"The crowding pressure and activity of so many must almost oppress one not accustomed to it. The number of public-houses, theatres, and music-halls must give a young enthusiast for Christ a sickening impression. The enormous number of hawkers must also have given a rather exaggerated idea of the poverty and cupidity which nevertheless prevailed. The Churches in those days gave the very uttermost idea of spiritual death and blindness to the existing condition of things; at that time very few of them were open more than one evening per week. There were no Young Men's or Young Women's Christian Associations, no P.S.A.'s, no Brotherhoods, no Central Missions, no extra effort to attract the attention of the godless crowds; for miles there was not an announcement of anything special in the religious line to be seen. "To any one who cared to enter the places of worship, their deathly contrast with the streets was even worse. The absence of week-night services must have made any stranger despair of finding even society or diversion. A Methodist sufficiently in earnest to get inside to the 'class' would find a handful of people reluctant to bear any witness to the power of God. "Despite the many novelties introduced since those days, the activities of the world being so much greater, the contrast must look even more striking in our own time." Imagine a young man accustomed to daily labour for the poor, coming into such a world as that! Thought about what they sang and said in the private gatherings of the Methodist Societies could only deepen and intensify the feeling of monstrosity. They sang frequently:-- He taught me how to watch and pray, And live rejoicing every day. But where were the rejoicing people? Where was there indeed anybody who, either in or out of a religious service, dared to express his joy in the Lord--or wished to express anything. It was as if religious societies had become wet blankets to suppress any approach to a hearty expression of religious faith. Nevertheless, by God's grace, it all worked in this case not to crush but to infuriate and stir the new-comer to action. Preaching, under such circumstances, was a relief to such a soul, and necessarily became more and more desperate. One hearing of William Booth was enough for Mr. Rabbits, a practical, go-ahead man, who had raised up out of the old-fashioned little business of his forefathers one of the great "stores" of London, and who longed to see the same sort of development take place in connexion with the old-fashioned, perfectly correct, and yet all but lifeless institutions that professed to represent Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world. His sense of the contrast between this preacher and others whom he knew was proportionately rapid and acute. The effects produced on hearers were the same at every turn.