Important Events Connected with The General's Life and Work
Illustrations
William Booth
Catherine Booth
General Bramwell Booth
Mrs. Bramwell Booth
Emma Booth Tucker
Commander Miss Booth
Autograph Page
The Authoritative Life of General William Booth
Founder of The Salvation Army
Chapter I
Childhood and Poverty
William Booth was born in Nottingham, England, on April 10, 1829, and
was left, at thirteen, the only son of a widowed and impoverished
mother. His father had been one of those builders of houses who so
rapidly rose in those days to wealth, but who, largely employing
borrowed capital, often found themselves in any time of general scarcity
reduced to poverty.
I glory in the fact that The General's ancestry has never been traced,
so far as I know, beyond his grandfather. I will venture to say,
however, that his forefathers fought with desperation against somebody
at least a thousand years ago. Fighting is an inveterate habit of ours
in England, and another renowned general has just been recommending all
young men to learn to shoot. The constant joy and pride with which our
General always spoke of his mother is a tribute to her excellence, as
well as the best possible record of his own earliest days. Of her he
wrote, in 1893:--
"I had a good mother. So good she has ever appeared to me that I
have often said that all I knew of her life seemed a striking
contradiction of the doctrine of human depravity. In my youth I
fully accepted that doctrine, and I do not deny it now; but my
patient, self-sacrificing mother always appeared to be an exception
to the rule.
"I loved my mother. From infancy to manhood I lived in her. Home
was not home to me without her. I do not remember any single act of
wilful disobedience to her wishes. When my father died I was so
passionately attached to my mother that I can recollect that,
deeply though I felt his loss, my grief was all but forbidden by
the thought that it was not my mother who had been taken from me.
And yet one of the regrets that has followed me to the present
hour is that I did not sufficiently value the treasure while I
possessed it, and that I did not with sufficient tenderness and
assiduity at the time, attempt the impossible task of repaying the
immeasurable debt I owed to that mother's love.
"She was certainly one of the most unselfish beings it has been my
lot to come into contact with. 'Never mind me' was descriptive of
her whole life at every time, in every place, and under every
circumstance. To make others happy was the end of all her thoughts
and aims with regard not only to her children but to her domestics,
and indeed to all who came within her influence. To remove misery
was her delight. No beggar went empty-handed from her door. The
sorrows of any poor wretch were certain of her commiseration, and
of a helping hand in their removal, so far as she had ability. The
children of misfortune were sure of her pity, and the children of
misconduct she pitied almost the more, because, for one reason,
they were the cause of sorrow to those who had reason to mourn on
their account.
"For many years before she died, love, joy, and peace reigned in
her heart, beamed from her countenance, and spoke in her words. Her
faith was immovably fixed on Him who is able to save to the
uttermost. It was a common expression of confidence with her that
'Jesus would go with her all the way through the journey of
life--even to the end. He would not leave her. Her feet were on the
Rock.'"
To this testimony to his mother's worth The General added:--
"To those whose eyes may fall on these lines, may I not be excused
saying, 'See to it that you honour your father and your mother, not
only that your days may be long in the land, but that you may not,
in after years, be disturbed by useless longings to have back again
the precious ones who so ceaselessly and unselfishly toiled with
heart and brain for your profoundest well-being.'
"My mother and father were both Derbyshire people. They were born
within a few miles of each other, the former at Somercotes, a small
village within a mile or two of Alfreton and the latter at Belper.
My mother's father was a well-to-do farmer. Her mother died when
she was three years of age; and, her father marrying again, she
was taken to the heart and home of a kind uncle and aunt, who
reared and educated her, giving her at the same time a sound
religious training.
"Years passed of which we have but imperfect knowledge during
which, by some means, she drifted to the small town of
Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Here she met my father, who was availing himself
of the waters as a remedy for his chronic enemy, rheumatism. He
offered her marriage. She refused. He left the town indignant, but
returned to renew his proposal, which she ultimately accepted.
Their marriage followed. Up to this date her path through life had
been comparatively a smooth one; but from this hour onward through
many long and painful years, it was crowded with difficulties and
anxieties.
"My father's fortunes appear to have begun to wane soon after his
marriage. At that time he would have passed, I suppose, for a rich
man, according to the estimate of riches in those days. But bad
times came, and very bad times they were, such as we know little
about, despite all the grumbling of this modern era. Nottingham,
where the family was then located, suffered heavily, a large
proportion of its poorer classes being reduced to the verge of
starvation. My father, who had invested the entire savings of his
lifetime in small house property, was seriously affected by these
calamitous circumstances; in fact, he was ruined.
"The brave way in which my mother stood by his side during that
dark and sorrowful season is indelibly written on my memory. She
shared his every anxiety, advised him in all his business
perplexities, and upheld his spirit as crash followed crash, and
one piece of property after another went overboard. Years of heavy
affliction followed, during which she was his tender, untiring
nurse, comforting and upholding his spirit unto death; and then she
stood out all alone to fight the battles of his children amidst the
wreck of his fortunes.
"Those days were gloomy indeed; and the wonder now in looking back
upon them is that she survived them. It would have seemed a
perfectly natural thing if she had died of a broken heart, and been
borne away to lie in my father's grave.
"But she had reasons for living. Her children bound her to earth,
and for our sakes she toiled on with unswerving devotion and
unintermitting care. After a time the waters found a smoother
channel, so far as this world's troubles were concerned, and her
days were ended, in her eighty-fifth year, in comparative peace."
"During one of my Motor Campaigns to Nottingham," The General wrote
on another occasion, "my car took me over the Trent, the dear old
river along whose banks I used to wander in my boyhood days,
sometimes poring over Young's _Night Thoughts_, reading Henry Kirke
White's _Poems_, or, as was frequently the case before my
conversion, with a fishing-rod in my hand.
"In those days angling was my favourite sport. I have sat down on
those banks many a summer morning at five o'clock, although I
rarely caught anything. An old uncle ironically used to have a
plate with a napkin on it ready for my catch waiting for me on my
return.
"And then the motor brought us to the ancient village of Wilford,
with its lovely old avenues of elms fringing the river.
"There were the very meadows in which we children used to revel
amongst the bluebells and crocuses which, in those days, spread out
their beautiful carpet in the spring-time, to the unspeakable
delight of the youngsters from the town.
"But how changed the scene! Most of these rural charms had fled,
and in their places were collieries and factories, and machine
shops, and streets upon streets of houses for the employes of the
growing town. We were only 60,000 in my boyhood, whereas the
citizens of Nottingham to-day number 250,000.
"A few years ago the city conferred its freedom upon me as a mark
of appreciation and esteem. To God be all the glory that He has
helped His poor boy to live for Him, and made even his former
enemies to honour him."
But we all know what sort of influences exist in a city that is at once
the capital of a county and a commercial centre. The homes of the
wealthy and comfortable are found at no great distance from the
dwellings of the poor, while in the huge market-places are exhibitions
weekly of all the contrasts between town and country life, between the
extremest want and the most lavish plenty.
Seventy years ago, life in such a city was nearly as different from what
it is to-day as the life of to-day in an American state capital is from
that of a Chinese town. Between the small circle of "old families" who
still possessed widespread influence and the masses of the people there
was a wide gap. The few respectable charities, generally due to the
piety of some long-departed citizen, marked out very strikingly a
certain number of those who were considered "deserving poor," and helped
to make every one less concerned about all the rest. For all the many
thousands struggling day and night to keep themselves and those
dependent upon them from starvation, there was little or no pity. It was
just "their lot," and they were taught to consider it their duty to be
content with it. To envy their richer neighbours, to covet anything they
possessed, was a sin that would only ensure for the coveter an eternal
and aggravated continuance of his present thirst.
In describing those early years, The General said:--
"Before my father's death I had been apprenticed by his wish. I was
very young, only thirteen years of age, but he could not afford to
keep me longer at school, and so out into the world I must go. This
event was followed by the formation of companionships whose
influence was anything but beneficial. I went down hill morally,
and the consequences might have been serious if not eternally
disastrous, but that the hand of God was laid on me in a very
remarkable manner.
"I had scarcely any income as an apprentice, and was so hard up
when my father died, that I could do next to nothing to assist my
dear mother and sisters, which was the cause of no little
humiliation and grief.
"The system of apprenticeship in those days generally bound a lad
for six or seven years. During this time he received little or no
wages, and was required to slave from early morning to late evening
upon the supposition that he was 'being taught' the business,
which, if he had a good master, was probably true. It was a severe
but useful time of learning. My master was a Unitarian--that is, he
did not believe Christ was the son of God and the Saviour of the
world, but only the best of teachers; yet so little had he learnt
of Him that his heaven consisted in making money, strutting about
with his gay wife, and regaling himself with worldly amusements.
"At nineteen the weary years of my apprenticeship came to an end.
I had done my six years' service, and was heartily glad to be free
from the humiliating bondage they had proved. I tried hard to find
some kind of labour that would give me more liberty to carry out
the aggressive ideas which I had by this time come to entertain as
to saving the lost; but I failed. For twelve months I waited. Those
months were among the most desolate of my life. No one took the
slightest interest in me.
"Failing to find employment in Nottingham, I had to move away. I
was loath, very loath, to leave my dear widowed mother and my
native town, but I was compelled to do so, and to come to London.
In the great city I felt myself unutterably alone. I did not know a
soul excepting a brother-in-law, with whom I had not a particle of
communion.
"In many respects my new master very closely resembled the old one.
In one particular, however, he differed from him very materially,
and that was he made a great profession of religion. He believed in
the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and in the Church of which he was a
member, but seemed to be utterly ignorant of either the theory or
practice of experimental godliness. To the spiritual interests of
the dead world around him he was as indifferent as were the vicious
crowds themselves whom he so heartily despised. All he seemed to me
to want was to make money, and all he seemed to want me for was to
help him in the sordid selfish task.
"So it was work, work, work, morning, noon, and night. I was
practically a white slave, being only allowed my liberty on
Sundays, and an hour or two one night in the week, and even then
the rule was 'Home by ten o'clock, or the door will be locked
against you.' This law was rigidly enforced in my case, although my
employer knew that I travelled long distances preaching the Gospel
in which he and his wife professed so loudly to believe. To get
home in time, many a Sunday night I have had to run long distances,
after walking for miles, and preaching twice during the day."
The contrast between those days and ours can hardly be realised by any
of us now. We may put down almost in figures some of the differences
that steam and electricity have made, linking all mankind together more
closely than Nottingham was then connected with London. But what words
can convey any picture of the development of intelligence and sympathy
that makes an occurrence in a London back street interest the reading
inhabitants of Germany, America, and Australia as intense as those of
our own country?
What a consolation it would have been to the apprentice lad, could he
have known how all his daily drudgery was fitting him to understand, to
comfort, and to help the toiling masses of every race and clime?
In the wonderful providence of God all these changes have been allowed
to leave England in as dominating a position as she held when William
Booth was born, if not to enhance her greatness and power, far as some
may consider beyond what she deserved. And yet all the time, with or
without our choice, our own activities, and even our faults and
neglects, have been helping other peoples, some of them born on our
soil, to become our rivals in everything. Happily the multiplication of
plans of intercourse is now merging the whole human race so much into
one community that one may hope yet to see the dawn of that fraternity
of peoples which may end the present prospects of wars unparalleled in
the past. How very much William Booth has contributed to bring that
universal brotherhood about this book may suffice to hint.
Chapter II
Salvation In Youth
In convincing him that goodness was the only safe passport to peace and
prosperity of any lasting kind, William Booth's mother had happily laid
in the heart of her boy the best foundation for a happy life, "Be good,
William, and then all will be well," she had said to him over and over
again.
