An Apprenticeship of Faith

From the Introduction: "Altogether too few men in recent decades have borne the burden for a revived church throughout their entire lives. A few such saints come to mind, including Armin Gesswein, Leonard Ravenhill and, of course the author of these memorials, J. Edwin Orr. Many have taken up the cause from time to time, and some are sticking faithfully to it, but many have laid their burden down long before the heat of the day was past and long before God of heaven moved over the earth in mighty awakening power."

From An Apprenticeship of Faith: "Most of these poor men, genuinely seeking work, were forced by hard circumstances into vagrancy. A man who presented himself at a casual ward was required to work all next day for his shelter. The next nearest ward being twenty or thirty miles away, he could not possibly reach shelter before nightfall and there he went to work again. But many stopped by the roadside, sleeping in outhouses or under haystacks, thus becoming disreputable in dress and making it harder to retain work. In less populated regions, the hardships increased. I found that these outcasts of the unemployed masses had become so bitter and despairing that the ordinary Christian could not reach them...

"Up in the Salop hills near Craven Arms, I met a Glasgow artisan who lost his employment through the depression. He was forty years old and had no living relatives. My particular method with tramps was to tell them that I had been on the road for a month and stir their curiosity. It was then easy to tell of answers to prayer. The fact that I knew what it meant to sleep out under the stars or walk all night in winter to keep warm gave me ready access to their hearts."