"I was told that ninety-five in every hundred of the population of our larger towns and cities never crossed the threshold of any place of worship, and I thought, 'Cannot something be done to reach these people with the Gospel?' Fifteen years ago I thus fell in love with the great crowds of people who seemed to be out of the pale of all Christian Churches. It seemed to me that if we could get them to think about Hell they would be certain to want to turn from it. If we could get them to think about Heaven they would want to go there. If we could get them to think about Christ they would want to rush to His open arms. "I resolved to try, and 'The Salvation Army' is the outcome of that resolution. In August, 1877, we had 26 Stations. We have now, in 1880, 162. In 1877, we had 35 Evangelists. We have now 285 Evangelists, or, as we now call them, Officers, and in many instances they have the largest audiences in the towns where they are at work. "We have got all those Officers without any promise or guarantee of salary, and without any assurance that when they reach the railway station to which they book they will find anybody in the town to sympathise with them. The bulk would cheerfully and gladly go anywhere. "We have got, I think, an improvement upon John Wesley's penny a week and shilling a quarter, by way of financial support from our Converts. We say to them, 'You used to give three or four shillings a week for beer and tobacco before you were converted, and we shall not be content with a penny a week and a shilling a quarter. Give as the Lord has prospered you, and down with the money.'" (Loud laughter.) "When I asked one of my Officers the other day at a Meeting held after a tea, for which the people had paid a shilling each, to announce the collection, the woman-Captain, to my astonishment, simply said, 'Now, friends, go into the collection. Whack it into the baskets.' The whole audience was evidently fond of her, and they very heartily responded. "If asked to explain our methods, I would say: _Firstly, we do not fish in other people's waters, or try to set up a rival sect._ Out of the gutters we pick up our Converts, and if there be one man worse than another our Officers rejoice the most over the case of that man. "When a man gets saved, no matter how low he is, he rises immediately. His wife gets his coat from the pawn-shop, and if she cannot get him a shirt she buys him a paper front, and he gets his head up, and is soon unable to see the hole of the pit from which he has been digged, and would like to convert our rough concern into a chapel, and make things respectable. That is not our plan. We are moral scavengers, netting the very sewers. We want all we can get, but we want the lowest of the low.