But how was he to "be good"? The English National Church, eighty years
ago, had reached a depth of cold formality and uselessness which can
hardly be imagined now. Nowhere was this more manifest than in the
"parish" church. The rich had their allotted pew, a sort of reserved
seat, into which no stranger dare enter, deserted though it might be by
its holders for months together. For the poor, seats were in some
churches placed in the broad aisles or at the back of the pulpit, so
conspicuously marking out the inferiority of all who sat in them as
almost to serve as a notice to every one that the ideas of Jesus Christ
had no place there. Even when an earnest clergyman came to any church,
he had really a battle against great prejudices on both sides if he
wished to make any of "the common people" feel welcome at "common
prayer." But the way the appointed services were "gone through" was only
too often such as to make every one look upon the whole matter as one
which only concerned the clergy. Especially was this the effect on young
people. Anything like interest, or pleasure, in those dull and dreary,
not to say "vain" repetitions on their part must indeed have been rare.
It is not surprising then that William Booth saw nothing to attract him
in the Church of his fathers. John Wesley, that giant reformer of
religion in England, had been dead some forty years, and his life-work
had not been allowed to affect "the Church" very profoundly. His
followers having seceded from it contrary to his orders and entreaties,
had already made several sects, and in the chief of these William Booth
presently found for himself at least a temporary home. Here the services
were, to some extent, independent of books; earnest preaching of the
truth was often heard from the pulpits, and some degree of real concern
for the spiritual advancement of the people was manifested by the
preachers.
Under this preaching and these influences, and the singing of Wesley's
hymns, the lad was deeply moved. To his last days he sang some of those
grand old songs as much as, if not more than, any others; that one, for
example, containing the verse:--
And can I yet delay my little all to give?
To tear my soul from earth away, for Jesus to receive?
Nay, but I yield, I yield! I can hold out no more,
I sink, by dying love compelled, and own Thee conqueror.
The mind that has never yet come in contact with teaching of this
character can scarcely comprehend the effect of such thoughts on a young
and ardent soul. This Jesus, who gave up Heaven and all that was bright
and pleasant to devote Himself to the world's Salvation, was presented
to him as coming to ask the surrender of his heart and life to His
service, and his heart could not long resist the appeal. It was in no
large congregation, however, but in one of the smaller Meetings that
William Booth made the glorious sacrifice of himself which he had been
made to understand was indispensable to real religion. Speaking some
time ago, he thus described that great change:--
"When as a giddy youth of fifteen I was led to attend Wesley
Chapel, Nottingham, I cannot recollect that any individual pressed
me in the direction of personal surrender to God. I was wrought
upon quite independently of human effort by the Holy Ghost, who
created within me a great thirst for a new life.
"I felt that I wanted, in place of the life of self-indulgence, to
which I was yielding myself, a happy, conscious sense that I was
pleasing God, living right, and spending all my powers to get
others into such a life. I saw that all this ought to be, and I
decided that it should be. It is wonderful that I should have
reached this decision in view of all the influences then around me.
My professedly Christian master never uttered a word to indicate
that he believed in anything he could not see, and many of my
companions were worldly and sensual, some of them even vicious.
"Yet I had that instinctive belief in God which, in common with my
fellow-creatures, I had brought into the world with me. I had no
disposition to deny my instincts, which told me that if there was a
God His laws ought to have my obedience and His interests my
service.
"I felt that it was better to live right than to live wrong, and as
to caring for the interests of others instead of my own, the
condition of the suffering people around me, people with whom I had
been so long familiar, and whose agony seemed to reach its climax
about this time, undoubtedly affected me very deeply.
"There were children crying for bread to parents whose own distress
was little less terrible to witness.
"One feeling specially forced itself upon me, and I can recollect
it as distinctly as though it had transpired only yesterday, and
that was the sense of the folly of spending my life in doing things
for which I knew I must either repent or be punished in the days to
come.
"In my anxiety to get into the right way, I joined the Methodist
Church, and attended the Class Meetings, to sing and pray and speak
with the rest." (A Class Meeting was the weekly muster of all
members of the church, who were expected to tell their leader
something of their soul's condition in answer to his inquiries.)
"But all the time the inward Light revealed to me that I must not
only renounce everything I knew to be sinful, but make restitution,
so far as I had the ability, for any wrong I had done to others
before I could find peace with God.
"The entrance to the Heavenly Kingdom was closed against me by an
evil act of the past which required restitution. In a boyish
trading affair I had managed to make a profit out of my companions,
whilst giving them to suppose that what I did was all in the way of
a generous fellowship. As a testimonial of their gratitude they
had given me a silver pencil-case. Merely to return their gift
would have been comparatively easy, but to confess the deception I
had practised upon them was a humiliation to which for some days I
could not bring myself.
"I remember, as if it were but yesterday, the spot in the corner of
a room under the chapel, the hour, the resolution to end the
matter, the rising up and rushing forth, the finding of the young
fellow I had chiefly wronged, the acknowledgment of my sin, the
return of the pencil-case--the instant rolling away from my heart
of the guilty burden, the peace that came in its place, and the
going forth to serve my God and my generation from that hour.
"It was in the open street that this great change passed over me,
and if I could only have possessed the flagstone on which I stood
at that happy moment, the sight of it occasionally might have been
as useful to me as the stones carried up long ago from the bed of
the Jordan were to the Israelites who had passed over them
dry-shod.
"Since that night, for it was near upon eleven o'clock when the
happy change was realised, the business of my life has been not
only to make a holy character but to live a life of loving activity
in the service of God and man. I have ever felt that true religion
consists not only in being holy myself, but in assisting my
Crucified Lord in His work of saving men and women, making them
into His Soldiers, keeping them faithful to death, and so getting
them into Heaven.
"I have had to encounter all sorts of difficulties as I have
travelled along this road. The world has been against me, sometimes
very intensely, and often very stupidly. I have had difficulties
similar to those of other men, with my own bodily appetites, with
my mental disposition, and with my natural unbelief.
"Many people, both religious and irreligious, are apt to think that
they are more unfavourably constituted than their comrades and
neighbours, and that their circumstances and surroundings are
peculiarly unfriendly to the discharge of the duties they owe to
God and man.
"I have been no exception in this matter. Many a time I have been
tempted to say to myself, 'There is no one fixed so awkwardly for
holy living and faithful fighting as I am.' But I have been
encouraged to resist the delusion by remembering the words of the
Apostle Paul: 'There hath no temptation taken you but such as is
common to man.'
"I am not pretending to say that I have worked harder, or practised
more self-denial, or endured more hardships at any particular time
of my life than have those around me; but I do want those who feel
any interest in me to understand that faithfulness to God in the
discharge of duty and the maintenance of a good conscience have
cost me as severe a struggle as they can cost any Salvation Soldier
in London, Berlin, Paris, New York, or Tokio to-day.
"One reason for the victory I daily gained from the moment of my
conversion was, no doubt, my complete and immediate separation from
the godless world. I turned my back on it. I gave it up, having
made up my mind beforehand that if I did go in for God I would do
so with all my might. Rather than yearning for the world's
pleasures, books, gains, or recreations, I found my new nature
leading me to come away from it all. It had lost all charm for me.
What were all the novels, even those of Sir Walter Scott or
Fenimore Cooper, compared with the story of my Saviour? What were
the choicest orators compared with Paul? What was the hope of
money-earning, even with all my desire to help my poor mother and
sisters, in comparison with the imperishable wealth of ingathered
souls? I soon began to despise everything the world had to offer
me.
"In those days I felt, as I believe many Converts do, that I could
willingly and joyfully travel to the ends of the earth for Jesus
Christ, and suffer anything imaginable to help the souls of other
men. Jesus Christ had baptised me, according to His eternal
promise, with His Spirit and with Fire.
"Yet the surroundings of my early life were all in opposition to
this whole-hearted devotion. No one at first took me by the hand
and urged me forward, or gave me any instruction or hint likely to
help me in the difficulties I had at once to encounter in my
consecration to this service."
This clear experience and teaching of an absolutely new life, that
"eternal life" which Jesus Christ promises to all His true followers, is
indispensable to the right understanding of everything in connexion with
the career we are recording. Without such an experience nothing of what
follows could have been possible. With it the continual resistance to
every contrary teaching and influence, and the strenuous struggle by all
possible means to propagate it are inevitable.
One is amazed at this time of day, to find intelligent men writing as
though there were some mysticism, or something quite beyond ordinary
understanding, in this theory of conversion, or regeneration.
Precisely the process which The General thus describes in his own case
must of necessity follow any thoughtful and prayerful consideration of
the mission and Gospel of Christ. Either we must reject the whole Bible
story or we must admit that "all we like sheep have gone astray," taking
our own course, in contempt of God's wishes. To be convinced of that
must plunge any soul into just such a depth of sorrow and anxiety as
left this lad no rest until he had found peace in submission to his God.
No outside influences or appearances can either produce or be
substituted for the deep, inward resolve of the wandering soul, "I will
arise, and go to my Father." Whether that decision be come to in some
crowded Meeting, or in the loneliness of some midnight hour is quite
unimportant. But how can there be true repentance, or the beginning of
reconciliation with God, until that point is reached?
And whenever that returning to God takes place, there is the same
abundant pardon, the same change of heart, the same new birth, which has
here been described. What can be more simple and matter of fact? Take
away the need and possibility of such "conversion," and this whole life
becomes a delusion, and the proclamation of Jesus Christ as a Saviour of
men inexcusable. What has created any mystery around the question
amongst Christians, if not the sacramental theory, which more or less
contradicts it all? In almost all Christian Churches a theory is set up
that a baby by some ceremonial act becomes suddenly regenerated, "made a
child of God, and an heir of His Kingdom."
If that were the case, there could, of course, have been no need for the
later regeneration of that child; but I do not believe that an
ecclesiastic could be found, from the Vatican to the most remote
island-parish where children are "christened," who would profess to have
seen such a regenerated child alive. There is notoriously no such change
accomplished in any one, until the individual himself, convinced of his
own godless condition, cries to God for His Salvation, and receives that
great gift.
What a foundation for life was the certainty which that lad got as he
knelt in that little room in Nottingham! Into that same "full assurance"
he was later on to lead many millions--young and old--of many lands. The
simple Army verse:--
I know thy sins are all forgiven,
Glory to the Bleeding Lamb!
And I am on my way to Heaven,
Glory to the Bleeding Lamb!
embalms for ever that grand starting-point of the soul, from which our
people have been able, in ignorance of almost everything else of Divine
truth, to commence a career of holy living, and of loving effort for the
souls of others.
How much more weight those few words carry than the most eloquent
address bereft of that certainty of tone could ever have!
That certainty which rests not upon any study of books, even of the
Bible itself, but upon the soul's own believing vision of the Lamb of
God who has taken its sins away; that certainty which changes in a
moment the prison darkness of the sin-chained into the light and joy and
power of the liberated slave of Christ; that is the great conquest of
the Salvation Soldier everywhere.
And yet, perhaps, in the eyes of an unbelieving world, and a doubting
Church, that was General Booth's great offence all through life. To
think of having uneducated and formerly godless people "bawling" the
"mysteries of the faith" through the streets of "Christian" cities,
where it had hitherto been thought inconsistent with Christian humility
for any one to dare to say they really knew Him "whom to know is life
eternal"! Oh, that was the root objection to all The General's preaching
and action.
And it was one of the most valuable features of his whole career that
wherever he or his messengers went there came that same certainty which
from the days of Bethlehem onwards Jesus Christ came to bring to every
man.
