'As I look back on life I do not remember the houses I have lived in, the
people that I have known, the things of passing interest at the moment.
They are all gone. There is nothing stands out before my mind as of any
consequence, but the work I have done for God and Eternity.'--MRS.
BOOTH.
If The General and those who loved our Army Mother best had been able to
choose for her, they would most likely have said: 'Let her live and fight
and work on, up to within a few days of her promotion to Glory. Let the
call come quickly and painlessly, as it has come to others in our ranks.'
But the Lord, who loved her more than we did, saw fit to send to her two
and a half years of ever-increasing weariness and suffering. For long
months she lay on the very bank of the River, longing for the messenger
of Death to carry her across. Those who loved her could not tell why the
Lord sent her this last fiery trial; they could only bow with her, and
say, 'Thy will be done.'
It was in February, 1888, that Mrs. Booth, who was anxious about her
health, went to consult a great doctor and get his opinion. She was
alone, for no one had thought her illness was so serious. She asked him
to tell her the truth--all through her life, as you know, she wanted the
truth; and after a little hesitation he told her.
The truth was the saddest that she could hear. That dreadful
illness--cancer--through which she had so tenderly nursed her own dear
mother, had come to her, and in the doctor's opinion she had much
suffering to pass through, and only two or, at the most, three years
longer to live. Mrs. Booth listened calmly, thanked the doctor, and
then, getting once more into the cab, drove home all alone.
It was a dark journey. The War needed her. The General needed her. Her
children needed her. And yet the sentence of Death had been passed upon
her, and she must soon leave them all. What did she do? I think you can
guess.
She knelt down in the cab, and in prayer committed to God, in a new and
deeper way than ever before, her own body, and her dear ones and the work
He had given her to do.
At last the cab stopped before her own door, and The General came out to
meet her.
'I shall never forget that meeting in this world, or the next,' he says.
'I had been watching for the cab, and had run out to meet her and help
her up the steps. She tried to smile on me through her tears; but,
drawing me into the room, soon told me, bit by bit, what the doctor had
said. I sat down speechless. She rose from her seat, and came and knelt
beside me, saying: "Do you know what was my first thought? That I should
not be there to nurse you in your last hour."
'I was stunned. I felt as if the whole world were coming to a standstill.
Opposite me, on the wall, was a picture of Christ on the cross. I thought
I could understand it then, as never before. She talked to me like an
angel; she talked as she had never talked before. I could say little or
nothing. I could only kneel with her and try to pray. That very same
night The General was to leave London for some great Meetings in Holland,
and Mrs. Booth would not hear of his changing his plans and remaining
with her.
'The War must go on' was her thought, even when all her family stood
stunned and heart-broken around her, unwilling to leave her even for a
moment.
Two years later, when but a few more days of suffering remained to her, a
last message from her lips reached us as Self-Denial Week began. 'The War
must go on' was one of its sentences.
'The War must go on' had been as her motto, lived out in all the long,
long months that lay between. Instead of immediately laying aside her
work, when the doctors gave their dreadful judgment, and beginning to
think only of herself, she went on with it as long as her increasing
weakness allowed.
But step by step the disease grew worse. First she was forced to give up
Meetings and public work. Then it became impossible for her to use her
right hand, and she was therefore obliged to give up her correspondence,
though she still continued to dictate her letters, and learnt also to
write with her left hand.
Soon her daily drives became too tiring, and by and by she went out of
the house into the little garden for the last time; and then for the
concluding twelve months of her life she was a prisoner in her room,
lying in constant suffering.
But during these long months the greatest joy and relief that could come
to her was to hear of some fresh victory or triumph for the Kingdom of
Jesus. Her interest in The Army and her love for the people were as keen
as ever, and War Councils were held and new developments planned in her
chamber, and much of The General's Darkest England Scheme for the poor
and outcast was thought out and decided upon beside her sick bed.
Again and again, too, Mrs. Booth would receive deputations of Officers of
different classes and from various countries in which The Army was at
work, who came to Clacton-on-Sea, where the last fifteen months of her
life were spent, to listen to her words of advice and inspiration.
There were no Corps Cadets in those days; but our Army Mother left some
specially beautiful words about the Juniors, to which I must refer.
When she was told by the Officer then in charge of our Junior Work in
England that the children loved and prayed continually for her, she
smiled.
'The thought of the little ones,' says some one who was there, 'brought
our beloved Army Mother wholly out of herself and her pain and
weariness.'
'A very choice branch of the work,' she said. 'I have often told Emma
that I hoped when I was too old for public work God would let me end
where I began--with the children. But it seems that it is not to be so.'
