The Authoritative Life of General William Booth Part 23

Her own devotion to the War, from her very childhood, had always been such as to set an example to all who knew her. As head, for ten years, of our Training Home for women Officers, she did more than can ever be known to ensure the purity and excellence of The Army's leaders, so that it may be easily guessed how much her father valued her.

As joint leader with her husband of our forces in India, and afterwards in the United States, she never spared herself, but, in spite of repeated illnesses, and without, in any way, neglecting her duties as mother of six children, she travelled and laboured incessantly.

Starting out at one o'clock in the morning of October 28th, from Colorado, to ride to Chicago, she managed to make a rush-call, between trains, in Kansas City, to view a new building The Army was about to take as an Industrial Home. Throughout most of the two days' journey, she was in conversation with one or another Officer as to coming extension of the work until, finding that Colonel Addie, whose Province she last pa.s.sed, had composed a new song, she asked him to sing it over to her, and to repeat three times the last verse, which was as follows:--

Time and place will cease to know you, Men and things will pa.s.s away; You'll be moving on to-morrow, You are only here to-day.

Little did either of them imagine how terribly the words were to be verified within four hours of their being sung.

Just as she was leaving her place in one carriage, to go to the sleeping berth prepared for her in another, a tremendous crash announced to all the pa.s.sengers that the car through which she and one of our Officers were pa.s.sing had left the rails and been destroyed. Both were buried in the debris. The Colonel (Holland) survived, but Mrs. Booth-Tucker, after lingering in unconsciousness a couple of hours, pa.s.sed away.

What a blow for The General! He wrote at the end of the year: "This has been, is, and will be, to the end of my earthly chapter, a mysterious and painful dispensation--at least, so it appears at the moment. What G.o.d may do for me in the future, and how He may make it work for my good does not at present appear. But He is able to make it mightily helpful to His glory, and the Salvation of souls. With this prospect, G.o.d forbid, then, that I should be other than content--nay, filled with praise. I am at present strangely supported and cheered; and not strangely either, for is it not what might have been expected, with so many loving prayers going up to Heaven on my account hour by hour."

Remembering that he had lost not only the most tenderly beloved one left to him, but an Officer holding one of the most important posts he had to fill, we can somewhat estimate the grace that could thus sustain him, and make it possible, even then, to go gladly forward!

Yet again he was to drink the bitter cup of family bereavement, this time affecting his youngest daughter, who had married Commissioner h.e.l.lberg, already mentioned as one of our first Swedish Officers.

Not only had he kept all the promise of his first brave and st.u.r.dy stand for The Army as a student, but, gaining by every year's experience in various lands, he had shown remarkable ability in many spheres.

With his no less able and devoted wife, he had laboured in India, at International Headquarters, in France and in Switzerland, when consumption, alas! showed itself, and, in spite of all that could be done for him, during years of suffering, in Algiers, and in various resorts of health-seekers, he steadily sank. Though, of course, death had long threatened him, he was caught suddenly at the last, and died in Berlin on the journey homewards to Sweden from South Germany, at a time when his wife could not be with him.

It will be readily understood how much more trying this was to The General than if he had been near to comfort his daughter in all her sorrow. And yet this blow, falling upon him when he was seventy-nine years old, found him no less resolute than ever. He sent this widowed mother out into Denmark, where she was a stranger, to persevere in the fight. She had showed herself, like her father; able to plead at the very grave-side with the crowd, for G.o.d.

In connexion with the loss of Mrs. Booth we began a system of special Memorial Services which have been wonderfully blessed. The first one, held on the first anniversary of her death, in the Agricultural Hall--one of the largest buildings in London, was altogether too large for any speaking to be heard. The plan was adopted, therefore, as at the funeral, of a complete form of service, each point of which was indicated on the programme, and by large illuminated signs. By this means the audience, of some 15,000, was able closely and unitedly to join in all the songs and prayers, whilst scenes from Mrs. Booth's life, and messages taken from her writings and from The General's, were also on the great lantern screen pa.s.sed on to them. Thousands of the most careless and thoughtless were present; but there was no break in the solemnity of the service. Hundreds went as requested, from the Meeting to a room in the stables, to volunteer for life-service as Officers.

