'The excitement made me worse than I have been for two years. My heart
was really alarming, and for two days I could hardly bear any clothes to
touch me. This has disheartened me again as to my condition. But God
reigns, and He will keep me alive as long as He needs me.'
Another of her hindrances, and one which was almost more difficult to
overcome than weakness of body, was depression.
I wonder if you know what that is? If so, it will help you to realize
that Mrs. Booth had to fight it also.
The Devil seemed allowed to try and test her faith to the uttermost, and
at times to blot out all peace and glory from her soul. During one such
time of darkness she writes:--
'I know I ought not, of all saints, or sinners either, to be depressed. I
know it dishonours my Lord, grieves His Spirit, and injures me greatly;
and I would fain hide from everybody to prevent their seeing it. But I
cannot help it. I have struggled hard, more than any one knows, for a
long time against it. Sometimes I have literally held myself, head and
heart and hand, and waited for the floods to pass over me.'
But our Army Mother did not give up working for God, and sit down in
despair, because she was thus tried. One day, just before leaving for a
great West-End Meeting, in which God made her words as a sharp two-edged
sword, she wrote this to one of her children:--
'I have been very much depressed since you left--more so than usual. It
is of no use reasoning with myself when these fits of despondency are on
me. I must hold on and fight my passage through; and when I get to Heaven
the light and joy will be all the greater. If I dared give up working I
should do so a hundred times over; but I _dare_ not.'
Another and constant hindrance which our Army Mother had to fight for the
greater part of her life was poverty. It was so difficult, many times, to
make two ends meet. She had, during many years of her life, no regular
money coming in on which to depend, and during that time it was a
constant struggle to have her children properly cared for and give them
the needed education.
But most of all did our Army Mother show herself a warrior in her own
Salvation campaigns. In those early days there were no praying Soldiers
and Sergeants to be had to deal with the penitents--no one, either, to
lead her singing, scarcely even to keep the doors or take up the
collection. She would arrive in a town absolutely alone. A hall had been
taken in which she was to speak, and she would hire a tiny lodging, or
stay in whatever home would receive her, and set to work. We can scarcely
understand the loneliness of her position. Here was a proof of her mighty
faith in God.
She began these solitary campaigns when her sixth child was but a few
weeks old, and God most wonderfully owned her labours. At one place she
saw one hundred grown-up people and two hundred children come to her
penitent-form in six days. But it was a fearful battle.
'I have a comfortable little cot to stay in,' she writes to her mother
from one such battle-field, 'very small and humble; but it is clean and
quiet; and when I feel nervous no one knows the value of quietness. I
have felt it hard work lately. Many a time have I longed to be where the
weary are at rest.'
At Margate, some years later, she commenced her Meetings without knowing
a single person in the place. For some weeks she had not even a helper in
the Prayer Meetings, nor one who would give out a song for her. Mrs.
Booth could not sing herself, and there was often an awkward pause before
any one would be willing to pitch her tune. 'If only,' she said when The
Army was fairly on its feet, 'I had been able to command a dozen reliable
people such as I could have anywhere now, I think I could have done
almost anything.'
Even more wonderful was her experience at Brighton.
The Dome, a great building holding three thousand people, had been taken
for her Meetings.
'I can never forget my feelings,' says this Soldier-saint, 'as I stood
upon the platform and looked upon the people, realizing that among them
all there was no one to help me. When I commenced the Prayer Meeting, for
which I should think quite nine hundred remained, Satan said to me, as I
came down from the platform according to my custom, "You will never ask
such people as these to come and kneel down here? You will only make a
fool of yourself if you do." I felt stunned for a moment; but I answered,
"Yes, I shall. I shall not make it any easier for them than for the
others. If they do not realize their sins enough to be willing to come
and kneel here, they will not be of much use to the kingdom."'
The Lord set His seal upon Mrs. Booth's faith and courage, for the first
to volunteer were two old gentlemen, both over seventy years of age; and
she had ten or twelve at the mercy-seat before the Meeting ended.
Writing from Portsmouth, she tells the same story of loneliness and
victory:--
'You say, "How do you get on personally?" Oh, I never was so hampered for
help in every way in all my life! The most able man I have keeps a
milliner's shop, and the one that opens for me generally is an overseer;
so their attention is divided and the time limited. Pray for me. I never
needed your prayers so much. This is a dreadfully wicked place.'
Yet during the seventeen weeks of her stay some six hundred names were
taken, many of them wonderful trophies of God's mercy.
Having lived such a warrior's life, you think, very likely, that the
death-bed experience of our Army Mother would be all peace and glory. But
no. Right down into the Valley she needed to use the Sword of the Spirit
and the Shield of Faith, for to the last Satan was allowed to test and
try her.
But she fought on!
'One of my hardest lessons,' she said in her last hours, 'has been the
difference between faith and realization; and if I have had to conquer
all through life by naked faith, I can only expect it to be the same now.
All our enemies have to be conquered by _faith_, not realization;
and is it not so with the last enemy, death? Yes, if it please the Lord
that I should go down into the dark valley without any realization,
simply knowing that I am His, and He is mine, I am quite willing--I
accept it.'
This is the faith that made our Army Mother and all the Bible saints such
conquerors. It is the secret of their victory--the faith without which it
is impossible to please God, and for which we all need to pray, 'Lord,
increase our faith.'