“The question in most churches which are at all earnest in their work is how to reach the masses.”

This isn’t some present-day church growth article; it comes from an English newspaper, The Northern Daily Express and was written in March 1879, as part of a report on early Salvation Army meetings in Gateshead in the Northeast of England.

The audience at these meetings was comprised of “the section of the community that lies outside the usual compass of religious life,” writes the Victorian journalist. More unusual still, “the work which experienced ministers and the ordinary agencies of churches had failed in, has been attempted by a few young women”. These young women were the “Hallelujah Lasses”, the shocktroops of the early Salvation Army.

“Some six or eight weeks ago, about half-a-dozen young women made a raid under the banner of a Gospel mission among the lowest classes in the town,” reported the journalist, “and they have succeeded in the most remarkable manner”.

These women, mostly in their twenties, hired music halls for their meetings. Despite sneers from all sides, within a short time these places were filled to overflowing for three hours, and hundreds are unable to gain admission.

“They have got such a hold upon the masses as to tame some of the worst of the characters,” continues the reporter. “A thorough transformation has been effected in the lives of some of the most thoughtless, depraved and criminal.”

What can have enabled these Salvation Army girls to achieve such breakthroughs? In part, it comes down to the “first love” and fire of a new movement in the flower of its vigour.

Yet we must see in action here the twin elements of “blood and fire” that were to become the Army’s motto. A total conviction of the power of Jesus’ redeeming blood to save even “the worst”, together with the freshness of the Holy Spirit’s filling (for which Salvationists spent whole nights in prayer) kept them pressing into territory where other feared to go.

And they expected results.

They also used the power of personal testimony. The journalist tells of the roughest and most criminal of people glorifying God for their soul’s salvation. And the Army used the passion of youth: “One youth, who is evidently not more than fourteen, is quite a phenomenon, and certainly has a marvellous utterance for one so young and inexperienced. On Saturday night, we were told, he spoke for twenty minutes, and carried the audience so fully away with him, that in the midst of his address three or four persons went up to the penitent form” (“penitent forms” were benches, placed at the front of the hall, where people could come and kneel, pray, repent and receive personal prayer).

The journalist concludes, perceptively, “What is needed in the work now is consolidation – some agency to carry the converts beyond the few simple truths they have got hold of, and to give them an interest in the work when the excitement of the change and the effort has passed away.”

One thing is certain: the Hallelujah lasses were a force to be reckoned with.