sage to which they so determinedly turn a
deaf ear." In the very earliest days of The Army, therefore, in
order to reach the people whom we could not reach by any other
means, we gave the hungry wretches a meal, and then talked to them
about God and eternity.

4. Then came the gradual unfolding of our Social methods, which
have been so remarkably successful.

My dear wife's heart had been particularly drawn out on behalf of
the fallen outcasts of society, who, often more sinned against than
sinning, appealed peculiarly to her large and tender sympathies.
More than once she found opportunity for extending help to
individual cases of misfortune, obtaining homes amongst her friends
for some of the children, and assisting the poor mothers to win
their way back to virtue.

But it was not until the end of 1883, or thereabouts, that anything
like a systematic effort in this direction was organised on their
behalf. Touched by the helpless and pitiable condition of some poor
girls who had sought Salvation at the Corps at which, with her
husband, she fought as a Soldier, a baker's wife, living in one of
the most wretched streets in Spitalfields, took the girls, in
distress and trouble, into her own home. Before long it was crowded
to its utmost capacity, and still other women were clamouring for
admission. She implored us to help her, and we engaged and opened a
house as our first Rescue Home, placing it under the direction of
Mrs. Bramwell Booth.

The breaking forth of the same spirit in different directions in
other lands quickly followed.

At about this time our first Prison Rescue Brigade, in the Colony
of Victoria, was organised by the late Colonel Barker. So striking
was the success attending his effort that, before many months had
passed by, magistrates in the city of Melbourne were actually
giving delinquents the option of being sent to prison or to our
Prison-Gate Home, and the Government placed the former Detective
Police Building at our disposal, at a nominal rental.

Not only does the genuine Christian spirit carry the soul out in
sympathy with misery, but it often leads it to prefer certain
particular classes of sufferers or wrongdoers, on whom to lavish
its self-sacrificing love, and restlessly spend itself in efforts
for