CHAPTER VIII
FRUITION!
All the work of years, all the successes, the fact that Frederick Charrington had become an acknowledged leader—perhaps I should say "the" acknowledged leader of the armies of Christ in the East End of London—are now about to culminate in the erection of that last, and permanent, "Great Assembly Hall."
We have seen him in all his earlier periods. We approach the moment when his work for our Lord is to be consolidated in a concrete form. The huge machinery for good inspired by him, invented and directed by him, is to be centralised. A new temple of righteousness is to arise, built by hands indeed, but far more by prayer and self-sacrifice.
The present chapter marks a very definite stage in the career of which I am privileged and happy to write.
The subaltern has become a commander-in-chief, and a commander-in-chief who, for the first time, is about to have a commissariat.
The time has arrived when the words of the Wisdom of Solomon sound strangely true.
"Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labours.
"When they see it, they will be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they looked for.