And the diary tells us nothing of his talks with Officers between Meetings, which have formed so important a part of all his travels. By means of such conversations, especially in the case of Officers who are not English, The General has gained a close knowledge of them and their difficulties as they have of his thoughts and wishes.
Between his arrival at Gothenburg and his Sundsvall Meetings came a rough journey to Norway, where we had as yet no Officers, yet where, nevertheless, a great Meeting had been arranged for by friends, who later helped in the establishment of our work in their country! The General passed on to Denmark, where our work was in its first year.
On the afternoon of his arrival he tells us he rested, wrote up correspondence and journal, and had some little thought about the coming Meetings.
"Night. Welcome Meeting in the Methodist Church. Packed. There must have been nearly 1,300 people present. The admission was free, and there were many Philistines, some socialists, and some lads bent on mischief. To add to our difficulties, my interpreter did his work so miserably that we had some confusion and restlessness. After an hour's talk, I paused for the collection to be taken, and changed interpreters. The second one did very much better. His voice, however, was feeble and his manner very quiet, so that things were not very much better for a time. Then we had a little quiet, and a decent finish. It was a considerable disappointment, however, and next door to a defeat. I retired to rest very sad, and with awkward forebodings about the coming Meetings.
"The great funereal vault of a church, the interpreting, the mocking young fellows void of any sense of honour or conscience to appeal to, or any respect for a stranger, the intense anxiety of the Officer in command to have good Meetings, and above all my longings to meet the needs of the hungry crowd, only wanting to hear, and many of them equally willing to obey: these and other troubling thoughts haunted my mind and spoiled my night's sleep. But I fell back on my old remedy, and, comforting myself in the Lord, resolved to do what could be done and left myself in His hands.
"Sunday.--11 a.m. Had a local minister to translate; he did well. Some fifty or sixty stood up at the close as seekers for a clean heart.
"Afternoon. The great church packed. Interpretation went fairly well. Began at 3 p.m. and went on till 5.20 p.m.
"Night. Police sent up word soon after six that the street was filling up, and the doors must be opened. When this was done the young fellows who had made so much trouble on Saturday night--or at least some hundreds of this class--forced their way in through all else, leaving hundreds more outside. They talked and laughed, and although now and then a policeman marched a row of them out, their game went on, spoiling everything.
"The voice of the interpreter was weak, and the confusion flustered him. So my dreams of a smash and of a hundred seekers were not realised, and we terminated with some six or seven gathered out of the crowd immediately near to the platform.
"It was a great disappointment. I felt beaten, and went home confessing it. And yet what could be done? My tongue was all but tied. I was helpless without an interpreter capable of conveying my meaning to the people. Such a man was wanting. Commending the whole matter and the anxious crowds of people so eager to hear to my Master, I retired at midnight.
"Monday.--Breakfast, 8.30 a.m. 9 a.m., spoke with a gentleman from Kiel, who is anxious to see The Army open there, and is building us a Hall. Saw his plans and arranged terms.
"9.30 a.m., saw the Officer from Stuttgart. He has a heavy struggle. 12 noon, drove round the city. In summer time it must be a very pleasant place.
"3.30 p.m., Meeting. Fine audience, very nearly filling the church. Commenced with a new interpreter, a student--execrable! I soon had to fall back on one of the others.
"7 p.m., as full as the police would allow. Continued till 10 p.m. And then had a Soldiers' Meeting till 11.30 p.m.
"Left Copenhagen the next morning at 8.30 a.m."
We who have since seen some of The General's greatest triumphs in that city, and have watched the steady growth of The Army in Denmark till it has won the sympathy of the Royal Family and of every other decent family in the country, must rejoice in this record of his first desperate battles there, and can guess how much of all the subsequent victory is due to what his people learned in those days.
But the record has a far wider interest, for it lets us see, as we have little opportunity ordinarily, the inward conflicts through which The General passed in so many places where, out of his weakness, or the weakness of his forces, he, or they, were "made strong."
Few achievements of The General's lifetime will, I fancy, impress future generations more than his establishment of The Army in Finland at the very time when all the former liberties of that country were gradually being taken away.
Formerly recognised by treaties as a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, with its own Parliament and laws, which were supposed to be permanently guaranteed, Finland found itself looked upon with a growing jealousy just when a new constitution was slowly changing the governmental arrangements of Russia. It is, as yet, too early for outsiders to understand how it came to pass that the country was regarded as a centre of disaffection, or why, ever and anon some new step was taken to nullify its Parliament, and to place it more and more under military control. What we are concerned with is the simple fact that these things interfered but little with the steady progress of The Army, and that this proved at every step the soundness of The General's principles, the completeness with which he succeeded in planting them in the hearts of his most distant followers, and the marvellous way in which God guided, protected, and blessed his work, just where he could do the least for its development.
The very beginning of the Work was due entirely to one of his most daring decisions, for it may well be doubted whether any attempt, under the leadership of a foreigner, would have been tolerated at that time. But when a young lady, who had become acquainted with The Army in Stockholm, devoted herself to its service, and after passing some time in Training in London, was sent back with two or three subordinates to begin work in Helsingfors, who could look upon her with suspicion?
The moment she succeeded, however, in inducing a few of her first Converts to put on our uniform or insignia, the police came down upon them, took away all their badges, and declared that the formation of a Corps there must be regarded as for ever prohibited. Even when the Converts were provided with a second supply of badges, they were called to the police-station, and again deprived of them. But the leader had learnt from The General too well the lessons of patient endurance and continuance to give way. And when the police saw her followers supplied a third time with the signs of union with us, having in the meantime had so many opportunities to learn more both of the leader and of her people, they concluded that it would be, after all, the best for the public interest to let them alone.