"By faith we know!" If every outward manifestation of The General's
successes could be swept off the world to-morrow, this positive faith in
the one Saviour would be capable of reproducing all its blessed results
over again, wherever it was preserved, or renewed. Any so-called faith
which gives no certainty must needs be hustled out of the way of an
investigating, hurrying, wealth-seeking age. Only those who are certain
that they have found the Lord can be capable of inducing others to seek
and find Him.
Chapter III
Lay Ministry
Convictions such as we have just been reading of were bound to lead to
immediate action. But it is most interesting to find that William
Booth's first regular service for Christ was not called forth by any
church, but simply by the spontaneous efforts of one or two young
Converts like himself. No one could be more inclined towards the use of
organisation and system than he always was, and yet he always advocated
an organisation so open to all, and a system so elastic, that zeal might
never be repressed, but only made the most of. It is, perhaps, fortunate
that we have in one of his addresses to his own young Officers the
following description of the way he began to work for the Salvation of
his fellow-townsmen:--
"Directly after my conversion I had a bad attack of fever, and was
brought to the very edge of the grave. But God raised me up, and
led me out to work for Him, after a fashion which, considering my
youth and inexperience, must be pronounced remarkable. While
recovering from this illness, which left me far from strong, I
received a note from a companion, Will Sansom, asking me to make
haste and get well again, and help him in a Mission he had started
in a slum part of the town. No sooner was I able to get about than
I gladly joined him.
"The Meetings we held were very remarkable for those days. We used
to take out a chair into the street, and one of us mounting it
would give out a hymn, which we then sang with the help of, at the
most, three or four people. Then I would talk to the people, and
invite them to come with us to a Meeting in one of the houses.
"How I worked in those days! Remember that I was only an apprentice
lad of fifteen or sixteen. I used to leave business at 7 o'clock,
or soon after, and go visiting the sick, then these street
Meetings, and afterwards to some Meeting in a cottage, where we
would often get some one saved. After the Meeting I would often go
to see some dying person, arriving home about midnight to rest all
I could before rising next morning in time to reach my place of
business at 7 A.M. That was sharp exercise! How I can remember
rushing along the streets during my forty minutes' dinner-time,
reading the Bible or C. G. Finney's _Lectures on Revivals of
Religion_ as I went, careful, too, not to be a minute late. And at
this time I was far from strong physically; but full of
difficulties as those days were, they were nevertheless wonderful
seasons of blessing, and left pleasant memories that endure to this
hour.
"The leading men of the church to which I belonged were afraid I
was going too fast, and gave me plenty of cautions, quaking and
fearing at my every new departure; but none gave me a word of
encouragement. And yet the Society of which for those six
apprentice years I was a faithful member, was literally my heaven
on earth. Truly, I thought then there was one God, that John Wesley
was His prophet, and that the Methodists were His special people.
The church was at the time, I believe, one thousand members strong.
Much as I loved them, however, I mingled but little with them, and
had time for but few of their great gatherings, having chosen the
Meadow Platts as my parish, because my heart then as now went out
after the poorest of the poor.
"Thus my conversion made me, in a moment, a preacher of the Gospel.
The idea never dawned on me that any line was to be drawn between
one who had nothing else to do but preach and a saved apprentice
lad who only wanted 'to spread through all the earth abroad,' as we
used to sing, the fame of our Saviour. I have lived, thank God, to
witness the separation between layman and cleric become more and
more obscured, and to see Jesus Christ's idea of changing in a
moment ignorant fishermen into fishers of men nearer and nearer
realisation.
"But I had to battle for ten of the best years of my youth against
the barriers the Churches set up to prevent this natural following
of the Lamb wherever He leads. At that time they all but compelled
those who wished to minister to the souls of men to speak in
unnatural language and tones, and adopt habits of mind and life
which so completely separated them from the crowd as to make them
into a sort of princely caste, whom the masses of every clime
outwardly reverenced and inwardly despised.
"Lad though I was, a group of new Converts and other earnest souls
soon gathered around me, and greater things seemed to be ahead when
a great trial overtook me. The bosom friend already referred to was
taken from my side. We had been like David and Jonathan in the
intensity of our union and fellowship in our work for God. He had a
fine appearance, was a beautiful singer, and possessed a wonderful
gift in prayer. After I had spoken in our Open-Air Meeting he would
kneel down and wrestle with God until it seemed as though he would
move the very stones on which he knelt, as well as the hearts of
the people who heard him. Of how few of those men called ministers
or priests can anything like this be said!
"But the unexpected blow came. He fell into consumption. His
relations carried him up and down the country for change of air and
scene. All was done that could be done to save his life, but in
vain. The last change was to the Isle of Wight. In that lovely spot
the final hope fled. I remember their bringing him home to die. He
bade farewell to earth, and went triumphantly to Heaven singing--
And when to Jordan's flood I come,
Jehovah rules the tide,
And the waters He'll divide,
And the heavenly host will shout--
"Welcome Home!"
"What a trial that loss was to my young heart! It was rendered all
the greater from the fact that I had to go forward all alone in
face of an opposition which suddenly sprang up from the leading
functionaries of the church."
The consecration which William Booth made of himself to this work, with
all the zeal and novelty with which it was characterised, was due, no
doubt, to the teaching, influence, and example of James Caughey, a
remarkable American minister who visited the town. Largely free from
European opinions and customs in religious matters, and seeking only to
advance the cause of Jesus Christ with all possible speed, this man to a
very large extent liberated William Booth for life from any one set of
plans, and led him towards that perfect faith in God's guidance which
made him capable of new departures to any extent.
The old-fashioned representatives of officialdom grumbled in vain at
novelties which have now become accepted necessities of all mission
work.
"But just about this time," The General has told us, "another
difficulty started across my path in connexion with my business. I
have told you how intense had been the action of my conscience
before my conversion. But after my conversion it was naturally ever
increasingly sensitive to every question of right and wrong, with a
great preponderance as to the importance of what was right over
what was wrong. Ever since that day it has led me to measure my own
actions, and judge my own character by the standard of truth set up
in my soul by the Bible and the Holy Ghost; and it has not
permitted me to allow myself in the doing of things which I have
felt were wrong without great inward torture. I have always had a
great horror of hypocrisy--that is, of being unreal or false,
however fashionable the cursed thing might be, or whatever worldly
temptation might strive to lead me on to the track. In this I was
tested again and again in those early days, and at last there came
a crisis.
"Our business was a large one and the assistants were none too
many. On Saturdays there was always great pressure. Work often
continued into the early hours of Sunday. Now I had strong notions
in my youth and for long after--indeed, I entertain them now--about
the great importance of keeping the Sunday, or Sabbath as we always
called it, clear of unnecessary work.
"For instance, I walked in my young days thousands of miles on the
Sabbath, when I could for a trifling sum have ridden at ease,
rather than use any compulsory labour of man or beast for the
promotion of my comfort. I still think we ought to abstain from all
unnecessary work ourselves, and, as far as possible, arrange for
everybody about us to have one day's rest in seven. But, as I was
saying, I objected to working at my business on the Sabbath, which
I interpreted to mean after twelve o'clock on Saturday night. My
relatives and many of my religious friends laughed at my scruples;
but I paid no heed to them, and told my master I would not do it,
though he replied that if that were so he would simply discharge
me. I told him I was willing to begin on Monday morning as soon as
the clock struck twelve, and work until the clock struck twelve on
Saturday night, but that not one hour or one minute of Sunday would
I work for him or all his money.
"He kept his word, put me into the street, and I was laughed at by
everybody as a sort of fool. But I held out, and within seven days
he gave in, and, thinking my scrupulous conscience might serve his
turn he told me to come back again. I did so, and before another
fortnight had passed he went off with his young wife to Paris,
leaving the responsibilities of a business involving the income and
expenditure of hundreds of pounds weekly on my young shoulders.
"So I did not lose by that transaction in any way. With no little
suffering on four separate occasions, contrary to the judgments of
all around me, I have thus left every friend I had in the world,
and gone straight into what appeared positive ruin, so far as this
world was concerned, to meet the demands of conscience. But I have
trusted God, and done the right, and in every separate instance I
can now see that I have gained both for this world and the next as
the result.
"During all the period of my lay preaching, both in Nottingham and
London, I had to grapple with other difficulties. What with one
thing and another I had a great struggle at times to keep my head
above the waters, and my heart alive with peace and love. But I
held on to God and His grace, and the never-failing joy that I
experienced in leading souls to Christ carried me through."
How can anybody fail to see how much more the masses are likely to be
influenced by the preaching, no matter how defective oratorically, of
one who has thus lived in the midst of them--living, in fact, their very
life of anxiety, suffering, and toil--than by that of men, however
excellent, who come to them with the atmosphere of the study, the
college, or the seminary?
And yet, after having been trained for a year in the rough-and-ready
oratory of the streets, subject to interruptions and interjected sneers,
The General was called upon, in order to be recognised as fit for
registration as a lay preacher, to mount the pulpit and preach a "trial
sermon"! Accustomed as he had become to talk out his heart with such
words and illustrations as involuntarily presented themselves to the
simple-minded, though often wicked and always ignorant crowds, who
gathered around the chair on which he stood; able without difficulty to
hold their attention when he had won it, and drive the truth home to
their souls, in spite of the counter-attractions of a busy thoroughfare,
he took very hardly to the stiff, cold process of sermonising and
sermon-making such as was then in vogue, and it was some time before he
had much liberty or made much progress in the business.
Still, in due time he was passed, first as a lay "preacher on trial,"
and later called as fully qualified to preach at any chapel in the
district--this latter after a second year's activities and a "second
trial sermon."
When he once got on to this sermon-making line he took the best models
he could find--men like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and, above all,
C. G. Finney, who he could be certain had never sought in their
preaching for human applause, but for the glory of God and the good of
souls alone.
In the Psalms, as in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, we have
the most unmistakable guidance upon this subject, showing it to have
been God's purpose so to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh that all His
people should be true prophets--not all, of course, of the same calibre
or style, but all capable of warning and teaching, in all wisdom, every
one whom they could reach.
The work of the ministry is another thing altogether. Let no one suppose
that The Salvation Army at all underrates the "separation" unto His work
of those whom God has chosen for entire devotion to some task, whatever
it be. As to those whom we take away from their secular calling to
become our Officers, I will only say here that we judge of their fitness
not alone by their ability to speak, but by their having proved
themselves to be so devoted to the poor that we can rely upon their
readiness to act as servants of the very neediest in any way that lies
within their power. Only two persons at each of our Stations, the
Officers actually in command, receive any payment whatever from The
Army. All the others associated with us, many of them wearing our
uniform and holding some particular office, give freely their
leisure-time and money to the work, and may be spoken of as "lay
preachers."
Our young "local preacher" generally spent his Sundays in some distant
village where he had been appointed to preach, just as is the case in
these days with thousands of our Soldiers.
"My homeward walk, often alone through the dark, muddy fields and
lanes," he tells us, "would be enlivened by snatches of the songs
we had been singing in our Meetings, and late into the night people
might have heard my solitary prayers and praises. 'Don't sit up
singing till twelve o'clock after a hard day's work,' was one of
the first needed pieces of practical advice I got from my best
adviser of later years."
"But we never felt we could have too much of God's service and
praise, and scarcely regarded the grave itself as a terminus for
our usefulness; for in the case of a girl who had attended our
Cottage Meetings, and who had died of consumption, we lads
organised something very like one of our present-day Salvation Army
Funerals.
