The Authoritative Life of General William Booth | Page 4

of these rural charms had fled, and in their places were collieries and factories, and machine shops, and streets upon streets of houses for the employes of the growing town. We were only 60,000 in my boyhood, whereas the citizens of Nottingham to-day number 250,000.
"A few years ago the city conferred its freedom upon me as a mark of appreciation and esteem. To God be all the glory that He has helped His poor boy to live for Him, and made even his former enemies to honour him."
But we all know what sort of influences exist in a city that is at once the capital of a county and a commercial centre. The homes of the wealthy and comfortable are found at no great distance from the dwellings of the poor, while in the huge market-places are exhibitions weekly of all the contrasts between town and country life, between the extremest want and the most lavish plenty.
Seventy years ago, life in such a city was nearly as different from what it is to-day as the life of to-day in an American state capital is from that of a Chinese town. Between the small circle of "old families" who still possessed widespread influence and the masses of the people there was a wide gap. The few respectable charities, generally due to the piety of some long-departed citizen, marked out very strikingly a certain number of those who were considered "deserving poor," and helped to make every one less concerned about all the rest. For all the many thousands struggling day and night to keep themselves and those dependent upon them from starvation, there was little or no pity. It was just "their lot," and they were taught to consider it their duty to be content with it. To envy their richer neighbours, to covet anything they possessed, was a sin that would only ensure for the coveter an eternal and aggravated continuance of his present thirst.
In describing those early years, The General said:--
"Before my father's death I had been apprenticed by his wish. I was very young, only thirteen years of age, but he could not afford to keep me longer at school, and so out into the world I must go. This event was followed by the formation of companionships whose influence was anything but beneficial. I went down hill morally, and the consequences might have been serious if not eternally disastrous, but that the hand of God was laid on me in a very remarkable manner.
"I had scarcely any income as an apprentice, and was so hard up when my father died, that I could do next to nothing to assist my dear mother and sisters, which was the cause of no little humiliation and grief.
"The system of apprenticeship in those days generally bound a lad for six or seven years. During this time he received little or no wages, and was required to slave from early morning to late evening upon the supposition that he was 'being taught' the business, which, if he had a good master, was probably true. It was a severe but useful time of learning. My master was a Unitarian--that is, he did not believe Christ was the son of God and the Saviour of the world, but only the best of teachers; yet so little had he learnt of Him that his heaven consisted in making money, strutting about with his gay wife, and regaling himself with worldly amusements.
"At nineteen the weary years of my apprenticeship came to an end. I had done my six years' service, and was heartily glad to be free from the humiliating bondage they had proved. I tried hard to find some kind of labour that would give me more liberty to carry out the aggressive ideas which I had by this time come to entertain as to saving the lost; but I failed. For twelve months I waited. Those months were among the most desolate of my life. No one took the slightest interest in me.
"Failing to find employment in Nottingham, I had to move away. I was loath, very loath, to leave my dear widowed mother and my native town, but I was compelled to do so, and to come to London. In the great city I felt myself unutterably alone. I did not know a soul excepting a brother-in-law, with whom I had not a particle of communion.
"In many respects my new master very closely resembled the old one. In one particular, however, he differed from him very materially, and that was he made a great profession of religion. He believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and in the Church of which he was a member, but seemed to be utterly ignorant of either the theory or practice of experimental godliness. To the spiritual