Generals -- Great Britain -- Biography; Gordon, Charles George, 1833-1885; Great Britain. Army -- Biography
And now the hero of so many battles fought for freedom and liberty, was
to witness scenes of warfare of a very different kind. War, it is true,
but not where there are garments rolled in blood and victims slain; but
war with the powers of darkness, war between good and evil, truth and
error, light and darkness. We went together into the lowest slums of the
district; walked arm in arm over the ground where misery tells its sad
and awful tale, where poverty shelters its shivering frame, and where
blasphemy howls its curse. We found out haunts of vice and sin, terrible
in their character, and distressing in their consequences. I found he
had not hitherto been accustomed to this kind of mission. Once on my
entering a den of dangerous characters and lecturing them on their sinful
course and warning them in unmistakable words of the consequences, he
afterwards said: "I could not have found courage of the kind you show in
this work; yet I never was considered lacking in courage on the field of
battle. When in the Crimea, I was sent frequently and went on hands and
knees through the fall of shells and the whizz of bullets right up to the
Russian walls to watch their movements, and I never felt afraid; I
confess I need courage to warn men of sin and its dangerous
consequences." He met me, for a time almost daily, well supplied with
tracts, which I noticed he used as a text for a few words of advice, or
comfort, or warning as the case required, but he invariably left a silver
coin between the leaves; this I think was a proof he was sincere in his
efforts to do good. Along Old Millgate, and around the Cathedral, at
that time, were numerous courts and alleys, obscure, often filthy, dark
and dangerous; down or up these he accompanied me; up old rickety
staircases, into old crumbling ruins of garrets he followed without
hesitation.
{C. G. Gordon: p51.jpg}
At the bedside of the dying prodigal or prostitute he would sit with
intense interest, pointing them to Him who casts out none. In our house
to house visitation he would sit down and read of the Saviour's love,
making special reference to those that are poor in this world, assuring
them it was for the outcast and the forsaken, and the lost, that Jesus
came to die. He would kneel down for prayer by a broken chair or the
corner of a slop-stone, or by the wash-tub, and with the simplicity of a
child, address in tender and touching petition, the Great Father of all
in Heaven, while tears chased each other down his sun-tanned face; his
great soul going out with his prayer for Heaven's blessing on the
helpless poor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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