"Having ministered to the poor girl's necessities during her
sickness, comforted her in her last hours of pain, sung hymns of
triumph round her bed as her spirit took its passage to the skies,
we had the right, as her only friends, to order her funeral, and we
resolved to make the most of it for the good of her neighbours.
"Although it was in the depth of winter, and snow lay thick on the
ground, we brought the coffin out into the street, sang and prayed
around it, and urged the few neighbours who stood shivering by, or
listening at their doors and windows, to prepare for their dying
day. We then processioned to the Cholera Burial Ground, as the
cemetery in which the poorest of Nottingham were buried was called,
obtaining permission from the Chaplain to hold another little
Meeting by the grave-side, after he had read the ordinary Service.
I cannot but feel that the hand of God was upon me in those days,
teaching me how much lay preachers could do."
How wonderful that the lad who did all that in the teeth of religious
convention and opinion should have lived to organise just such battles
and just such funerals all round the world, and to train hundreds of
thousands of Soldiers of Christ to do likewise! What a termination to
his own career he was preparing all the time, when the City of London
was to suspend the traffic of many of its busiest thoroughfares for
hours to let his coffin pass through with a procession of his uniformed
Soldiers a mile long!
With regard to the question of a "Call to the ministry," that bugbear of
so many souls, The General constantly expressed himself as follows:--
"How can anybody with spiritual eyesight talk of having no call,
when there are such multitudes around them who never hear a word
about God, and never intend to; who can never hear, indeed, without
the sort of preacher who will force himself upon them? Can a man
keep right in his own soul, who can see all that, and yet stand
waiting for a 'call' to preach? Would they wait so for a 'call' to
help any one to escape from a burning building, or to snatch a
sinking child from a watery grave?
"Does not growth in grace, or even ordinary growth of intelligence,
necessarily bring with it that deepened sense of eternal truths
which must intensify the conviction of duty to the perishing world?
"Does not an unselfish love, the love that goes out towards the
unloving, demand of a truly loving soul immediate action for the
Salvation of the unloved?"
"And, are there not persons who know that they possess special
gifts, such as robust health, natural eloquence or power of voice,
which specially make them responsible for doing something for
souls?
"And yet I do not at all forget, that above and beyond all these
things, there does come to some a special and direct call, which it
is peculiarly fatal to disregard, and peculiarly strengthening to
enjoy and act upon.
"I believe that there have been many eminently holy and useful men
who never had such a call; but that does not at all prevent any one
from asking God for it, or blessing Him for His special kindness
when He gives it."
There is, I think, no doubt that God did give to young William Booth
such a call, although he never spoke of it, perhaps lest he might
discourage any who, without enjoying any such manifestation, acted upon
the principles just referred to. At any rate, he battled through any
season of doubt he had with regard to it, and came out into a certainty
that left him no room for question or fear.
Chapter IV
Early Ministry
We cannot wonder that God Himself rarely seems to find it wise, even if
it be possible, to fit men for His most important enterprises in a few
years, or by means of one simple process of instruction. Consider the
diversity of men's minds and lives, and the varying currents of thought
and opinion which are found in the various parts of the world at
different periods of even one century, and it will at once be seen how
impossible we should all immediately pronounce it to fit one man by
means of one pathway of service to be the minister and leader of the
followers of Christ in every part of the world.
Christ Himself was kept in an obscurity we cannot penetrate for thirty
years before He was made known to the comparatively small people amongst
whom all His time on earth was to be spent. Moses was not called till he
was eighty years old, having spent forty years amidst the splendours of
one of the grandest courts of the ancient world, and forty more amidst
the sheep on a desert border!
How was the ardent English lad who came to serve in a London shop during
the week, and to do the work of a lay preacher on Sundays, to be fitted
to form and lead a great Christian Order of devotees out of every
nation, and to instruct and direct them in helping their fellow-men of
every race in every necessity that could arise? To prepare a man merely
to preach the Gospel a few years of service in that work might suffice;
but then we should probably have seen a man merely interested in the
numbers of his own audiences and the effect produced upon them by his
own preaching.
For William Booth a much more tedious and roundabout journey was needed.
He must first of all preach his way up from the counter to the pulpit,
and he must then have twenty years of varied experiences in ministerial
service amongst widely differing Churches, before he could be fit to
take up his appointed place, outside all the Churches, to raise from
amongst every class a new force for the exaltation of Christ amongst all
men.
For so great a work he must needs have a helpmeet, and he was to find
her when she was still physically as weak and unlikely for the great
task as he was, and as entirely severed from all existing organisations.
Catherine Mumford, like himself, innocent of any unkind feeling towards
her Church, had been excluded from it, simply because she would not
pledge herself to keep entirely away from the Reform party.
Unable really at the time to do more than teach a class in the Sunday
School, and occasionally visit a sick person, she nevertheless, by the
fervour of her action, made herself a power that was felt, and threw all
her influence on the side of any whole-hearted religious or temperance
effort. The anxiety of both these two young people not to allow any
thought for their own happiness to interfere with their duty to God and
to their fellows delayed their marriage for years; and when they did
marry it was with the perfect resolve on both sides to make everything
in their own life and home subordinate to the great work to which they
had given themselves.
[Illustration: CATHERINE BOOTH
Born January 17th, 1829. Died October 4th, 1890.]
Neither of them at the time dreamed of Mrs. Booth's speaking in public,
much less that they were together to become the liberators of woman from
the silence imposed on her by almost every organisation of Christ's
followers. Having known both of them intimately during the years in
which The Salvation Army was being formed, I can positively contradict
the absurdly exaggerated statement that The General would have had
little or no success in life but for the talents and attractive ministry
of Mrs. Booth. She was a helpmeet in the most perfect sense, never, even
when herself reduced to illness and helplessness, desiring to absorb
either time or attention that he could give to the great War in which
she always encouraged him as no other ever could. Remaining to her
latest hour a woman of the tenderest and most modest character, she
shrank from public duty, and merely submitted so far as she felt
"constrained," for Christ's sake, to association with anything that she
was convinced ought to be done to gain the ears of men for the Gospel,
however contrary it might be to her own tastes and wishes. Perhaps her
most valuable contribution to the construction of The General's life was
her ability to explain to him opinions and tastes differing widely from
his own, and to sustain and defend his general defiance of the usual
traditions and customs of "society."
His own feelings about it all he has described in these words:--
"The sensations of a new-comer to London from the country, are
always somewhat disagreeable, if he comes to work. The immensity of
the city must especially strike him as he crosses it for the first
time and passes through its different areas. The general turn-out
into a few great thoroughfares, on Saturday nights especially,
gives a sensation of enormous bulk. The manifest poverty of so many
in the most populous streets must appeal to any heart. The language
of the drinking crowds must needs give a rather worse than a true
impression of all.
"The crowding pressure and activity of so many must almost oppress
one not accustomed to it. The number of public-houses, theatres,
and music-halls must give a young enthusiast for Christ a sickening
impression. The enormous number of hawkers must also have given a
rather exaggerated idea of the poverty and cupidity which
nevertheless prevailed. The Churches in those days gave the very
uttermost idea of spiritual death and blindness to the existing
condition of things; at that time very few of them were open more
than one evening per week. There were no Young Men's or Young
Women's Christian Associations, no P.S.A.'s, no Brotherhoods, no
Central Missions, no extra effort to attract the attention of the
godless crowds; for miles there was not an announcement of anything
special in the religious line to be seen.
"To any one who cared to enter the places of worship, their
deathly contrast with the streets was even worse. The absence of
week-night services must have made any stranger despair of finding
even society or diversion. A Methodist sufficiently in earnest to
get inside to the 'class' would find a handful of people reluctant
to bear any witness to the power of God.
"Despite the many novelties introduced since those days, the
activities of the world being so much greater, the contrast must
look even more striking in our own time."
Imagine a young man accustomed to daily labour for the poor, coming into
such a world as that!
Thought about what they sang and said in the private gatherings of the
Methodist Societies could only deepen and intensify the feeling of
monstrosity. They sang frequently:--
He taught me how to watch and pray,
And live rejoicing every day.
But where were the rejoicing people? Where was there indeed anybody who,
either in or out of a religious service, dared to express his joy in the
Lord--or wished to express anything. It was as if religious societies
had become wet blankets to suppress any approach to a hearty expression
of religious faith. Nevertheless, by God's grace, it all worked in this
case not to crush but to infuriate and stir the new-comer to action.
Preaching, under such circumstances, was a relief to such a soul, and
necessarily became more and more desperate.
One hearing of William Booth was enough for Mr. Rabbits, a practical,
go-ahead man, who had raised up out of the old-fashioned little business
of his forefathers one of the great "stores" of London, and who longed
to see the same sort of development take place in connexion with the
old-fashioned, perfectly correct, and yet all but lifeless institutions
that professed to represent Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world. His
sense of the contrast between this preacher and others whom he knew was
proportionately rapid and acute. The effects produced on hearers were
the same at every turn.
This living preaching was and is a perfect fit with all the rush of the
world outside, and the helplessness of the poor souls around.
William Booth was, as we have seen, only seventeen when he was fully
recognised as a preacher of the Gospel according to the custom of the
Methodist Churches, and at nineteen his minister urged him to give up
his life to the ministry. At that time, however, he felt himself too
weak physically for a ministerial career, and in this view his doctor
concurred. So determined was he to accomplish his purpose, however, that
he begged the doctor not to express his opinion to the minister, but to
allow the matter to stand over for a year. Unless a man with a nervous
system like his was "framed like a bullock," and had "a chest like a
prize-fighter," he would break down, said the physician, and seeing that
he was not so built, he would be "done for" in twelve months. The doctor
went to the grave very soon afterwards, whereas The General continued
preaching for over sixty years after that pronouncement.
At this period, some of the Wesleyans who were discontented with their
leaders in London broke into revolt, and there was so much bitter
feeling on both sides, that the main object of John Wesley--the
exaltation of Christ for the Salvation of men--was for the moment almost
lost sight of.
Mr. Booth joined with the most earnest people he could find; but though
they gave him opportunity to hold Meetings, he wrote to one of his old
associates:--
"How are you going on? I wish I knew you were happy, living to God
and working for Jesus.
"I preached on Sabbath last to a respectable but dull and lifeless
congregation. Notwithstanding this I had liberty in both prayer and
preaching. I had not any one to say 'Amen' or 'Praise the Lord'
during the whole of the service. I want some of you here with me in
the Prayer Meetings, and then we should carry all before us."
Thus we see emerging from the obscurity of a poor home a conqueror,
fired with one ambition, out of harmony with every then existing
Christian organisation, because of that strange old feeling, so often
expressed in the Psalms of David, that the praises of God ought to be
heard from all men's lips alike, and that everything else ought to give
way to His will and His pleasure.
In speaking to his Officers later on he said:--
"When the great separation from the Wesleyan Church took place, Mr.
Rabbits said to me one day: 'You must leave business, and wholly
devote yourself to preaching the Gospel.'
"'Impossible,' I answered. 'There is no way for me. Nobody wants
me.' 'Yes,' said he, 'the people with whom you have allied yourself
want an evangelist.'
"'They cannot support me,' I replied; 'and I cannot live on air.'
"'That is true, no doubt,' was his answer. 'How much can you live
on?'
"I reckoned up carefully. I knew I should have to provide my own
quarters and to pay for my cooking; and as to the living itself, I
did not understand in those days how this could be managed in as
cheap a fashion as I do now. After a careful calculation, I told
him that I did not see how I could get along with less than twelve
shillings a week.
"'Nonsense,' he said; 'you cannot do with less than twenty
shillings a week, I am sure.'
