He believed that love could save the very worst man and the very worst woman in the world who wanted to be saved; and he also believed that nothing was so just and wise as rigorous punishment for the unrighteous who would not be saved.
I think that he would have set up in England, if he had enjoyed the power which we give to politicians, two classes of prison--the reforming prison, controlled only by compassionate Christians who believe in love; and the punishing prison, which isolates the evil and iniquitous from contact with innocence and struggling virtue.

In that direction this most merciful man was merciless.
"Why he became a Salvationist is very clear.

He knew that the centre of life is the heart.

He saw that all efforts of statesmanship to alter the conditions of existence must be fruitless, or, at any rate, that the harvest must be in the far distant future of humanity, while the heart of man remains unchanged.

He suspected the mere respectability which satisfies so many reformers.