William Booth’s First Sermon
Fifty years ago, July 5, William Booth preached his first sermon to the outcasts of London. With a great yearning to reach the poor and the unfortunate, as well as the wicked of the metropolis, he went down to Mile End Waste, the most abandoned part of the East End of London, and there in front of the Blind Beggar Public House—a plain, ordinary, low-down saloon, as we would call it in this country—he sang, drew a crowd, and proclaimed the gospel. Out of that service grew the Salvation Army formally organized in 1878, with its world-wide constituency. It was the intention of the army to have observed this event with fitting exercises this year, but owing to the European war no formal celebration is to take place.