'Give the children,' she went on, in reply to the messages they had sent,
'my dear love, and tell them that if there had been a Salvation Army when
I was ten I should have been a Soldier then, as I am to-day.
Never allow yourself to be discouraged in your work. I know you must meet
with many discouragements; but I am sure the Spirit of God works mightily
on little children long before grown people think they are able to
understand.'
Again and again during that last year of awful suffering it seemed as if
Mrs. Booth were about to leave us; but then she would revive, and come
back to endure more weeks and months of agony.
But at last, on October 4, 1890, all could see that she was on the brink
of the River, and even those who loved her the most tenderly could not
wish to hold her back.
'O Emma, let me go, darling,' she whispered; and hearing the reply, 'Yes,
we will, we will,' she said, 'Now! Yes, Lord, come, Oh, come!'
The singing of The Army songs seemed to comfort her; and once she raised
her suffering arm, and pointed to the text, '_My grace is sufficient
for thee_,' which hung on the wall. It was lifted down and placed at
the foot of her bed, so that her eyes could often rest on it during those
last hours.
'Soon after noon,' says the present General, 'I felt that the deepening
darkness of the Valley was closing around my dear mother, and a little
later I took my last farewell. Her lips moved, and she gave me one look
of unspeakable tenderness and trust which will live with me for ever.
Again we sang:--
My mistakes His free grace doth cover,
My sins He doth wash away;
These feet which shrink and falter
Shall enter the Gates of Day.
And, holding her hand, The General gave her up to God. It was a solemn
and wonderful scene.'
The Chief of the Staff and Mrs. Bramwell Booth, Mrs. Booth-Tucker, and
the Commander, and her three daughters, Marian, Eva, and Lucy, knelt
round the bed, upon which were placed photographs of the other members of
her family who were unavoidably absent. Near to her stood her faithful
nurse, Captain Carr, and others of the household, the dear General bowing
over his beloved wife and companion in life's long strife, and giving her
up to the keeping of the Father.
One by one the members of the family tenderly embraced her; then a gleam
of recognition passed over the brightening countenance as The General
bent over her. Their eyes met---the last kiss of love on earth, the last
word till the Morning, and without a movement the breathing gently
ceased, and a warrior laid down her sword to receive her crown.
* * * * *
You may have heard of those wonderful days from Tuesday morning till
Sunday night, when the coffin containing the precious remains of our Army
Mother lay at the Congress Hall, Clapton, and when more than fifty
thousand people came to have a last look at her dear face.
A piece of glass had been let into the plain oak coffin. It was just
large enough to show the head and shoulders, and she lay as if in a sweet
sleep.
You wonder if many came merely from curiosity. Some did, of course, but
most of the people came because her life and example and words had been
so blessed to their souls; and they came as they would come to look at
the dead face of their own mother. It was the most wonderful tribute to a
woman's life and words that London had ever seen.
For all kinds of people came--rich and poor, good and bad, people of many
different religions, and many with no religion at all. Working men came
in their dinner-hour, with their tools on their backs and tears in their
eyes; mothers lifted up their little children to look at the one who had
taught them the way of life; and, best of all, by the side of her coffin
knelt many a wanderer and backslider to give themselves afresh to God.
More than one poor girl went direct from the Congress Hall to the Rescue
Homes, to begin to live 'as she would have wished'; and the Cadets on
guard were all the time dealing with drunkards and helping those who
desired to begin from thenceforth to live a new and different life.
Even to-day, twenty-four years later, we often meet those who date their
conversion, or their first step in the Narrow Way, from their look at
that face lying in its simple coffin.
One of Mrs. Booth's own grandchildren, Mary, the present General's second
daughter, looks back to that scene as the time when God in an
unmistakable manner sealed her as His. She was only five years old as she
knelt by the coffin, but nevertheless she decided there, in her childish
consecration, like Ruth of old, that 'Thy people shall be my people, and
thy God my God'; and in the spirit of this consecration she lives to-day.
* * * * *
In order that some of the crowds who wished to share in the funeral
service might be present, the largest hall in London, the Olympia, was
taken. Twenty-six thousand people filled it; and though it was, of
course, impossible for them all to hear, they followed the service given
on printed papers with reverent sympathy.
The coffin was carried down the immense hall by Officers; The General and
his family followed.
Those who arranged for this last mighty gathering remembered that Mrs.
Booth, when with us, was never happy to leave a Meeting unless it had
been brought to a point, and something definite had been done; and
therefore, when the songs and prayers and readings were over, the huge
crowd was asked to kneel and make a solemn covenant with God.