The Maréchale (Catherine Booth-Clibborn)Strahan, James
Religion
The Maréchale (Catherine Booth-Clibborn)
Strahan, James
Booth-Clibborn, Catherine, 1860-1955
But the sense of duty may become morbid if it is not transmuted by love.
Many servants of God never learn the secret which makes Christ’s yoke
easy and His burden light. They have to confess to themselves that they
cannot say, "To do Thy will, O Lord, I take delight." It would have
been strange if any of the Booth children had not learned the secret.
Catherine discovered it early, learned it thoroughly, and it became in
after years one of the hidden sources of her power. As a child she
lived in union with Christ; she practised and felt the Real Presence;
she understood that Christianity is a Divine Service transfigured by a
Divine Friendship. In Victoria Park there was a shady alley where she
was in the habit of walking, because Some One walked beside her! In
Clifton, where she lived for a time, she had a tiny upper room in which
she felt that she was never alone! That was her childhood’s religion,
which she never needed to change. She found it to be utterly
independent of time and place, form and ceremony. In the glare of
public life, in the storm of persecution, in the hour of temptation and
danger, she had always a cathedral into which she could retire that she
might find peace. She was spiritually akin with the Hebrew mystics who
lived in the secret place of the Most High, who had at all times a
pavilion from the strife of tongues. In her Neuchâtel prison she wrote
some simple words which sent a thrill through the heart of Christian
Europe:
Best Beloved of my soul,
I am here alone with Thee;
And my prison is a heaven,
Since Thou sharest it with me.
*CHAPTER II*
*A GIRL EVANGELIST*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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