e history and theory of Christianity; but their conversion,
which is the main thing, seems to us to be sadly and sorely
overlooked. That the immediate gathering of the children to Christ
is the teacher's work, is recognised, we fear, in very few schools.
It is not the aim of the present moment; and, consequently, little
effort is made to bring it about. Feeling all this, we resolved
that, if ever opportunity offered, we would try services as much
adapted for the conversion and instruction of children as our other
services are for adults.

"On the first Sunday afternoon in April, 1869, we held our first
'Children's Salvation Service,' in our late Hall in the old Bethnal
Green Road, and five children professed to find the Saviour."

But of all The General's revolutionary tasks this has, perhaps, proved
to be the toughest. His eldest son--now General Bramwell Booth--made the
children's work his earliest care, and in later years held annually
Councils for all Officers engaged in it in England.

But, although God has wrought wonders amongst the children in every
land, so that we have now thousands of Officers who have been won in
their early years by that Junior work, the spectre of the Sunday School
ever and anon rises to threaten with a peaceful death, this Divine
undertaking. Only the most persistent watchfulness can prevent the
narrow idea of instruction, and unbelief as to children's Salvation
which is its foundation, from gaining the upper hand. It is so easy to
get a thousand children drilled into pretty attention, pretty
performances, pretty recitations and singing, and even into some degree
of knowledge of the killing letter, but so hard to get any one child
really to submit to the one great Teacher of mankind, and be saved!

Therefore we take special pleasure in dwelling upon the fact that The
General's theory has been proved, on trial, to result in producing
heroes and heroines, capable, almost in infancy, of daring battle for
God, and becoming, before they reach their majority, thoroughly
experienced and intelligent conquerors.

In that earliest record we read:--

"Although the services are strictly for children, it is not an
unusual thing to see adults sitting by the side of the little ones,
and sometimes to see parent and child kneeling together seeking 'to
know Him whom to know is life eternal.' One Sunday evening a woman
bro