The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men"Carpenter, Minnie Lindsay Rowell
Religion
The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men"
Carpenter, Minnie Lindsay Rowell
Lee, Kate; Salvation Army
'She got me the job I've been in this fourteen years,' says an
ex-drunkard. 'I had worked my way along after I was saved; then I heard of
a good job becoming vacant, and I asked her if she would mind saying a word
for me. She was up and away before breakfast next morning, interviewed
the manager, and got me the job. Like a mother she said, with her nice
smile, "Now, don't you let me down!" And I haven't.'
Kate Lee oozed motherliness-that love that is capable, wise, patient,
tender-the love that never fails!
One of the sweetest fruits in her spiritual children is that after she
had left them they continued to perform the services she loved. One man,
saved from nameless sins, slow to speech, and clouded in intellect, would
spend his money on Testaments, and 'War Crys,' and walk miles to visit
gipsy camps to read and pray with these wanderers, and other isolated
people. He knew that 'mother,' as this middle-aged man always called the
Adjutant, would be pleased.
When Kate Lee received farewell orders from a corps, she suffered as a
mother does in leaving her family. Her eyes hungered as they rested upon
the men and women whom, with great travail of spirit, she had brought
into the Kingdom of Grace. She had striven to teach them the ways of
life, but they were not strong, and temptations were many. Laying hold of
godly comrades of the corps, she would plead with them to continue to
care for these children in the Lord, after she had left them.
And her heart often wandered back. She knew that no voice sounded to them
just as hers did. There were, perhaps, thirty or forty trophies of grace,
who now and again received a letter of encouragement in her swift,
legible handwriting. Just a few words fresh as the dew, bright as the
sunshine, with her voice ringing in them, pointing these souls, uplifted
from the depths, to God, and holding them up to the standards she had
raised.
When, during the war, the men of England were scattered over the world's
battlefields, no mother suffered more anxiety for her sons than did Kate
Lee for her sons in the Gospel. Separated, as many of them were, from
Army meetings and helpful influences, and surrounded by sin and
temptation, her letters came like angel messages. No one knows how many
she kept in touch with, but from unlikely sources up and down the
country, one hears, 'she was the only one who wrote to me.'
For the 'Twice Born Men' she felt a special solicitude. To the 'Criminal'
at the front in France, she wrote every week, sending him 'The War Cry,'
and occasionally a parcel. An early one contained an Army jersey. 'Wear
it, Joe, and always live up to it,' she had written. He wore it till it
dropped to pieces, and then cut out the crest and brought it home. One
can understand how her thoughtful love helped that trophy of grace, when,
coming half-frozen out of the trenches, he refused the hot tea he craved
for, because it contained rum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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