These soldiers of the League of Service moved everywhere
around me in the incessant processions of a tireless love. I knew
their works, and there was no hour when my heart did not go out to them
in sympathy. Why was it that I was only sympathizer and spectator,
never comrade?
Partly through a kind of mischievous humility which was really pride.
They could do these things; I could not, nor were they required of me.
It needed special gifts for such a work, and I had not these gifts.
Besides, had I not my own work? Was it not as important to educate
persons of some culture and social position in a knowledge of Christian
truth as to redeem lost people from the hell of their misdoing?
Certainly it was easier and pleasanter. I found in it that most subtle
of all gratifications, the sense of ability efficiently applied, and
winning praise by its exertion. There was no one who wished me to live
in any other way than that in which I lived. Those to whom I
ministered were satisfied with me, and had I told them that I wished to
do the sort of things that Salvation Army people did among the slums,
they would have been shocked, and would certainly have dissuaded me.
And so to this mischievous humility which assured me that I had no
fitness for the kind of life which I knew was the life of the saints in
every age, there was added the dull pressure of convention.
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