The Value Of The Human Soul

He said William Booth could preach like nobody else from Jeremiah, the harvest is past, or somebody said it, or his favourite was, and he had a gruff voice, if thou hast run with a footman and they have wearied thee, I will now do in the swelling of the Jordan fire a volley, which men say hallelujah, so they all roar hallelujah. And he said that what William Booth could do, he could get men trembling, he said. He said as a matter of fact, you give them a hymn book of maybe 25 pages, and they sit with it on their lap and shred it while they were so disturbed. He said you can see where these men had been, all the back pews were full of shredded hymn books. The same thing happened in 1926, I talked with the greatest revivalist Ireland's ever had, W.P. Nicholson. He said people used to shred the hymn books when we listened, they were under conviction, they were so nervous. And sweat would run off their noses, it doesn't happen anymore. Anyhow, going back to this, he said the old William Woodpeat hellfire boy, he said he could make you shake, and he said, but he couldn't make an altar call. So he would say, now come to the mercy seat, come to the mercy seat, come run for your life, you're going to hell. And he couldn't get anywhere, he'd shout out, where is Lawley, where is Lawley? Well, Commissioner Lawley was one of the stalwarts of the Salvation Army like Bringle. And he said he was under the platform, and he'd come out, and they used to hang close to each other, you know, like somebody gave me your suit, it would be hanging down on me, and Commissioner Lawley's coat was down to his ankles. But he said he'd come out on all fours and do this, there'd be a cloud of dust, and then Lawley would begin to make an appeal, you know, come to the mercy seat. And he said the altar would be lined up, sometimes they wouldn't come. He said the general would turn round and roar at us, you know, pray! Everybody looked down and prayed. And usually there's a break, but he said this day they prayed. And nothing happened, so he said again, pray! And he said everybody's nervous. Hang on a second, he said, the old boy, he's angry, he's angry. Well, let's pray! And he said, Lord, Lord, move right now, move right now. And he said nobody came, so the third time he'd roar, you know, get hold of God, he said this meeting is going to go to hell, these people are perishing, some of them are wealthy, some are poor, some are ignorant, some are backslidden, pray! And he said the Holy Ghost would take all the men on the back seat and lift them bodily over the congregation and drop them on the altar. I said to Pentecostal, you saw that, you'd run for the door, you'd say Spiritism or something. I said, but there was an unwritten law in the Salvation Army, they called their churches a corps, you know, like the Army does, C-O-R-P-S Corps. And it was an unwritten law in the Salvation Army that when you finish your street meeting at nine o'clock Saturday night, you go to pray till midnight. And he said to me, we had men that would pray, and one old man particularly would say, he'd jump up, maybe at twelve or one, and raise his hand and shout, victory, victory! There'll be ten tomorrow. And he said, there'll be nine or ten saved. Or he'd say, there'll be fifteen, there'll be thirteen or fourteen. He said, there was only one or twelve every time. But he said, remember we had street meetings, we got baptized with rotten eggs. In those days, there were no houses with bathrooms. They kept what they call a pot under the bed, and they'd always empty it. And people would run out and throw it from the window and throw urine on them. And he said, we kept two coats. You kept an old one with eggs. And you went home and scraped them off, and then you put your Sunday best on. And he said, Bert, he said, who cares when there's revival? As I said to you, you don't have to advertise a fire. Colonel Brangle was the biggest orator in America, and I don't know who it was, one of the multimillionaires offered to build him the biggest church in America, give him the biggest salary if he would stay. He said, I'm going to London. Why? Because there's a fire. There's a man called William Booth, he was a Methodist, they got rid of him. And he's having revival, and he went and had revival. And he gathered all kinds of people to him. But the secret again, that they had a burning. You went in a prayer meeting, you know, you felt the glory, the majesty of God. And now you don't do that. Like I was with a team not long ago, well, before the meeting at night, we went in a side room and they'd hot tea and cold tea and drinks and fruit and everything, and trivia talking and straight off there to the platform. How do you suddenly turn off and suddenly become spiritual? We traveled the country, but I walked the length of England, I walked the breadth of England with five college fellows. We slept in fields at night, we slept in churches. We didn't get a penny wage in six months, and nobody ever said a word. Because at night, we'd kneel in the street at ten and eleven o'clock at night, and people get saved in the street. You don't care who where you sleep. We slept in sleeping bags for three years. Slept on the floor of churches, anywhere they'd take us in. But we had revival. The churches are still standing.