Booth, Catherine Mumford, 1829-1890; Salvation Army -- Great Britain -- Biography
Another and constant hindrance which our Army Mother had to fight for the
greater part of her life was poverty. It was so difficult, many times, to
make two ends meet. She had, during many years of her life, no regular
money coming in on which to depend, and during that time it was a
constant struggle to have her children properly cared for and give them
the needed education.
But most of all did our Army Mother show herself a warrior in her own
Salvation campaigns. In those early days there were no praying Soldiers
and Sergeants to be had to deal with the penitents--no one, either, to
lead her singing, scarcely even to keep the doors or take up the
collection. She would arrive in a town absolutely alone. A hall had been
taken in which she was to speak, and she would hire a tiny lodging, or
stay in whatever home would receive her, and set to work. We can scarcely
understand the loneliness of her position. Here was a proof of her mighty
faith in God.
She began these solitary campaigns when her sixth child was but a few
weeks old, and God most wonderfully owned her labours. At one place she
saw one hundred grown-up people and two hundred children come to her
penitent-form in six days. But it was a fearful battle.
'I have a comfortable little cot to stay in,' she writes to her mother
from one such battle-field, 'very small and humble; but it is clean and
quiet; and when I feel nervous no one knows the value of quietness. I
have felt it hard work lately. Many a time have I longed to be where the
weary are at rest.'
At Margate, some years later, she commenced her Meetings without knowing
a single person in the place. For some weeks she had not even a helper in
the Prayer Meetings, nor one who would give out a song for her. Mrs.
Booth could not sing herself, and there was often an awkward pause before
any one would be willing to pitch her tune. 'If only,' she said when The
Army was fairly on its feet, 'I had been able to command a dozen reliable
people such as I could have anywhere now, I think I could have done
almost anything.'
Even more wonderful was her experience at Brighton.
The Dome, a great building holding three thousand people, had been taken
for her Meetings.
'I can never forget my feelings,' says this Soldier-saint, 'as I stood
upon the platform and looked upon the people, realizing that among them
all there was no one to help me. When I commenced the Prayer Meeting, for
which I should think quite nine hundred remained, Satan said to me, as I
came down from the platform according to my custom, "You will never ask
such people as these to come and kneel down here? You will only make a
fool of yourself if you do." I felt stunned for a moment; but I answered,
"Yes, I shall. I shall not make it any easier for them than for the
others. If they do not realize their sins enough to be willing to come
and kneel here, they will not be of much use to the kingdom."'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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