"'All right,' I said, 'have it your own way, if you will; but where
is the twenty shillings to come from?'
"'I will supply it,' he said, 'for the first three months at
least.'
"'Very good,' I answered. And the bargain was struck there and
then.
"I at once gave notice to my master, who was very angry, and said,
'If it is money you want, that need not part us.' I told him that
money had nothing to do with the question, that all I wanted was
the opportunity to spend my life and powers in publishing the
Saviour to a lost world. And so I packed my portmanteau, and went
out to begin a new life.
"My first need was some place to lay my head. After a little time
spent in the search, I found quarters in the Walworth district,
where I expected to work, and took two rooms in the house of a
widow at five shillings a week, with attendance. This I reckoned at
the time was a pretty good bargain. I then went to a furniture
shop, and bought some chairs and a bed, and a few other
necessaries. I felt quite set up. It was my birthday, a Good
Friday, and on the same day I fell in love with my future wife.
"But the people would have nothing to do with me. They 'did not
want a parson.' They reckoned they were all parsons, so that at the
end of the three months' engagement the weekly income came to an
end; and, indeed, I would not have renewed the engagement on any
terms. There was nothing for me to do but to sell my furniture and
live on the proceeds, which did not supply me for a very long time.
I declare to you that at that time I was so fixed as not to know
which way to turn.
"In my emergency a remarkable way opened for me to enter college
and become a Congregational minister. But after long waiting,
several examinations, trial sermons and the like, I was informed
that on the completion of my training I should be expected to
believe and preach what is known as Calvinism. After reading a book
which fully explained the doctrine, I threw it at the wall opposite
me, and said I would sooner starve than preach such doctrine, one
special feature of which was that only a select few could be
saved.[A]
"My little stock of money was exhausted. I remember that I gave the
last sixpence I had in the world to a poor woman whose daughter lay
dying; but within a week I received a letter inviting me to the
charge of a Methodist Circuit in Lincolnshire, and from that
moment my difficulties of that kind became much less serious.
"The Spalding people welcomed me as though I had been an angel from
Heaven, providing me with every earthly blessing within their
ability, and proposing that I should stay with them for ever. They
wanted me to marry right away, offered to furnish me a house,
provide me with a horse to enable me more readily to get about the
country, and proposed other things that they thought would please
me.
"With them I spent perhaps the happiest eighteen months of my life.
Of course my horizon was much more limited in those days than it is
now, and consequently required less to fill it.
"Although I was only twenty-three years of age and Lincolnshire was
one of the counties that had been most privileged with able
Methodist preaching for half a century before, and I had to
immediately follow in Spalding a somewhat renowned minister, God
helped me very wonderfully to make myself at home, and become a
power amongst the people.
"I felt some nervousness when on my first November Sunday I was
confronted by such a large congregation as greeted me. In the
morning I had very little liberty; but good was done, as I
afterwards learned. In the afternoon we had a Prayer, or
After-Meeting, at which one young woman wept bitterly. I urged her
to come to the communion rail at night. She did so, and the Lord
saved her. She afterwards sent me a letter thanking me for urging
her to come out. In the evening I had great liberty, and fourteen
men and women came to the communion rail; many, if not all, finding
the Saviour.
"On the Monday I preached there again. Four came forward, three of
whom professed to find Salvation. I exerted myself very much, felt
very deeply, and prayed very earnestly over an old man who had been
a backslider for seven years. He wept bitterly, and prayed to the
Lord to save him, if He could wash a heart as black as Hell. By
exerting myself so much I made myself very ill, and was confined to
the house during the rest of the week. My host and hostess were
very kind to me.
"The next Sunday I started from home rather unwell. I had to go to
Donnington, some miles away, in the morning and evening, and to
Swineshead Bridge in the afternoon.
"But at night God helped me to preach in such a way that many came
out, and fourteen names were taken of those who really seemed
satisfactory. It was, indeed, a melting, moving time.
"I was kneeling, talking to a Penitent, when somebody touched me on
the shoulder, and said, 'Here is a lady who has come to seek
Salvation. Her son came to hear you at Spalding, and was induced to
seek the Saviour, and now she has come to hear you, and she wants
Salvation, too." The Lord had mercy upon her, and she went away
rejoicing.
"At Swineshead Bridge--the very name gives some idea of the utterly
rural character of the population--I was to preach on three
successive evenings, in the hope of promoting a Revival there. Many
things seemed to be against the project; but the Lord was for us.
Two people came out on the Monday evening, and God saved them both.
This raised our faith and cheered our spirits, especially as we
knew that several more souls were in distress.
"On the Tuesday the congregation was better. The news had spread
that the Lord was saving, and that seldom fails to bring a crowd
wherever it may be. That evening the word was with power, and six
souls cried for mercy. At the earnest solicitations of the people,
I decided to stay the remainder of the week, and urged them to pray
earnestly, with the result that many more sought and found
Salvation, and the little Society was nearly doubled.
"On the Saturday, just before I started home on the omnibus, a
plain, unsophisticated Christian came and said, 'O sir, let me have
hold of your hand.' When he had seized it between both his, with
tears streaming down his face, he said, 'Glory be to God that ever
you came here. My wife before her conversion was a cruel
persecutor, and a sharp thorn in my side. She would go home from
the Prayer Meeting before me, and as full of the Devil as possible;
she would oppose and revile me; but now, sir, she is just the
contrary, and my house, instead of being a little Hell has become a
little Paradise.' This was only one of a number of cases in which
husbands rejoiced over wives, and wives over husbands, for whom
they had long prayed, being saved.
"I shall always remember with pleasure the week I spent at
Swineshead Bridge, because I prayed more and preached with more of
the spirit of expectation and faith, and then saw more success
than in any previous week of my life. I dwell upon it as, perhaps,
the week which most effectually settled my conviction for ever that
it was God's purpose by my using the simplest means to bring souls
into liberty, and to break into the cold and formal state of things
to which His people only too readily settle down."
For the sake of readers who have never seen Meetings such as The General
for so many years conducted, it seems at once necessary to explain what
is meant by the terms "seeking mercy" or "Salvation," the "cries for
mercy," and, above all, the "Mercy-Seat," or "Penitent-Form," which
appear so constantly in all reports of his work.
From the first beginnings of his Cottage Meetings as a lad in
Nottingham, he always aimed at leading every sinner to repentance, and
he always required that repentance should be openly manifested by the
Penitent coming out in the presence of others, to kneel before God, to
confess to Him, and to seek His pardon.
This is merely in accordance with the ancient customs practised by the
Jews in their Temple, to which practice Jesus Christ so strikingly calls
attention in His Parable of the Publican, who cried, "God be merciful to
me a sinner." The Psalms of David abound with just such cries for
deliverance, and with declarations that God heard and answered all those
who so cried to Him in the anguish of their guilt.
The General was never blind to the fact that open acts of contrition
like this may be feigned, or produced by a mere passing excitement; but
having seen so much of the indifference with which men generally
continue in sin, even when they admit their consciousness of guilt and
danger, he always thought the risk of undue excitement, or too hasty
action, comparatively small.
The "Penitent-Form" of The Salvation Army is simply a form or a row of
seats, immediately in front of the platform, at which all who wish to
seek Salvation are invited to kneel, as a public demonstration of their
resolution to abandon their sins, and to live henceforth to please God.
Those who kneel there are urged to pray for God's forgiveness, and when
they believe that He does forgive them to thank Him for doing so. Whilst
kneeling there they are spoken to by persons who, having passed through
the same experience, can point out to them the evils and dangers they
must henceforth avoid, and the first duties which a true repentance must
demand of them.
There are many cases, for example, in which the Penitent is urged to
give up at once some worldly habit or companionship, or to make
confession of, and restitution for, some wrong done to others. An
Officer or Soldier accompanies the Penitent to his home or to his
employer, should such a course appear likely to help him to effect any
reconciliation, or take any other step to which his conscience calls
him. The names and addresses of all Penitents are recorded, so that they
may be afterwards visited and helped to carry out the promises they have
made to God.
For convenience' sake, in very large Meetings, such as those The General
himself held, where hundreds at a time come to the Penitent-Form, a room
called the Registration Room is used for the making of the necessary
inquiries and records. In this room those who decide to join The Army
have a small piece of ribbon of The Army's colours at once attached to
their coats. But this Registration Room must in no way be confused with
an "Inquiry Room," where seeking souls can go aside unseen. The General
was always extremely opposed to the use of any plan other than that of
the Penitent-Form, lest there should be any distinction made between one
class and another, or an easier path contrived for those who wish to
avoid a bold avowal of Christ.
And he always refused to allow any such use of the Bible in connexion
with Penitents as has been usual in Inquiry Rooms, where the people have
been taught that if they only believed the words of some text, all would
be well with them. The faith to which The General desired all who came
to the Penitent-Form to be led is not the mere belief of some statement,
but that confidence in God's faithfulness to all His promises, which
brings peace to the soul.
Nothing could be more unjust than the representation that by the use of
the Penitent-Form an attempt is made to work up excitement, or emotion.
Experience has proved, everywhere, that nothing tends so rapidly to
allay the painful anxiety of a soul, hesitating before the great
decision, as the opportunity to take at once, and publicly, a decisive
step. We often sing:--
Only a step, only a step,
Why not take it now?
Come, and thy sins confessing,
Thou shalt receive a blessing;
Do not reject the mercy
So freely offered thee.
But the Penitent-Form is no modern invention, nor can it be claimed as
the speciality of any set of religionists. Even heathen people in past
ages have provided similar opportunities for those who felt a special
need either to thank their God for blessings received, or to seek His
help in any specific case, to come forward in an open way, and confess
their wants, their confidence, or their gratitude, at some altar or
shrine.
Shame upon us all that objection should ever be made to equally public
avowals of penitence, of submission, of faith, or of devotion to the
Saviour of the world. The General, at any rate, never wavered in
demanding the most speedy and decisive action of this kind, and he
probably led more souls to the Penitent-Form than any man who has ever
lived.
In Germany especially it has frequently been objected that the soul
which is "compelled" to take a certain course has in that very fact
manifested a debased and partly-destroyed condition, and that nothing
can excuse the organisation of methods of compulsion. With any such
theory one could not but have considerable sympathy, were it not for the
undeniable fact that almost all "civilised" people are perpetually under
the extreme pressure of society around them, which is opposed to
prayer, or to any movement of the soul in that direction.
To check and overcome that very palpable compulsion on the wrong side,
the most desperate action of God's servants in all ages has never been
found strong enough. Hence there has come about another sort of
compulsion, within the souls of all God's messengers. It could not but
be more agreeable to flesh and blood if the minds of men could more
easily be induced to turn from the things that are seen to those which
are invisible. But this has never yet been the case. Hence all who
really hear God's voice cannot but become alarmed as to the manifest
danger that His warnings may remain entirely unheeded. When once any
soul is truly enlightened, it cannot but put forth every devisable
effort to compel the attention of others.
The Army is only the complete organisation of such efforts for permanent
efficiency. We may have had to use more extreme methods than many before
us, because, unlike those who are the publicly recognised advocates of
Christ, we have, in the first instance, no regular hearers at all, and
have generally only the ear of the people so long as we can retain it,
against a hundred competitions. And yet, to those who live near enough
to notice it, the exercise of force by means of church steeples and
bells is far more violent, all the year round, than the utmost attack of
the average Corps upon some few occasions.
Who complains of the compulsion of railway servants, who by bell, flag,
and whistle, glaring announcements, or in any other way, urge desiring
passengers to get into their train, before it is too late? Wherever a
true faith in the Gospel exists, The General's organisation of
compulsory plans for the Salvation of souls will not only be approved,
but regarded as one of the great glories of his life.
