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Always it was the same earnest, simple tale of drink and degradation, passed now for ever; of the Penitent-Form; of the building up of a new self, and of position regained.
For two years now I have helped to support an invalid sister instead of being a burden to every one I knew, as once I was. After the singing of the hymn, 'Rock of Ages, another man addressed the meeting. He had been a drunkard, a homeless wanderer, who slept night after night on the Embankment till fortune brought him to this service and to the Penitent-Form.
Booth said no more just then, but held on in faith and prayer, and some months later, to her unutterable thankfulness, she found him squeezed in among a number of other children at the penitent-form. He had, unasked, made his way there, and was weeping and confessing his sins with all his heart.
When we got him, a week later, to the Penitent-Form, and I said to him, 'Now you must pray, he said, 'I can't pray. 'But you must, I said. After waiting a moment, he just clapped his great rough hands together and said, 'O God, jump down my throat and squeeze the Devil out. And then he said the old child's prayer:
After listening many times without yielding, he was startled out of his coolness by a large Hall in which he attended a Night of Prayer being burned to the ground the next day. The next evening, with one of his companions, he went to the Penitent-Form and found the mercy of God.
We were more than full, and the place holds 1,500. I had much liberty in speaking, the After Meeting went with a swing seldom known on the Continent or elsewhere, and we had eighty-four at the Penitent-Form, some of them remarkable cases." No wonder this octogenarian Leader finds his young Dutchmen wanting in enterprise! "Sunday. The theatre again in the morning at ten. An excellent plan.
Once inside, she went right up to the Penitent-Form with her prisoner, and made him kneel with her there. He had never seen so many grown-up people kneeling before, and, as they prayed, he felt what a naughty boy he had been, and began both to weep and pray.
The congregation which I saw on this particular occasion seemed to me to consist for the most part of elderly men; in fact, some of them were very old, and the average age of those who attended the Penitent-Form I estimated at about thirty-five years. This, however, varies. I am informed that at times they are mostly young persons.
A gentleman came up to the penitent-form, after one of my West-end services, last season, and told me: "I am a preacher. I have been laboring in the Gospel for eight years, but I know I am utterly destitute of this power." "Do you want it?" "Oh!" he said, "I do;" and he looked as though he were sincere. "Then," I said, "what is it? There is a hindrance. It is not God's fault.
They could purchase at the canteen such articles as were for sale and it was home to them. Very wonderful meetings were held in this spot and many men found Christ at the penitent-form, which was an old bench placed in front of the canteen. On the wharf in New York when the soldiers were returning home some soldiers were talking about the Salvation Army.
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