'What the Lord wants is, that you shall go about the business to which He
sets you, not asking for an easy post, nor grumbling at a hard
one.'--MRS. BOOTH.
If she had not been a worker, our Army Mother would have done little with
her life. The wonderful call which came to her, her great gifts, the zeal
and love which filled her heart, would all have been useless had she not
been willing to work, and to work hard, and to work every day.
Stop and think about this. No life accomplishes anything unless it is
full of hard work--often work accompanied by much drudgery, whether it is
the life of a king or of a poor man. Mrs. Booth has set us all an example
in this, for she would work ceaselessly with head or hands or heart, as
long as ever her health allowed her to do so. Laziness and idleness of
all kinds she detested; nor could she tolerate a lazy person in her
service.
She worked first of all in her home. When she spent a morning in her
kitchen, the work there was perfectly done. The dinner was ready at the
right time, properly cooked, good and wholesome. She allowed no waste and
no extravagance. Her bread was light and beautifully baked, and when she
had finished her morning's work her kitchen was as neat as when she
began. She finished everything, and put it straight as she went along.
It was the same with the children. She was alike nurse and doctor,
dressmaker and tailor; she made and mended, washed and ironed for her
boys and girls during their early years, and herself attended to every
smallest detail of their lives. Strangers who asked where Mrs. Booth
bought her children's things, so that they could go to the same shop,
could scarcely believe the reply: 'Mamma makes all our clothes
herself'--so beautifully were they cut and finished.
And when the little garments were of no further service to her, she would
alter and mend them once again, and give them away. Her baby-clothes,
when the last daughter had outgrown them, were given to a member of the
Mission for his child.
He will never forget taking the little bundle home to his wife and
turning over the tiny things. 'I had often heard Mrs. Booth preach,' he
said, 'but those baby-clothes preached a louder sermon to me and my wife
than ever her words had done. They were all darned and mended and
patched, and the work--but, there, I never saw such stitches! And as we
looked, and knew the hours of toil she must have put into them, rather
than throw them away, as many another would have done--well, I tell you I
listened to her next sermon as I had never listened before.'
And this same diligent, tireless spirit was with her to the last. When on
her deathbed, able only to use her left hand, and propped up by pillows,
she devised a little frame on which, painfully, stitch by stitch, she
could work a last token of love for The General.
When her hands were folded still in death, I saw those slippers. They
were beautifully embroidered, one with the words, 'He will keep the feet
of His Saints'; and the other with the sure and certain hope which lay
beyond the parting, 'Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O
Jerusalem'--a fitting and sacred service with which to close her many
years of toil and labour for others.
But our Army Mother had another way of working in her home--that is, she
worked over others. If a girl wished to learn, Mrs. Booth would take
endless trouble in showing her the best way to wash or iron, or clean a
grate, or do whatever the work on hand might be. She instructed her
servants, explaining to them the reason for doing their duties in a
certain way, teaching them forethought and common sense, and dealing
faithfully with them over all their failures.
'Better,' she said, in one of her addresses--and she lived it out in her
own home--'better take a girl whom you have to teach how to wash a
child's face, or to stitch a button on, if she is true and sincere, than
have one ever so clever, who will teach your children to lie and
deceive.'
She worked, too, over the cases of need and poverty which were often at
her door. Not content, like so many, with giving a few coppers to a
beggar, or some broken food, she would inquire into the _cause_ of
the distress; and then, if the need seemed genuine, she would help,
either by getting the father work, or by having the home visited and
suitable relief given after the true condition of things had been found
out.
And this was only a little of the homework with which her hands were ever
full. Of her ceaseless care over her children's mind and soul training I
have told you elsewhere. But of her public work perhaps the most
exhausting was that which resulted from her Meetings. For she could not
rest content with the most careful preparation beforehand, nor with
pouring out her whole soul upon the people during the forty or fifty
minutes that her address lasted. At the close of the Meeting, whenever
her health allowed it, she would labour and toil, often for two hours and
more, dealing herself with the penitents, meeting their difficulties, one
by one, and was unwilling to leave them until, as far as possible, all
had claimed and received the blessing they sought.
The next day, too, she would follow up any special case with a long
personal letter from her own pen, or she would arrange another interview,
or in some way keep in close, actual touch with the struggling soul,
until the step of obedience had been taken, and he or she was fairly
started on the Narrow Way.
And it was this careful, earnest, patient after-work which gave such
glorious harvests to her soul-saving campaigns. Labour and trouble were a
joy to her, if she could but help one sincere, seeking soul into the
light.
But remember this: while she so toiled over all who came to her for
advice and guidance, she never repeated nor passed on to others their
confidences. If she had done so, people would soon have left off corning
to her; they would have said, 'We cannot trust her.' She was, as you
know, a mighty speaker; but about other people's affairs she was entirely
silent--as you must learn to be if you wish to be of any service to God
or man.
And Mrs. Booth strove constantly to teach all who were around her to work
as she did. 'You have begun well enough--now carry it through,' she would
say again and again to her children, and whether it was a doll's frock,
or an article for 'The War Cry,' or a series of Meetings, it was always
the same. Unfinished, half-done work she detested with all her soul. 'If
a thing is worth beginning at all, then it is worth finishing,' she would
say; and this great principle followed her through her life in small
things as in great.
This was the reason that, on her deathbed, she could say, turning to the
Chief of the Staff, 'I have no vain regrets about the past. As far as my
strength allowed, I have finished the work I had to do as I went along;
and now I leave it, all imperfect as it has been, in His hands.'
Perhaps, by nature, you are not a worker. But what you are not by nature,
you can become by grace. God can teach you to love work. And as you work,
you will, like our dear Army Mother, learn better and better how to work;
and your life, whenever God calls you to lay it down, shall be like hers,
not unfinished, but complete.