AUTHOR OF "WHEN IT WAS DARK," "THE DRUNKARD," ETC. WITH THIRTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS SIXTH EDITION HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO Printed in 1913 DEDICATION TO THE POOR OF THE EAST END AMONG WHOM MR. CHARRINGTON HAS LABOURED SO LONG 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 shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation, so fa

In the year 1882 the most popular novelist of his day wrote as follows about the East End of London— "Two millions of people, or thereabouts, live in the East End of London. That seems a good-sized population for an utterly unknown town. They have no institutions of their own to speak of, no public buildings of any importance, no municipality, no gentry, no carriages, no soldiers, no picture-galleries, no theatres, no opera,—they have nothing. It is the fashion to believe they are all paupers, w

There is a certain passage at the end of the "Apostles," by Ernest Renan, which has always seemed to me to be one of singularly penetrating beauty. Translated, it runs as follows: "I am impatient to tell again that unparalleled epic, to depict those roads stretching infinitely from Asia to Europe, along which they sowed the seed of the Gospel, those waves over which they fared so often under conditions so diverse. The great Christian Odyssey is about to begin. Already the Apostolic barque has sh

As I know him now, a marked characteristic of Charrington is his extreme love of the open air. He has built the largest mission hall in the world. I should be afraid to say how many erections of stone, wood, and brick owe their inception to his courage and his work. But, at the same time, the open air—under God's sky—has always appealed to a man with a mind as clear and simple as running water. The idea came to him that, while he could get large congregations into his various missions, the great

I suppose few eminent men of our time have been more blessed with friends than Frederick Charrington. From the highest to the lowest he has had, and has, troops of devoted men and women who reverence and love him. But there has been one friendship in his life which deserves to rank with the great friendships of the world, so uninterrupted, so firm and beautiful, was it. No life of the great evangelist would be complete without an account of his friendship with the late Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer, t

There was a time when the name "Charrington" was, for quite a considerable period, a household word in England. The reason for this was not because the public had suddenly awakened to the fact that among them was a man who had given up all that makes life dear to ordinary people, who lived a remote and buried life in the far East End, denying himself everything, and working for Christ among folk as sordid and savage as those to be found in any distant land, but because this same "Charrington" ha

The personal campaign against Lusby's Music Hall, the astounding details of which are found in the preceding chapter to this, was complemented by Mr. Charrington's work upon the London County Council, to which we find him elected as member for Mile End. Some one has told me that after Mr. Charrington was returned to London's local Parliament, one of his congregation at the Great Assembly Hall remarked that he ought to be known from henceforth as "the member for Religion." Certainly, Mr. Charring

In 1885, the late Mr. Stead, whose death this year in the "Titanic" suddenly closed so brilliant a career, startled the whole of England by the publication of his "Maiden Tribute" in the Pall Mall Gazette , of which he was editor at that time. When the Criminal Law Amendment Bill was talked out just before the defeat of the Ministry it became necessary to rouse public attention to the necessity for legislation on this painful subject. The evidence taken before the House of Lords Committee in 188

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

Mr. Charrington's name is, of course, indissolubly linked with the Temperance cause. His work for Temperance has been the most strenuous of all his efforts. His hatred of strong drink, begun so many years ago when he gave up the great fortune that was made from beer, persists to-day with undiminished force. Throughout the whole of this book the evangelistic Temperance work is very evident, but in this chapter I gather up a few special instances connected with his lifelong anti-drink crusades. Of

You have seen the subject of this memoir under very many changing circumstances, the central figure in one lurid scene after another, but there is a side to Frederick Charrington's life as strangely contrasted as possible to nearly all I have hitherto written. My readers will not have accompanied me so far without realising that in Mr. Charrington is an unique personality. No one has done what he has done, and the originality of temperament has always been curiously aided and abetted by original