it more and more under military control.  What we are concerned with is the simple fact that these things interfered but little with the steady progress of The Army, and that this proved at every step the soundness of The General’s principles, the completeness with which he succeeded in planting them in the hearts of his most distant followers, and the marvellous way in which God guided, protected, and blessed his work, just where he could do the least for its development.

The very beginning of the Work was due entirely to one of his most daring decisions, for it may well be doubted whether any attempt, under the leadership of a foreigner, would have been tolerated at that time.  But when a young lady, who had become acquainted with The Army in Stockholm, devoted herself to its service, and after passing some time in Training in London, was sent back with two or three subordinates to begin work in Helsingfors, who could look upon her with suspicion?

The moment she succeeded, however, in inducing a few of her first Converts to put on our uniform or insignia, the police came down upon them, took away all their badges, and declared that the formation of a Corps there must be regarded as for ever prohibited.  Even when the Converts were provided with a second supply of badges, they were called to the police-station, and again deprived of them.  But the leader had learnt from The General too well the lessons of patient endurance and continuance to give way.  And when the police saw her followers supplied a third time with the signs of union with us, having in the meantime had so many opportunities to learn more both of the leader and of her people, they concluded that it would be, after all, the best for the public interest to let them alone.