'No soul was ever yet saved who was too idle to seek.'--MRS. BOOTH.
Perhaps you, the Corps Cadet, for whom I am especially writing this
little book, have been tempted to break your vows by becoming engaged to
some one who does not want to be an Officer. And you think, perhaps, that
no one understands your feelings.
You will be surprised, then, to know that our Army Mother had just such a
battle to fight when she was a girl.
She had a cousin, a little older than herself, who was tall and very
clever. He came with his parents to stay in her home, and Katie had not
seen him since they were young children. He quickly grew very fond of his
cousin, and Catherine found how nice it was to have some one to give her
presents and to love her as he did. At last he begged her to promise that
by and by she would be engaged to him. Now Katie was very perplexed. On
the one hand she loved her cousin, and did not want to grieve him, and
yet in her heart she knew he was not truly given up to God, and would not
help her in her soul.
'Go to the Meeting with you, Katie?' he used to say. 'Of course, I'll go
anywhere to please you.' But then, while she was trying to get a
blessing, he would be scratching little pictures on the back of the seat
to make her laugh. Perhaps you can guess the struggle it was for Katie to
decide what her answer should be. 'If you will only say "yes," and be
engaged to him, I am sure you will be able to help him, and very likely
get him properly saved,' the Devil would whisper. 'Break it off now,
Katie; do not go another step; you know God cannot smile on it.' That was
how her conscience spoke.
At last, one day as she was truly praying and seeking for light, she read
the verse in 2 Corinthians vi. 14: 'Be ye not unequally yoked together
with unbelievers.' It came to her as the voice of God.
'I will do it, Lord,' she said, after a long struggle; and she sat down,
and wrote her cousin a letter, telling him just why she could never be
engaged to him, and breaking it all off for ever. Then she turned back to
her home duties, and did not re-open the question.
And did our Army Mother in after years regret that she had acted like
this? No, indeed; she has told us that she saw plainly later on that, if
just then she had chosen to follow her own feelings and wishes, instead
of obeying God's command, all her life would have been altered, and she
would never have done the glorious work He had planned for her. It was a
hard battle at the time, and cost her many tears; but it was worth it,
ten thousand times over, as we can all see to-day.
Very soon after this victory Catherine became really converted.
'What!' you say. 'Was she not converted before this?'
No. All her life she had, like many children trained to-day in
Salvationist homes, felt God's Holy Spirit striving with her. Sometimes,
when quite a little girl, her mother would find her crying because she
felt how she had sinned against God.
But when she was about fifteen she longed to know that she was really
saved.
'Don't be silly,' said the Devil in her heart. 'You have been as good as
saved all your life. You have always wanted to do right. How can you
expect such a sudden change as if you were a great big drunkard? It's
absurd.'
'But my _heart_ is as bad as the heart of a big sinner,' cried poor
Katie in an agony of fear. 'I have been as bad inside, if not in my
outward actions and words.'
And then she took hold of God in faith. 'Lord, I must be converted. I
cannot rest till Thou hast changed my whole nature; do for me what Thou
dost do, for the thieves and drunkards.'
But for six weeks it seemed as if God did not hear her cry. She grew more
and more unhappy. All her past sins rose before her: those bursts of
temper when she was at school, those wrong thoughts and feelings. Yes,
the Bible was true when it said: 'The heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked.'
Katie argued, too, like this: 'I cannot recollect any time or place where
I claimed Salvation and the forgiveness of my sins; if God _has_
saved me, He would surely have made me certain of it. Anyway, I must and
will know it. I must have the assurance that I am God's child.'
Unable to rest, she would pace her room till two o'clock in the morning,
and would lie down at last, with her Bible and hymn-book under her
pillow, praying that God would Himself tell her that her sins were
forgiven. At last, one morning, as she woke, she opened her hymn-book,
and read these words:--
My God, I am Thine,
What a comfort divine,
What a blessing to know that my Jesus is mine.
Now she had read and sung these lines scores of times before, but they
came this morning with a new power to her soul.
'I am Thine!' 'My Jesus is mine!' she exclaimed. 'Lord, it is true!--I do
believe it! My sins are forgiven. I belong to Thee!' and her whole soul
was filled with light and joy. She now possessed what she had been
seeking all these weeks--the assurance of Salvation! And then what do you
think she did? She threw on a wrapper, and, without waiting to dress,
hurried across to her mother's room, and tapped at the door.
'Come in,' said her mother's voice; and Katie, her face shining with joy,
burst into the room. 'Mamma, mamma, I am a child of God! My sins are
forgiven--Jesus is my Saviour!' she cried, flinging herself into her
mother's arms. And this was the same Katie, who had been so shy and
backward that she had never before dared to speak about her spiritual
anxieties, even to her mother! Ah! what a change real conversion, or
change of heart, had made.
For the next six months Katie was so happy that she felt as if she were
walking on air. 'I used to tremble,' she tells us, 'and even long to die,
lest I should back-slide or lose the sense of God's favour.'
But as time went on she learned, as we all have to do, to walk by faith,
not by sight, and to serve and follow the Saviour whether she had happy
feelings or not.
But you must not suppose, because Katie had the assurance of Salvation,
that therefore she had no more fighting. No--indeed, her fighting days
had only just begun.
One of her great difficulties, which many Corps Cadets will understand,
was that she felt so nervous about doing anything in public. No one, of
course, asked her to speak--such a thing was never dreamed of; but the
lady who took the Bible Class which she attended regularly would now and
then ask her to pray. 'Miss Mumford will pray,' the lady would say, when
they were all kneeling together.
But Katie was too shy to begin, and sometimes they would wait for several
minutes before she had courage to say a few words. 'Don't ask me to pray
again,' she said one day to her leader; 'the excitement and agitation
make me quite ill.'
'I can't help that,' was the very wise answer; 'you must break through
your timidity; for otherwise you will be of no use to God.'
And did Katie persevere? Yes, indeed, she did. Here is an entry made some
time later in the diary that she kept, which shows you how very much her
experience was like yours:--
'I have not been blessed so much for weeks as I was to-night. I prayed
aloud. The cross was great, but so was the reward.