The War Romance of the Salvation ArmyHill, Grace Livingston
History
The War Romance of the Salvation Army
Hill, Grace Livingston
World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Salvation Army
The written pages on her desk loudly demanded attention and the
Commander tried to bring her thoughts back to them once more, but again
and again the call sounded in her heart.
She lifted her eyes to the wall across the room from her desk where
hung the life-like portrait of her Christian-Warrior father, the grand
old keen-eyed, wise-hearted General, founder of the movement. Like her
father she knew they must go. There was no question about it. No
hindrance should stop them. They must go! The warrior blood ran in her
veins. In this the world’s greatest calamity they must fulfill the
mission for which he lived and died.
“Go!” Those pictured eyes seemed to speak to her, just as they used to
command her when he was here: “You must go and bear the standard of the
Cross to the front. Those boys are going over there, many of them to
die, and some are telling them that if they make the supreme sacrifice
in this their country’s hour of need it will be all right with them
when they go into the world beyond. But when they get over there under
shell fire they will know that it is not so, and they will need Christ,
the only atonement for sin. You must go and take the Christ to them.”
Then the Commander bowed her head, accepting the commission; and there
in the quiet room perhaps the Master Himself stood beside her and gave
her his charge—just as she would later charge those whom she would send
across the water—telling her that He was depending upon the Salvation
Army to bear His standard to the war.
Perhaps it was at this same high conference with her Lord that she
settled it in her heart that Lieutenant-Colonel William S. Barker was
to be the pioneer to blaze the way for the work in France.
However that may be he was an out-and-out Salvationist, of long and
varied experience. He was chosen equally for his proved consecration to
service, for his unselfishness, for his exceptional and remarkable
natural courage by which he was afraid of nothing, and for his
unwavering persistence in plans once made in spite of all difficulties.
The Commander once said of him: “If you want to see him at his best you
must put him face to face with a stone wall and tell him he must get on
the other side of it. No matter what the cost or toil, whether hated or
loved, he would get there!”
Thus carefully, prayerfully, were each one of the other workers
selected; each new selection born from the struggle of her soul in
prayer to God that there might be no mistakes, no unwise choices, no
messengers sent forth who went for their own ends and not for the glory
of God. Here lies the secret which makes the world wonder to-day why
the Salvation Army workers are called “the real thing” by the soldiers.
They were hand-picked by their leader on the mount, face to face with
God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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