It was shortly before the foundation of the Work that he was converted at one of his mother's own Meetings.

The shrinking from publicity, which seems an essential part of every conscientious person, held him long back from resolving to become one of their Officers.

But during all the years between his being saved and that great decision, he was constantly helping, first in Children's Meetings, and then in office work, so that at twenty-one he was already a very experienced man, both in the work of saving souls, and in much of the business management for which a great Movement calls.
When I first saw him at seventeen, he was still studying; but he had been, during the previous eighteen months of the General's illness and absence, his mother's mainstay in the managing both the public and the office work of "The Christian Mission," and the Secretary and, largely, manager of a set of soup kitchens, the precursors, in some ways, of our present Social Wing.

For all this to be possible to a lad of seventeen, of delicate health, may give some little indication of the faculties with which God had endowed him.
It was not, however, till five years later, when he had fully conquered his own taste for a medical career that he gave himself fully to the War.

Alone, or with one of his sisters, he visited the towns where many of our largest Corps were being raised, holding Meetings in theatres and other popular resorts, so that he gained first-hand all the experiences of Officers, both in the pioneering days and in the after years of struggle against all manner of difficulty, when every sort of problem as to individuals, and Corps, had to be dealt with from hour to hour.
This much to explain how it was possible for a man so young to become at twenty-five the worthy and capable Chief of the Staff of an Army already at work in both hemispheres and on both sides of the world.