The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army. George S. Railton
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.
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