Booth, Catherine Mumford, 1829-1890; Salvation Army -- Great Britain -- Biography
'I see more than ever that the religion which is pleasing to God consists
in doing and enduring His will, rather than in good sentiments and
feelings. The Lord help us to endure as seeing Him who is
invisible.'--MRS. BOOTH.
When our first General stood on that October evening by the grave of his
beloved wife, and spoke to us with a breaking heart of our Army Mother,
he unfolded to us the three great qualities which made her character so
beautiful. First, and foremost, she was good; secondly, she was love;
and, thirdly, she was a Warrior. Let us, following The General's outline,
look at these three leading qualities in her life. 'First,' he said, 'she
was _good_. She was washed in the Blood of the Lamb. To the last
moment her cry was "a sinner saved by grace." She was a thorough hater of
shams, hypocrisies, and make-believes. Her goodness was of a practical
sort. "By their fruits ye shall know them" was a text she often quoted,
and one by which she was always willing to be judged.'
It is of this 'goodness of a practical sort' that I want first to tell
you, before we consider that soul goodness which made her life so holy.
Mrs. Booth could not imagine any goodness apart from industry. As we have
already seen, she considered it a sin to waste precious time. Any one who
was lazy she could not endure, and when one such offered for the work she
wrote of him:--
'I do hope you will not throw a lot of money away in trying H------, just
for want of courage to tell him at once that he will not do, because I am
sure that it will be thrown away. It is the _nature_ of the man that
is at fault, and not his _circumstances_. He is a _drone_, and
nothing, no change of place or position, can ever make him into a bee. He
never ought to have left his trade; he never _would_ have done so if
he had thought soul-saving was harder work!'
Extravagance and waste of every kind she abhorred, and had she not been
so careful in planning and arranging, her time and money would again and
again have run short. The sewing, mending, and housekeeping needed for a
family of little children when means are scarce would have been burden
enough for most mothers. But besides this came her own letter-writing,
preparing for her Meetings, and also the hours she spent consulting and
advising The General, whose voice, 'Here, Kate,' would call her from the
nursery or kitchen to help him decide some important question.
Again, it was impossible to talk to Mrs. Booth, even for five minutes,
without finding how true and sincere she was. To please no one would she
keep back the truth, or appear different from her real self.
'I believe,' she writes, when quite a young woman, 'honesty to be the
best policy, and I shall act upon it. Let me have truth, if it shakes the
foundation of the earth.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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