The "Will you go?" of The Army, wherever its songs are heard, has ever
been more than a kindly invitation. It has been an urging to which
millions of undecided souls will for ever owe their deliverance from the
dilatory and hindering influences around them, into an earnest start
towards a heavenly life.
That is why The General taught so many millions to sing, in their varied
languages, his own song:--
O boundless Salvation! deep ocean of love,
O fulness of mercy Christ brought from above!
The whole world redeeming, so rich and so free,
Now flowing for all men--come, roll over me!
My sins they are many, their stains are so deep,
And bitter the tears of remorse that I weep;
But useless is weeping, thou great crimson sea,
Thy waters can cleanse me, come, roll over me!
My tempers are fitful, my passions are strong.
They bind my poor soul, and they force me to wrong;
Beneath thy blest billows deliverance I see,
Oh, come, mighty ocean, and roll over me!
Now tossed with temptation, then haunted with fears,
My life has been joyless and useless for years;
I feel something better most surely would be,
If once thy pure waters would roll over me.
O ocean of mercy, oft longing I've stood
On the brink of thy wonderful, life-giving flood!
Once more I have reached this soul-cleansing sea,
I will not go back till it rolls over me.
The tide is now flowing, I'm touching the wave,
I hear the loud call of "The Mighty to Save";
My faith's growing bolder--delivered I'll be--
I plunge 'neath the waters, they roll over me.
And now, Hallelujah! the rest of my days
Shall gladly be spent in promoting His praise
Who opened His bosom to pour out this sea
Of boundless Salvation for you and for me.
Chapter V
Fight Against Formality
The Army's invariable principle of avoiding even the appearance of
attacking any other association of religionists, or their ideas or
practices, renders it difficult to explain fully either why William
Booth became the regular minister of a church, or why he gave up that
position; and yet he has himself told us sufficient to demonstrate at
one stroke not only the entire absence of hostility in his mind, but the
absolute separateness of his way of thinking from that which so
generally prevails.
The enthusiastic welcome given to The General wherever he went, by the
clergy of almost every Church indicates that he had generally convinced
them that he had no thought of attacking them or their Churches, even
when he most heartily expressed his thankfulness to God for having been
able to escape from all those trammels of tradition and form which would
have made his great life-work, for all nations, impossible. And I think
there are few who would nowadays question that his life, teaching, and
example all tended greatly to modify many of the Church formalities of
the past.
"Just before leaving Lincolnshire," he says, "I had been lifted up
to a higher plane of the daily round of my beloved work than I had
experienced before. Oh, the stagnation into which I had settled
down, the contentment of my mind with the love offered me at every
turn by the people! I still aimed at the Salvation of the
unconverted and the spiritual advance of my people, and still
fought for these results. Indeed, I never fell below that. And yet
if the After-Meeting was well attended, and if one or two Penitents
responded, I was content, and satisfied myself with that hackneyed
excuse for so much unfruitful work, that I had 'sown the seed.'
Having cast my bread on the waters, I persuaded myself that I must
hope for its being found by and by.
"But I heard of a Rev. Richard Poole who was moving about the
country, and the stories told me of the results attending his
services had aroused in me memories of the years gone by, when I
thought little and cared less about the acceptability of my own
performances, so long as I could drag the people from the jaws of
Hell.
"I resolved to go and hear him. I found him at the house of a
friend before the Meeting, comparatively quiet. How I watched him!
But when I had heard him preach from the text, 'Said I not unto
thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the salvation
of God,' and had observed the blessed results, I went to my own
chamber--I remember that it was over a baker's shop--and resolved
that, regardless of man's opinions, and my own gain or position, I
would ever seek the one thing.
"Whilst kneeling in that room, there came into my soul a fresh
realisation of the greatness of the opportunity before me of
leading men and women out of their miseries and their sin, and of
my responsibility to go in for that with all my might. In obedience
to the heavenly vision, I made a consecration of the present and
future, of all I had, and hoped to have, to the fulfilment of this
mission, and I believe God accepted the offering.
"I continued my public efforts in line with my new experience."
Happily and freely as William Booth had been allowed to lead his people,
however, he and his intended wife both saw that there could be no
permanent prospect of victory amongst these "Reformers." The very
popularity of a preacher was sure to lead to contention about the sphere
of his labours.
"The people," he writes, "with whom I had come into union were
sorely unorganised, and I could not approve of the ultra-radicalism
that prevailed. Consequently, I looked about for a Church nearer my
notions of system and order, and in the one I chose, the Methodist
New Connexion, I found a people who were, in those days, all I
could desire, and who received me with as much heartiness as my
Lincolnshire friends had done.
"Ignorance has different effects on different people. Some it puffs
up with self-satisfaction. To others it is a source of mortifying
regret. I belonged to the latter class. I was continually crying
out, 'O God, how little I am, and how little I know! Give me a
chance of acquiring information, and of learning how more
successfully to conduct this all-important business of saving men
to which Thou hast called me, and which lies so near my heart.'
"To gratify this yearning for improvement, the Church with which I
had come into union gave me, at my request, an opportunity of
studying under a then rather celebrated theologian. But instead of
better qualifying me for the work of saving men, by imparting to me
the knowledge necessary for the task, and showing me in every-day
practice how to put it to practical use, I was set to study Latin,
Greek, various Sciences, and other subjects, which, as I saw at a
glance, could little help me in the all-important work that lay
before me. However, I set to work, and, with all the powers I had,
commenced to wrestle with my studies.
"My Professor was a man of beautiful disposition, and had an
imposing presence. The books he wrote on abstract and difficult
theological problems were highly prized in those days. Moreover, he
belonged to a class of preachers, not altogether unknown to-day,
who have a real love for that order of preaching which convicts and
converts the soul, although unable to practise it themselves. _He
knew a good thing when he saw it_.
"The first time he heard me preach was on a Sunday evening. I saw
him seated before me, at the end of the church. I knew he was going
to judge me, and I realised that my future standing in his
estimation, as well as my position in the Society I had now made my
home, would probably very much depend on the judgment he formed of
me on that occasion.
"I am not ashamed to say that I wanted to stand well with him. I
knew also that my simple, practical style was altogether different
from his own, and from that of the overwhelming majority of the
preachers he was accustomed to approve. But my mind was made up. I
had no idea of altering my aim or style to please him, the world,
or the Devil.
"I saw dying souls before me, the gates of Heaven wide open on the
one hand, and the gates of Hell open on the other, while I saw
Jesus Christ with His arms open between the two, crying out to all
to come and be saved. My whole soul was in favour of doing what it
could to second the invitation of my Lord, and doing it that very
night.
"I cannot now remember much about the service, except the sight of
my Professor, with his family around him, a proud, worldly daughter
sitting at his side. I can remember, however, that in my desire to
impress the people with the fact that they could have Salvation
there and then, if they would seek it, and, to illustrate their
condition, I described a wreck on the ocean, with the affrighted
people clinging to the masts between life and death, waving a flag
of distress to those on shore, and, in response, the life-boat
going off to the rescue. And then I can remember how I reminded my
hearers that they had suffered shipwreck on the ocean of time
through their sins and rebellion; that they were sinking down to
destruction, but that if they would only hoist the signal of
distress Jesus Christ would send off the life-boat to their rescue.
Then, jumping on the seat at the back of the pulpit, I waved my
pocket-handkerchief round and round my head to represent the signal
of distress I wanted them to hoist, and closed with an appeal to
those who wanted to be rescued to come at once, and in the presence
of the audience, to the front of the auditorium. That night
twenty-four knelt at the Saviour's feet, and one of them was the
proud daughter of my Professor.
"The next morning was the time for examination and criticism of the
previous day's work, and I had to appear before this Doctor of
Divinity. I entered the room with a fellow-student. He was put
through first. After listening to the Doctor's judgment on his
performance my turn came. I was not a little curious as to what his
opinion would be.
"'Well, Doctor,' I said, 'what have you to say to me? You heard me
last night. What is your judgment on my poor performance?'
"'My dear Sir,' he answered, 'I have only one thing to say to you,
and that is, go on in the way you have begun, and God will bless
you.'
"But other difficulties were not far away, for I had hardly settled
down to my studies before I got into a red-hot Revival in a small
London church where a remarkable work was done. In an account of
this effort my name appeared in the church's Magazine, and I was
invited to conduct special efforts in other parts of the country.
This, I must confess, completely upset my plans once more, and I
have not been able to find heart or time for either Greek or Latin
from that day to this."
How sincerely this curious student longed for improvement is manifested
in the following entry in his Journal, written, I presume, on a Monday
morning when it was thought that some relaxation of his studies
following a Sunday's services would be advantageous:--
"Monday.--Visited the British Museum. Walked up and down there
praying that God would enable me to acquire knowledge to increase
my power of usefulness."
Who will doubt that that Museum prayer was heard and answered?
The Church he had joined was governed by an annual assembly, called the
Conference, at which candidates for the ministry were accepted into it,
and were appointed to some sphere of labour called a Circuit. Just
before the Conference met he was astonished to hear that it was proposed
to appoint him as Superintendent of a London Circuit. He was able to
persuade the authorities concerned to alter this intention on the ground
of his comparative lack of experience, although he expressed his
willingness to take the post of assistant minister under whomsoever the
Conference might appoint as Superintendent.
In due course, the appointment was made, and he found himself assistant
to a Superintendent who, he tells us, was "stiff, hard, and cold, making
up, in part, for the want of heart and thought in his public
performances by what sounded like a sanctimonious wail."
This gentleman strongly objected when, as a result of the reports of Mr.
Booth's services appearing in the Press, he was urgently invited to
visit other places, as he had visited Guernsey. The Conference
authorities, however, prevailed, and insisted, in the general interest,
upon his place in London being taken by another preacher, and his
services being utilised wherever called for.
It was thus by no choice of his own, but by the arrangement of his
Church, that Mr. Booth, instead of remaining tied down to the ordinary
routine of pastoral life, was sent for some time from place to place to
conduct such evangelising Campaigns as his soul delighted in. Who can
doubt that God's hand was in this disposal of his time? He was allowed
to marry, though his young wife had to content herself with but
occasional brief spells of association with him.
His Campaigns were really wonderful in their success. He would go for a
fortnight, or even less, to some city where the congregation had
dwindled almost to nothing, and where one or two services a week,
conducted in a very quiet and formal way, were maintained with
difficulty, owing to the indifference or hopelessness of both minister
and people. For the period of his stay all the usual programme would be
laid aside, however, and he would be left free to carry out his own
plans of daily service.
How remarkable to find him so completely carrying with him all who had
been accustomed to the old forms, and introducing, with the evident
sanction of the president and authorities of his Church, such
re-arrangements, records, and reorganisation as he desired.
But the strange, the almost inexplicable thing is that, without his even
remarking upon it, all should go back to the old forms the moment his
Campaign ended!
What is not at all strange is that there should have grown up within the
Church a strong opposition to him, so that, at the end of two and a half
years, a majority of the Conference voted against his continuing these
Campaigns, and required him to resume the ordinary routine of the
ministry. Surely, any one might have foreseen that unless the old forms
could be altered in favour of the new régime, the leader of this warfare
must submit to the old routine. True, he might try to carry out in his
Circuit, to the utmost of his power, his ideas of free and daily
warfare; but, unless all who were under him in the various places which
constituted a Methodist Circuit would constantly agree and co-operate,
no one man could prevent the old forms from prevailing.
