'Well, the Lord help us to be faithful to our convictions, even in the
dark and cloudy day! I have felt it hard work to do so lately. Many a
time have I longed to be where the weary are at rest.
'Well, we must labour and wait a little longer; it may be that the clouds
will break, and surround us with sunshine. Anyway, God lives above the
clouds, and He will direct our path.'
The General and Mrs. Booth were holding Salvation services in London when
our Army Mother was called to make a fresh sacrifice, never dreaming of
the wonderful results that would spring from it. You shall read about it
in her own words, spoken many years afterwards:--
'I remember well,' she says, 'when The General decided at last to give up
the evangelistic life and to devote himself to the Salvation of the
East-Enders. He had come home from a Meeting one night, tired out, as
usual. It was between eleven and twelve o'clock. Flinging himself into
an easy chair, he said to me, "O Kate, as I passed by the doors of the
flaming gin-palaces to-night I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears,
'Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so
great a need for your labours?' And I felt as though I ought at every
cost to stop and preach to these East-End crowds."
'I remember the emotion that this produced in my soul. I sat gazing into
the fire, and the Devil whispered to me, "This means another new
departure--another start in life."
'The question of our support I saw at once to be a serious difficulty.
Hitherto we had been able to meet our expenses by the collections which
we had made from our respectable audiences. But it was impossible to
suppose that we could do so among the poverty-stricken East-Enders. We
did not then see things as we do to-day. We were afraid even to ask for a
collection among the East London crowds.
'Nevertheless, I did not answer discouragingly. After a moment's pause
for thought and prayer, I answered, "Well, if you feel you ought to stay,
stay. We have trusted the Lord once for our support, and we can trust Him
again."'
Mrs. Booth, when she answered like this, had no idea of all that was to
follow. She never dreamt that, from The General's standing alone in
Whitechapel, a mighty wave of Salvation would sweep over the earth, nor
that God was about to raise up an Army of which she and The General were
to be the leaders.
But, as always before, she willingly agreed to whatever would be for
God's glory and the Salvation of souls; and we all know to-day how, from
that little Whitechapel beginning, grew the Christian Mission, and how,
at last, the Christian Mission became The Salvation Army.
Do not think, however, that our dear Army Mother's consecration stopped
here! No, indeed. One by one, as they became old enough, she gave up her
children to the Work, and we shall never know all we owe as an Army to
her beautiful spirit of devotion and sacrifice.
Let us stand together by her open grave in the autumn twilight. Her
twenty-six years of fight and toil in The Salvation Army are over now,
her spirit has been summoned Home. Listen. The Army Founder himself is
the speaker. He is recalling the forty years which he and our dear Army
Mother had trod together, and his words sum up better than any other
words could do what she was to our Leader:--
'If you had had a tree,' he said, speaking to the vast crowd that stood
round the grave, 'that had grown up in your garden, under your window,
which for forty years had been your shadow from the burning sun, whose
flowers had been the adornment and beauty of your life, whose fruit had
been almost the stay of your existence, and the gardener had come along
and swung his glittering axe and cut it down before your eyes, I think
you would feel as though you had a blank--it might not be a big one--but
a little blank in your life.
'If you had had a servant who for all this long time had served you
without fee or reward, who had administered, for very love, to your
health and comfort, and who suddenly passed away, you would miss that
servant.
'If you had had a counsellor who, in hours--continually occurring--of
perplexity and amazement, had ever advised you, and seldom advised wrong;
whose advice you had followed, and seldom had reason to regret it; and
the counsellor, while you were in the same intricate mazes of your
existence, had passed away, you would miss that counsellor.
'If you had had a friend who had understood your very nature, the rise
and fall of your feelings, the bent of your thoughts, and the purpose of
your existence; a friend whose communion had ever been pleasant--the
most pleasant of all other friends--to whom you had ever turned with
satisfaction, and your friend had been taken away, you would feel some
sorrow at the loss.
'If you had had a mother for your children who had cradled and nursed and
trained them for the service of the living God, in which you most
delighted--a mother, indeed, who had never ceased to bear their sorrows
on her heart, and who had been ever willing to pour forth that heart's
blood in order to nourish them, and that darling mother had been taken
from your side, you would feel it a sorrow.
'If you had had a wife, a sweet love of a wife, who for forty years had
never given you real cause for grief; a wife who had stood with you, side
by side, in the battle's front, who had been a comrade to you, ever
willing to interpose herself between you and the enemy, and ever the
strongest when the battle was fiercest, and your beloved one had fallen
before your eyes, I am sure there would be some excuse for your sorrow.
'Well, my comrades, you can roll all these qualities into one
personality, and what would be lost in all I have lost in one. There has
been taken away from me the light of my eyes, the inspiration of my soul,
and we are about to lay all that remains of her in the grave. I have been
looking right at the bottom of it here, and calculating how soon they may
bring and lay me alongside of her, and my cry to God has been that every
remaining hour of my life may make me readier to come and join her in
death, to go and embrace her in life in the Eternal City.'
V