The Lord set His seal upon Mrs. Booth's faith and courage, for the first to volunteer were two old gentlemen, both over seventy years of age; and she had ten or twelve at the mercy-seat before the Meeting ended. Writing from Portsmouth, she tells the same story of loneliness and victory:-- 'You say, "How do you get on personally?" Oh, I never was so hampered for help in every way in all my life! The most able man I have keeps a milliner's shop, and the one that opens for me generally is an overseer; so their attention is divided and the time limited. Pray for me. I never needed your prayers so much. This is a dreadfully wicked place.' Yet during the seventeen weeks of her stay some six hundred names were taken, many of them wonderful trophies of God's mercy. Having lived such a warrior's life, you think, very likely, that the death-bed experience of our Army Mother would be all peace and glory. But no. Right down into the Valley she needed to use the Sword of the Spirit and the Shield of Faith, for to the last Satan was allowed to test and try her. But she fought on! 'One of my hardest lessons,' she said in her last hours, 'has been the difference between faith and realization; and if I have had to conquer all through life by naked faith, I can only expect it to be the same now. All our enemies have to be conquered by _faith_, not realization; and is it not so with the last enemy, death? Yes, if it please the Lord that I should go down into the dark valley without any realization, simply knowing that I am His, and He is mine, I am quite willing--I accept it.' This is the faith that made our Army Mother and all the Bible saints such conquerors. It is the secret of their victory--the faith without which it is impossible to please God, and for which we all need to pray, 'Lord, increase our faith.' XI LAST DAYS 'As I look back on life I do not remember the houses I have lived in, the people that I have known, the things of passing interest at the moment. They are all gone. There is nothing stands out before my mind as of any consequence, but the work I have done for God and Eternity.'--MRS. BOOTH. If The General and those who loved our Army Mother best had been able to choose for her, they would most likely have said: 'Let her live and fight and work on, up to within a few days of her promotion to Glory. Let the call come quickly and painlessly, as it has come to others in our ranks.' But the Lord, who loved her more than we did, saw fit to send to her two and a half years of ever-increasing weariness and suffering. For long months she lay on the very bank of the River, longing for the messenger of Death to carry her across. Those who loved her could not tell why the Lord sent her this last fiery trial; they could only bow with her, and say, 'Thy will be done.'