But William Booth was no revolutionist, and his willingness and
submission to carry on the old routine, with little alteration, for four
successive years surely proved that no desire for personal exaltation or
mastery, but only the conquest of souls, was his guiding influence.
In those four years, spent in Brighouse and Gateshead, he tried to
introduce into the churches as much as he could of the life of warfare
which he considered necessary. In one year he so far won over the
officialdom of Brighouse that they desired his reappointment; whilst in
Gateshead he so transformed the Circuit that before many weeks had
passed the Central Chapel, which had hitherto borne the dignified but
cool-sounding name of "Bethesda," was dubbed by the mechanics, who
formed the bulk of the surrounding population, "The Converting Shop."
To those iron workers, accustomed daily to see masses of metal suddenly
changed, whilst in a red-hot state, into any desired form by the action
of powerful machinery, set up for the purpose, such a name was both
intelligible and expressive.
It, moreover, accorded with the new pastor's idea of the proper
utilisation of any building devoted to the worship of Jesus Christ.
There ought to be felt there, he thought, that marvellous heat of Divine
Love which was implied in Christ's engagement to "baptise" all His
followers "with fire," and the services should above all else, be such
as would ensure the immediate conversion to God of all who came under
their influence.
But in Gateshead The General was to discover the most potent force that
could be brought to bear upon all these questions, in the liberation of
Mrs. Booth from the customary silence which Church system has almost
universally imposed upon woman. It might almost be said that the whole
problem of cold formality, as against loving warmth, can be solved by
woman's liberation. True, in the ordinary state of things, the most
excellent ladies of any church become its most conservative bulwarks;
and, fortified, as they imagine, by a few words in one of St. Paul's
Epistles, such ladies can oppose every new spiritual force as powerfully
as some of them opposed him in Antioch, nineteen hundred years ago. But
"daughters" of God who have been liberated by His Spirit generally make
short work of any continued opposition.
Mrs. Booth, herself trained and hitherto fettered by this old school of
silence, to the astonishment of every one prayed in the church on the
first Sunday evening in Gateshead. The opposition of an influential
pastor, in a neighbouring city, to the public ministrations of a Mrs.
Palmer, a visitor from the United States, very soon afterwards led Mrs.
Booth to defend her sister's action in the Press, and thus to see more
clearly than before what God could do through her, if she was willing.
The General had not yet seen the importance of this advance, and, in
view of his wife's delicate health, had not pressed her into any sort of
activity, much as he had valued her perfect fellowship with him in
private. But he rejoiced, of course, in her every forward step, and when
she not only visited a street of the most godless and drunken people in
the neighbourhood, but began to speak in the services, he gave her all
the weight of his official as well as his personal sanction, little
imagining at the time what a mighty force for the spread of the truth he
was thus enlisting.
After faithfully serving the Church in Gateshead for three years, he
found the Conference no more willing than before to release him for the
evangelistic work which now both he and his wife more and more longed
for.
The final scene, when, in a Conference at Liverpool, Mrs. Booth
confirmed The General's resolution to refuse to continue even for one
more year his submission to form, by calling out "Never!" marked a stage
in his career which was decisive in a startling way as to the whole of
his future.
"It is true that I had a wonderful sphere of usefulness and
happiness," says The General; "but I was not contented. I had many
reasons for dissatisfaction. I was cribbed, cabined, and confined
by a body of cold, hard usages, and still colder and harder people.
I desired freedom! I felt I was called to a different sphere of
labour. I wanted liberty to move forward in it. So when the
Conference definitely declined my request to set me free for
evangelistic work I bade them farewell.
"It was a heart-breaking business. Here was a great crowd of people
all over the land who loved me and my dear wife. I felt a deep
regard for them, and to leave them was a sorrow beyond description.
But I felt I must follow what appeared to be the beckoning finger
of my Lord. So, with my wife and four little children, I left my
quarters and went out into the world once more, trusting in God,
literally not knowing who would give me a shilling, or what to do
or where to go.
"All my earthly friends thought I was mistaken in this action; some
of them deemed me mad. I confess that it was one of the most
perplexing steps of my life. When I took it every avenue seemed
closed against me. There was one thing I could do, however, and
that was to trust in God, and wait for His Salvation."
The difficulty of the Church was really insurmountable at that time.
Since those days most of the Protestant Churches have learnt that
evangelistic work is just as essential as the ordinary pastoral
ministrations.
The fact is, that neither the Booths nor the Church were then aware that
God, behind all their perplexities, was working out a plan of His own.
Who laments that separation to-day? As the evangelists of any Church
they could not possibly have become to so large an extent the
evangelists of all.
Chapter VI
Revivalism
Not many days passed after William Booth's retirement from the ministry
of the Methodist New Connexion before his faith was rewarded by a warm
invitation to a small place at the other end of the country. One of his
former Converts was a minister in the little seaport Hayle, in Cornwall,
and he sent the call, "Come over and help us."
The Church had got into the stagnant condition which is so commonly
experienced wherever contentment with routine long holds sway. Mr. and
Mrs. Booth were not only welcomed, but given a free hand to take any
course they pleased to fill the building with hearers, and to secure
their Salvation.
Fighting now together, as they had learnt to do at Gateshead, they saw
results more rapid and striking than they had ever known before,
although they found themselves face to face with a population more
disinclined for novelty, and especially for the novelties they
introduced, than any they had before had to deal with. The General thus
described at the time for the Connexional Magazine some of his first
battles in Cornwall:--
"Hayle, Cornwall.
"When in London, you requested me to send now and then a report of
the Lord's working in connexion with my ministry, and thinking that
the following account of the Revival now in progress here will be
interesting to you, I forward it. We arrived here on the 10th
inst., and commenced labour on the following Sabbath. The chapel
was crowded. Gracious influences accompanied the word. Many
appeared to be deeply convicted of sin, but no decided cases of
conversion took place that day. On Monday afternoon we had a
service for Christians, and spoke on the hindrances to Christian
labour and Christian joy. Evening, chapel crowded. Very solemn
season. Nearly all the congregation stayed to the Prayer Meeting
that followed, and many appeared deeply affected, but refused to
seek the mercy of God. A strong prejudice prevails here against the
custom of inviting anxious inquirers to any particular part of the
building. The friends told me that this plan never had succeeded in
Cornwall; but I thought it the best, considering the crowded state
of the chapel, and therefore determined to try it. I gave a short
address, and again invited those who wished to decide for Christ to
come forward. After waiting a minute or two, the solemn silence was
broken by the cries of a woman who at once left her pew, and fell
down at the Mercy-Seat, and became the first-fruits of what I trust
will be a glorious harvest of immortal souls. She was quickly
followed by others, when a scene ensued beyond description. The
cries and groans were piercing in the extreme; and when the
stricken spirits apprehended Jesus as their Saviour, the shouts of
praise and thanksgiving were in proportion to the previous sorrow.
"Tuesday Evening.--Congregation again large. Prayer Meeting similar
to Monday night, and some very blessed cases of conversion.
"Wednesday.--Chapel full. Mrs. Booth spoke with much influence and
power. Glorious Prayer Meeting. An old woman who found the Saviour
jumped on her feet, and shouted, with her face beaming with
heavenly radiance, 'He's saved me! Glory to God! He's saved me, an
old sinner, sixty-three. Glory to God!' Other cases of great
interest transpired, and the people, with swimming eyes, and
glowing hearts, sang--
"'Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.'
"Thursday.--Preached from 'Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise
cast out.' Had a blessed Meeting. A woman who had herself found
Jesus during the week, pointed me to her husband. Found him fully
enlightened and deeply convicted. I urged him to immediate decision
and the full surrender of himself to God. He came out, and fell
down among the Penitents. He remained there about an hour. The
Meeting could not be concluded until near eleven o'clock, and many
were very reluctant to retire even then.
"Friday.--The first thing this morning my host informed me that he
had just heard of a mason who had been at the services every night,
and who had resolved to stop work until he found the Lord. Soon
after a young lady came in to tell us of a woman who had found
peace during the night. At the family altar this morning, a woman
in the employ of the gentleman with whom we are staying commenced
to bemoan her sinful condition and to cry for mercy. I asked her to
remain, and pointed her to Jesus, and she soon found rest through
believing. In the afternoon, met several anxious persons for prayer
and conversation. In the evening we had announced a public Prayer
Meeting. Before we reached the chapel we could hear the cries and
prayers of those already assembled. On entering, we found a strong
man praising God at the top of his voice for hearing his prayer and
pardoning his sins. It was the mason. He had been under deep
concern for three days; had not slept at all the night before, but
after a day's agony, he had found Jesus; and such tumultuous,
rapturous joy I think I never witnessed. Again and again, during
the evening, he broke out with a voice that drowned all others, and
rose above our songs of praise ascribing glory to Jesus for what He
had done for his soul. There were many other cases of almost equal
interest. The Meeting was not closed until eleven.
"About midnight, the Rev. J. Shone, the minister in charge of the
church, was called out to visit a woman who was in great distress.
He afterwards described her agony in seeking, and her joy in
finding, the Lord, together with the sympathy and exultation of her
friends with her, as one of the most thrilling scenes he ever
witnessed."
In a later report The General wrote:--
"Hayle, Cornwall.
"The work of the Lord here goes on gloriously. The services have
progressed with increasing power and success, and now the whole
neighbourhood is moved. Conversion is the topic of conversation in
all sorts of society. Every night, crowds are unable to gain
admission to the sanctuary. The oldest man in the church cannot
remember any religious movement of equal power. During the second
week, the Wesleyans opened a large room for united Prayer Meetings
at noon; since then, by their invitation, we have on several
occasions spoken in their chapels to densely crowded audiences;
services being simultaneously conducted in the chapel where the
movement originally commenced. One remarkable and gratifying
feature of the work is the large number of men who are found every
night amongst those who are anxious. Never have I seen so many men
at the same time smiting their breasts, and crying, 'God be
merciful to me a sinner,' Strong men, old men, young men, weeping
like children, broken-hearted on account of their sins. A number of
these are sailors, and scarcely a ship has gone out of this port
the last few days without taking among its crew one or more souls
newly-born for Heaven."
Can it be believed that just such victories as these led to the closing
of almost all the Churches against him?
"In these days," The General has more recently written, "it has
become almost the fashion for the Churches to hold yearly 'revival'
or 'special' services, but forty years ago they were as unanimously
opposed to anything of the kind, and compelled me to gain outside
every Church organisation the one liberty I desired--to seek and
save the lost ones, who never enter any place of worship whatever.
"Let nobody suppose that I cherish any resentment against any of
the Churches on account of their former treatment of me, or that I
have a desire to throw a stone at any of them. From any such
feelings I believe that God has most mercifully preserved me all my
life, and I rejoice in the kindness on this account with which they
load me now in every land, as testimonies to that fact.
"But I want to make it clear to readers in lands far away from
Christendom why I was driven into the formation of an Organisation
entirely outside every Christian Church in order to accomplish my
object, and why my people everywhere, whilst having no more desire
than myself to come into dispute, or even discussion, with any
Church near them, must needs act as independently of them all as I
have done, no matter how friendly they may now be to us.
"Nothing could be more charming than the present attitude towards
us of every religious community in the United States, from the
Roman Catholics, whose Archbishop has publicly commended us, to the
Mormons, who are generally regarded as enemies of all Christianity,
and the Friends (commonly called Quakers) whose ideas of worship
seem to be at the uttermost extreme from ours. All are satisfied
that I and my people are not wishful to find fault with any
religious body whatever, but to spend all our time and energy in
combating the great evils of godlessness and selfishness which
threaten to sweep away all the people everywhere from any thought
above material things.
