"A lawyer said to me the next day that the sermons and lecture were the most wonderful he had ever heard. Another lawyer who had been to each Meeting stayed in his place till the very close on Sunday night, saying that he could not tear himself away.
"The common people heard him gladly, and the uncommon people were overwhelmed with admiration, and conviction. A young lady, belonging to one of the best families in the city, just home from Paris, where she had been studying art, heard him and could not refrain from leaving the box in which she sat and going to the Penitent-Form. She went home truly converted.
"The wave of power and conviction did not cease when The General left; and during the next four days we saw fifty-eight persons at the Penitent-Form."
The special value of all these American testimonies to the effect of The General's brief visits, lies in the fact that they show the triumph of the War plan of God, just in the circumstances where weaklings are tempted to yield to public opinion, substitute orations for real righting for souls, and to press nobody to an immediate decision, or change of heart and life.
There can be no doubt that The Army's invariable fight against the drink has helped to make its General so highly honoured amongst American statesmen. But in that, as in everything else, the important fact to note is that it was by establishing an absolute authority that he secured the faithful carrying on of the campaign against drink and every other evil at every spot where our Flag flies.
The eyes of the whole world have, in our day, been more or less opened to the ruinous character of the drink traffic, and The General and his forces, whilst keeping out of the political arena, have mightily helped the agitations that have ended in the exclusion of the drink traffic altogether from many states and cities, and its limitation, in many ways.
But much less notice has been taken of other evils, which have no less absorbed the attention, and spoiled the means, the minds, and the souls of the masses. The sight daily in every great English-reading city when the sporting editions of the newspapers appear, ought indeed to arouse every follower of Christ. But the habit of irresponsibility that has grown up in most "Christian" circles has still to be fought against everywhere, and The General's persistent testimony against it, indeed the whole theory of a Divine Army and of War, must remain for ever one of the strongest features of his life's work. The old song:--