emphatically in both. He could see no escape from belief in both. And he knew already, had known it throughout his "blighted childhood," that men definitely or indefinitely, consciously or unconsciously, by all their thoughts and by all their actions, with consequences visible here, and direr consequences unimaginable hereafter, serve the One or the other. To "go in for God," however the phrase may strike upon the ear, meant with him a rational decision for the Best, a whole-hearted loyalty to the Highest, and a life of logical self-sacrifice devoted to Righteousness. He had inherited from his father a commercial mind; the imagination of his mother's ancestry gave warmth and fervour to his disposition; the hard, vigorous, uncompromising spirit of the north inspired his soul. Such a youth could speak about going in for God without offence, and in speaking about it he would mean it with an iron logic and a fixed determination. His instincts told him "that if there were a God His laws ought to have my obedience"; and "one feeling specially forced itself upon me, and I can recollect it as distinctly as though it had transpired only yesterday, and that was the sense of the folly of spending my life in doing things for which I knew I must either repent or be punished in the days to come."

There was something of a bargain in his decision. Consciously or unconsciously, logic was at work in his soul. But chiefly he came to religion as an escape from the unhappiness, the unrest, and the dissatisfaction of his troubled heart; came to it, too, almost unhelped, unencouraged, and unbefriended. The child who had grown up with the idea that he was "to be made a gentleman "; who had seen the shadow of poverty deepening every day upon the shabbying walls of his unhappy home; who had been left to form his own friendships and find his own amusements in the playingfields of a manufacturing town; who had been thrust into a very exacting and dispiriting employment at the age of thirteen; who had seen his father die, and helped his mother while he was yet a boy to move into a humble shop and begin life over again; who had witnessed the utmost miseries and depressions of a commercial reaction which spread ruin on every side; who had listened with enthusiasm to the

oratory of so-called revolutionary politicians this boy came of his own choice, so far as we can judge, to the religion which makes a supreme demand and confers an exclusive benefit. He came to it for release. He came to it, one may say, selfishly. And it is certain that he realized neither the demand it was to make of him, nor dreamed of the triumph to which it was destined to carry him.

In the year 1844 William Booth was a very youthful shop-assistant who had decided to live a religious life, and who was working exceedingly hard to improve his material prospects. Happiness had come to him, and he had escaped from the wretchedness of unrest by confessing to a sin that haunted his conscience, and by deciding to live henceforth in the knowledge and service of God.

No conversion could be simpler, less dramatic, and more natural; few in the long history of Christianity have brought a richer harvest to the whole world.

CHAPTER IV

BEGINNINGS OF THE NEW LIFE AND THE FIRST SERMON EVER PREACHED BY WILLIAM BOOTH

1845

"DIRECTLY after I was converted I had a bad attack of fever. I was brought down to the edge of the River."

This emphatic statement, occurring abruptly in the disjecta membra of autobiography, might lead the reader to suppose that conversion had been approached in a morbid and unhealthy manner, that the great submission had been made in a feverish or hysterical frame of mind. But, fortunately for the truth, the statement is typical of William Booth's indifference to chronology. The attack of fever did not come till nearly two years after his conversion, when he was seventeen years of age, and at the threshold of his extraordinary career. Conversion was followed, unfortunately for our present purpose, by about two years of autobiographical silence.

Three things alone are known with any degree of definiteness concerning these important years. We know that the chief friendship of his youth was deepened by his new religious experience; we know that the humanitarian instinct. manifested itself in at least one act of touching kindness; and we know that romance for the first time knocked at the heart of this young voyager, whose chart was not yet marked for boundless adventures of quite other kind.

When the friendship of William Booth and William Sansom began is not clearly known, but it was probably as early as the days of Nottintone Place, where the two boys would have been close neighbours. Will Sansom, as he is affectionately called, was the son of a well-to-do lace manufacturer. His social circumstances were superior to William Booth's, his prospects altogether of a more enviable nature. Yet from very early days, just as Ann Booth was the chosen friend of Sarah Butler, so William Booth was the

chosen friend of this fortunate young man; and in both cases, it is worthy of noticing, the friendship persisted when the Booths were reduced from a proud poverty to a staring and emphatic penury. Something there must have been in these Booths very attractive and admirable.

I asked Mrs. Osborne, the Sarah Butler of those days, if William Booth was at all violent in the first enthusiasm of his preaching. "Not in the least," she replied; adding, "if he had been, Will Sansom would have curbed him.' This answer not only exhibits Sansom as a refined and gentle nature; it shows that he exercised a decided influence over William Booth.

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Will Sansom is described as a very handsome young man, romantic-looking, and marked from boyhood by the intense and dreadful signs of consumption. He was one of those whom Maeterlinck calls the Pre-destined. "The men among whom they dwell become the better for the knowledge of them, and the sadder, and the more gentle." He was of the company who look at us with an eager smile, and seem to be on the point of confessing that they know all; and then, towards their twentieth year, they leave us, hurriedly, muffling their footsteps, as though they had just discovered that they had chosen the wrong dwelling-place, and had been about to pass their lives among men whom they did not know." In this case the youth was profoundly religious. He had the deep absorbing faith of a Gratray, the fervour of a Pascal, the hastening evangelical eagerness of a Wesley. The nearer he approached his youthful death the more passionately did he seek to spread his knowledge of the truth. But always he was refined in manner, persuasive in method, winning and ingratiating by nature.

"We were like David and Jonathan," says William Booth; and Mrs. Osborne described to me how these two young men were always together, how they walked about arm-in-arm, how they both had the same stoop, the same pallor, the same brightness of the eyes. The friendship was noticed by other people. The young men were regarded by their circle as "bosom friends."

It is not often in biography that such a friendship as

this is recorded, the deep and affectionate friendship of a young man prosperous and well-stationed with the apprenticed shop-assistant. Religion had much to do with it, but the first cause appears to have been the commanding character and extraordinary attraction of Wilful Will.

Some time after William Booth's conversion, these two youths were attracted by the friendless condition of a poor old withered beggar-woman who shuffled about the streets in horrid rags, endured the mockery of street boys, suffered the persecution of Nottingham "lambs," and slept in doorways or under hedges a grotesque parody of womanhood. William Booth must have seen her a hundred times before his conversion, for she was a character of the streets; but it was not until after his conversion that her deplorable destitution, the infinite pity of her forlorn and friendless state, appealed to 'his compassion. He determined to rescue her from this state, and consulted Will Sansom as to the best way of ensuring her welfare. Then they went about among their friends, collected money, took a little cabin, furnished it, and installed the old woman within, making provision for her support. The most wretched creature, the most ridiculed and neglected of all Nottingham's miserables had moved the heart of William Booth to compassion, and upon such an one as this he made his first experiment in social work.

During this period in his life he imagined that his earthly happiness was bound up with the life of a girl into whose society he had been thrown for some years. She was the daughter of the old couple who had first introduced him to Methodism, the old people who loved him because he resembled their dead son. For a number of months William Booth walked about the world believing that he was in love. He probably discussed the matter with Will Sansom. He was elated by the discovery, and cherished the thought of this wonderful passion at his heart with a fervour of sentimentalism. The young lady sang well, and William Booth, who then could not sing himself, loved music very keenly. It was a great pleasure for him to sit and listen to the singing of this pretty girl, who was a little older than himself.