"Yet we have had to forbid our people to accept too often the
pressing invitations that pour upon them from all sides to hold
Meetings in Church buildings, lest they should lose touch with the
masses outside, and begin to be content with audiences of admirers.
"The thirty-six years of my life whilst I was groping about in vain
for a home and fellowship amongst Churches gave me to understand,
as only experience can, what are the thoughts and feelings of the
millions in Christian lands, who not only never enter a church, but
who feel it to be inconceivable that they ever should do so.
"If this experience has been invaluable to us in Christian lands,
how much more so is it in the far vaster countries of Asia and
Africa, where our work is only as yet in its beginnings. When I
went to Japan, the entire missionary community everywhere united to
uphold me as the exemplar of true Christlike action for the good of
all men. But the leaders of all the five sects of Buddhism were no
less unanimous in their welcome to me, or in their expressions of
prayerful desire for the success of my work.
"In India and Africa I have repeatedly seen supporting me in my
indoor and outdoor demonstrations the leaders of the Hindu, Parsee,
Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish, and Mohammedan communities, who had never
met with the Christians in so friendly a way before. I cannot think
this would have been the case had I ever become settled amongst any
Christian body in this country.
"Can any one wonder then that I see in all the unpleasant
experiences of my early days the hand of God Himself, leading me by
a way that I knew not--that I could scarcely believe indeed at the
time to be His way. Why should it have been so difficult for a man,
who only wished to lead the lost ones to the great Shepherd who
seeks them all to get or to remain within any existing fold, if it
was not that there lay before me and my Soldiers conquests
infinitely greater and more important than had ever yet been made?
"Oh, with what impatience I turn from the very thought of any of
the squabbles of Christian sects when I see all around me the
millions who want to avoid any thought of their great Friend and
Father, and of the coming Judge before whom we must all, perhaps
this very day, appear."
How easily excuses, which sound most plausible, are found for every sort
of negligence in the service of God--indeed, for not serving Him at all!
"It is not my way, you see," says some one, who does not like to make
any open profession of interest in Jesus Christ, as though our own
preferences or opinions were to be the governing consideration in all
that affects the interests of "our Lord"!
The General has proved that the old ideas connected with "the Master"
can not only be revived but acted up to in our day, and the sense of
shame for idle excuses drive out all the paltry pleas set up for
indifference to the general ruin.
"At this season, nothing can be done" is as coolly pleaded to-day as if
"in season, out of season" had never been written in our Divine
Order-Book.
How often our forces in the midst of fairs, and race-days, and "slack
times," have demonstrated that real soldiers of Christ can snatch
victory, just when all around seems to ensure their defeat!
When The General began to form his Army, it was ordinarily assumed as a
settled principle that Open-Air Work could only be done in fine weather,
and the theory is still existent in many quarters. As if the comfort and
convenience of "the workers," and not the danger and misery of the
people, were to fix the times of such effort!
"But the people will not come," is even now pleaded as an excuse for the
omission or abandonment of any imaginable attempt to do good. As if the
people's general disinclination for anything that has to do with God
were not the precise reason for His wish to "send out" His servants!
"Such a plan would never succeed here," is an almost invariable excuse
made for not undertaking anything new. The General was never blind to
differences between this and that locality and population. But he
insisted that no plan that could be devised by those on any given spot,
and especially no plan that has manifestly been blessed and used by God
elsewhere should be dismissed without proper, earnest trial.
"But that has never been done, or has never done well here," seemed to
him rather a reason for trying it with, perhaps, some little
modification than for leaving a plan untried. The inexorable law to
which he insisted that everything should bend was that nothing can
excuse inactivity and want of enterprise where souls are perishing. And
he was spared to see even Governments beginning to recognise that it is
inexcusable to let sin triumph in "a Christian country." He proved that
it was possible to raise up "Christian Soldiers," who would not only
sing, or hear singing, in beautiful melody about "Marching, onward as to
War"; but who would really do it, even when, it led to real battle.
Chapter VII
East London Beginning
What were Mr. and Mrs. Booth to do? They were excluded from most of the
Churches in which during the last twenty years they had led so many
souls to Christ. They found themselves out of harmony with most of the
undenominational evangelists of the day, and, moreover, they had
experienced throughout even the brightest of their past years a gnawing
dissatisfaction with much of their work, which The General thus
described in the preface to his book, _In Darkest England, and the Way
Out_:--
"All the way through my career I have keenly felt the remedial
measures usually enumerated in Christian programmes, and ordinarily
employed by Christian philanthropy, to be lamentably inadequate for
any effectual dealing with the despairing miseries of the outcast
classes. The rescued are appallingly few, a ghastly minority
compared with the multitudes who struggle and sink in the
open-mouthed abyss. Alike, therefore, my humanity and my
Christianity, if I may speak of them as in any way separate from
each other, have cried out for some comprehensive method of
reaching and saving the perishing crowds."
The Booths had settled in a London home, finding that they must needs
have some fixed resting-place for their children, and that abundant
opportunities of one kind or another could be found for them both in the
metropolis. But The General, who was "waiting upon God, and wondering
what would happen" to open his way to the unchurched masses, received an
invitation to undertake some services in a tent which had been erected
in an old burial-ground in Whitechapel, the expected missioner having
fallen ill! He consented, and he thus describes his experiences:--
"When I saw those masses of poor people, so many of them evidently
without God or hope in the world, and found that they so readily
and eagerly listened to me, following from Open-Air Meeting to
tent, and accepting, in many instances, my invitation to kneel at
the Saviour's feet there and then, my whole heart went out to them.
I walked back to our West-End home and said to my wife:--
"'O Kate, I have found my destiny! These are the people for whose
Salvation I have been longing all these years. 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
there and then in my soul I offered myself and you and the children
up to this great work. Those people shall be our people, and they
shall have our God for their God.'"
Mrs. Booth herself wrote:--
"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
departure, another start in life!' The question of our support
constituted a serious difficulty. Hitherto we had been able to meet
our expenses out of the collections which we had made from our more
respectable audiences. But it was impossible to suppose that we
could do so among the poverty-stricken East-Enders--we were afraid
even to ask for a collection in such a locality.
"Nevertheless, I did not answer discouragingly. After a momentary
pause for thought and prayer, I replied, 'Well, if you feel you
ought to stay, stay. We have trusted the Lord _once_ for our
support, and we can trust Him _again_!'"
"That night," says The General, "The Salvation Army was born."
Before long God moved the heart of one of the most benevolent men in
England, Mr. Samuel Morley, to promise them his influence and support
without any condition but the continuance of the work thus begun. But no
amount of monetary help could have placed The General in a position to
establish anything like the permanent work he desired. He writes:--
"I had hardly got successfully started on this new path before my
old experience of difficulty met me once more. On the third Sunday
morning, I think it was, we found the old tent which formed our
cathedral, blown down, and so damaged by the fall, as well as so
rotten, that it could not be put up again. Another tent was
impossible, as we had no money to buy one; so, as no suitable
building could be obtained, there was nothing for it but for us to
do our best out of doors.
"After a time we secured an old dancing-room for Sunday Meetings.
But, there being no seats in it, our Converts had to come at 4
o'clock on Sunday morning to bring the benches in, and work till
midnight, or later still, when the day's Meetings were over, to
move them out again. For our week-night Meetings we had hired an
old shed, formerly used to store rags in, and there we fought for
months."
What a testimony to the character of the work already accomplished, and
the readiness of the little force already raised to toil like pioneer
soldiers for the love of Christ!
Most of the Converts of those days "had been forgiven much." The
following letter from one of them may give some idea both of the nature
of the work done, and the surrounding circumstances:--
"Dear Sir,--I have reason to bless the hour that God put the
thought into your head to open the Mission at the East-End of
London, for it has been the means of making me and my family happy
in the love of Christ; it has turned me from a drunkard,
blasphemer, and liar, to a true believing Christian. At the age of
thirteen, I went as a waiter-boy in a public-house, where I
remained until I was sixteen. Here I learned to love the flavour of
drink, and I never lost it until I was converted to God, through
the blessed words spoken in the open air. When I look back, and
think how I have beaten my poor wife--it was through the drink--it
makes me ashamed of myself. It was the word and the blow, but
sometimes the blow first. After I got sober, sometimes it would
make me ashamed to look at her black eyes; but I do thank God there
is no fear of black eyes now; for we are very happy together.
"I am a stoker and engine-driver, and I wonder I have never had an
explosion, for I have been drunk for a week at a time. On one
occasion, I had been drunk overnight, and was not very sober in the
morning. I went to work at half-past five, instead of five, and,
without looking to see if there was any water in the boiler, I
began stoking the fire up. The fright sobered me. It cost above
£100 before it was fit for work again. But that did not alter me,
only for the worse. I broke up my home. I got worse, after that,
and cared for nothing. Half my wages went in drink, my wife was
afraid to speak to me, and the poor children would get anywhere out
of my way. Afterwards I was discharged; but although I soon got
another job, I could not leave off the drink. I was reckoned a
regular drunkard. I lost place after place, and was out of work
several weeks at a time; for they did not care to employ a
drunkard. Still, I would have beer somehow, I did not care how. I
have given one and sixpence for the loan of a shilling, and though
there was not a bit of bread at home, the shilling went in beer.
"I have often had the police called in for ill-using my wife. On
one occasion she ran down to her mother's, with her face bleeding;
but I went to bed. When I woke, I saw she was not there, so I went
out and got drunk. I came home and got a large carving-knife, put
it up my sleeve, and went down to her mother's, with the intention
of killing her; but they saw the knife. The police were called in,
and I was taken to Spitalfields Station. But no one coming to press
the charge, I got off.
"Eight years ago God thought fit to lay me on a bed of sickness for
thirteen weeks, and I was given up by all the doctors. When I got
better, people thought I would alter my life, and become a steady
man; but no, I was as bad as ever. While I was at work, another
time, drunk, I lost one of my eyes by an accident; but even that
did not make me a sober man, nor make me leave off swearing and
cursing. I was generally drunk two or three times on Sundays. The
Sunday that I was convinced I was a sinner I had been drunk twice.
"I did not think there was so much happiness for me; but I do thank
God for what He has done for me. He has changed my heart, He has
filled me full of the love of Christ; and my greatest desire is to
tell sinners what a dear Saviour I have found."
Best of all was the demonstration that, out of such material, God was
able and ready to raise up a fighting force.
One great difficulty of those days was the obtaining of suitable
buildings. For a time a theatre was hired for Sunday Meetings (the law
in England then not allowing theatres to give performances on Sundays).
The great buildings to which the people have been accustomed to go for
amusement have always proved admirably suited for the gathering of
congregations of that sort. A gentleman who had had long experience in
mission work thus describes what he saw when he went to spend a "Sunday
afternoon with William Booth":--
"On the afternoon of Sunday, January 31st, I was able to see some
of the results of William Booth's work in the East of London, by
attending his Experience Meeting, held in the East London Theatre.
About 2 o'clock some of his helpers and Converts went out from the
Mission Hall, where they had been praying together, and held an
Open-Air Meeting in front of a large brewery opposite the Hall. The
ground was damp and the wind high, but they secured an audience,
and then sang hymns along the road, till they came to the theatre,
taking in any who chose to follow them. Probably about five hundred
were present, though many came in late.
"The Meeting commenced at three, and lasted one hour and a half.
During this period fifty-three persons gave their experience, parts
of eight hymns were sung, and prayer was offered by four persons.
After singing Philip Philips' beautiful hymn, 'I will sing for
Jesus,' prayer was offered up by Mr. Booth and two others.