'Let us beware of wrong doctrine, come through whomsoever it may. Holy
men make sad mistakes. "Well, but," say some, "is not a person who holds
wrong views with a right heart better than a person with right views and
a wrong heart?" Yes, so far as his personal state before God is
concerned, but not in his influence on man. My charity must extend to
those likely to be deceived or ruined by his doctrines as well as to
him.'
Mrs. Booth's whole life was a continual fight against sin--sin of all
kinds. Whether her Meeting was held for the very lowest and roughest, or
whether rows of clergy and lawyers, and lords and ladies sat to listen,
it made no difference to her. She attacked sin, and went straight at the
very heart-sins of the people in front of her.
'We need great grace,' she says in the midst of her wonderful West-End
campaign, where even princes and princesses came to hear her. 'I think
the Lord never enabled me to be more plain and faithful. As a lady in
high circles said to me, "We never heard this sort of Gospel before." No,
poor things, they are sadly deceived.'
Drink, too, was another evil which Mrs. Booth fought against during the
whole of her life. She began, as you remember, when a girl by being
secretary of the 'Band of Love' of those days.
In the early days of their engagement The General was strongly advised to
take a little wine for the sake of his health. Our Army Mother wrote him
a long letter, showing him how false and foolish such advice was, and
ending with:--
'I have had it recommended to me scores of times, but I am fully and for
ever settled on the physical side of the question. [Footnote: That means
taking it for the sake of health.--ED.]
'It is a subject on which I am most anxious you should be thorough. I
have far more hope for your health _because_ you abstain, than I
should if you took wine. Flee the detestable thing as you would a
serpent; be a teetotaller in principle and practice.'
Though, as we have seen, full of boundless faith and pity for the
drunkard, Mrs. Booth attacked the makers and sellers of drink
unmercifully. She says, on one occasion:--
'By your peace of conscience on a dying bed; by the eternal destinies of
your children, by your care for never-dying souls; by the love you owe
your Saviour, I beseech you _banish the drink_.
'Tell me no more of charity towards brewers, distillers, and publicans.
Your false charity to these has already consigned millions to an untimely
Hell!... Arise, Christians, arise, and fight this foe! You and you alone
are able, for your God will fight for you!'
Another thing for which our Army Mother fought, and which to-day we owe
in great measure to her efforts, is the position to which women have been
lifted as speakers and teachers in God's work. She first, as we have
seen, opened the way herself; and then she left it open, encouraging and
helping tens of thousands of simple, holy women all round the world to
follow in her steps.
She had a tough battle to wage. All classes wrote and spoke against women
being allowed to stand and speak for God in the open air or in public
halls; but, strong in faith and courage, convinced that she had Divine
authority for what she did, our Army Mother fought on, arguing, writing,
preaching on the matter. Now to-day there is scarcely a land where The
Army bonnet is not known and loved, nor where Army women cannot gain a
crowd of respectful listeners.
Now I am going to show you some of the hindrances in spite of which our
Army Mother fought on.
The first of these hindrances was the burden which God allowed Mrs. Booth
to carry all through her life--a weak and suffering body. She said, when
her life was drawing to its close, that suffering seemed to have been her
special lot, and that she could scarcely remember a day in her life when
she had been wholly free from pain.
'I don't care about my body,' she exclaimed when lying in her last
illness. 'It has been a poor old troublesome affair. I shall be glad for
it to be sealed up. It is time it was. Oh, I have dragged it wearily
about.'
Most women suffering as she did, with a weak spine, heart disease, and
over-strained nerves, would have lived the life of an invalid. But the
warrior spirit within forced her body along. Scores of times she has gone
from her bed to the Meeting, and then, exhausted and fainting with the
effort, has had to be almost carried home. But she had done her work, and
sent the arrow of conviction into hundreds of hearts.