What it cost The General to be present on this, and, since then, on similar occasions, specially after his daughter's death, may be imagined; but he never hesitated to endure this, for the sake of the many souls such services have invariably aroused to repentance, faith, and self-sacrifice for the War. Writing, in 1905, to a friend, he says:--

"Were you at the Memorial Service? That was a trying ordeal for me, but I hear that many were benefited. It seems selfish to ask for so many intercessions; but I cannot get on without them. (In all our Memorial Services all present are asked to unite in prayer for the bereaved ones.) The mere fact of my knowing that so large a number of the very elect of the Kingdom are pleading for power and love on my account, helps me forward. G.o.d bless and keep and comfort you every day and every hour."

Undoubtedly, these services, whilst blessed to all present, have also served to provoke much prayer and faith for all our bereaved ones, and for The General most of all, and have thus made it easier for him, and for all of us, to triumph over personal sorrows and losses, and press forward to ever-increasing victory.

That The General's example of burying his own sorrows in redoubled effort to cheer and help others has been followed everywhere, may count as large compensation for all he has lost. And yet, all who knew him best, have seen that the wound caused by Mrs. Booth's loss was never healed. With the badge of bereavement, which we have subst.i.tuted for any costly mourning, ever upon his left arm, just as it was twenty years ago, our first General went onward to the great re-union above, "as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing," his sadness ever touching as many hearts as his merry remarks aroused.

Curiously enough, The General, whilst anxious at all times to remind every one of death and judgment, and to prevent their being so intoxicated by pleasure and pa.s.sing trivialities as to prevent their thinking of their souls and of eternity, abolished, so far as his followers were concerned, the horrible formalities which, in all countries have come to be thought necessary whenever death and the grave come into view.

Nothing could be more opposed to everything taught by Christ than the usual processes of "Christian burial," and the records of "the departed." He who "brought life and immortality to light" through His Gospel could not wish to see His people's graves surrounded exclusively by signs of mourning, and then plastered over with flattering records of earthly glory, making, as a rule, no mention of His Salvation, and the eternal glories it a.s.sures. He manifested, indeed, and always shows the deepest sympathy with our sorrows; but He does so most by teaching us to make them steps to higher life and joy.

This great purpose The General aimed at in all his arrangements as to burials, and thus alleviated sadness, and turned death into victory to a very remarkable extent. No widow or orphan under his Flag will add to all the inevitable costs of nursing the dying those of fas.h.i.+onable "mourning," clothing, flowers, or monuments. The cross and crown badge worn on the left arm by himself and his bereaved ones, sometimes for years, whilst providing a most touching token of abiding affection for lost friends, is, at the same time, a special declaration of faith and hope, and yet obviates entirely the need for any peculiar dress "for the occasion."

Every funeral thus becomes a very valuable opportunity for comforting and strengthening the mourners, and for urging the unsaved to ensure an eternal triumph. It would not be easy to compute the total of crowds thus brought under the sound of the Gospel, in connexion with our losses, every year.

Thus all these occasions for sadness have been turned into fountains of joy, not merely to those most immediately concerned, but to the whole community. We have not yet had time or opportunity, thank G.o.d!

sufficiently to redeem the grave and the cemetery from the scandal of men-praising expenditure, for any sort of tombstone has generally been too costly for our people. But the small, simple edge-stone which marks the resting-place of "Catherine Booth, Mother of The Salvation Army,"

and which asks every pa.s.ser-by, "Do you also follow Christ?" has set an example, consistent with all our past and our eternal future.

Surely, the day will come when our General's teaching and practice in this matter will help to lighten the burden of every bereaved family, and make every cemetery the birthplace of crowds of souls. The music and song with which we surround every deathbed and funeral, still too much tinged sometimes with the follies of traditional show, have already been used by G.o.d's Spirit to bring life and gladness to many a spiritually dead soul.

Chapter XX

His Social Work

Most erroneously and unfairly it has been widely a.s.sumed that the great work of The General was the establishment in the world of some Social Inst.i.tutions. Happily, we have got a verbatim report of an address to his Social Officers gathered around him a year before his death in which we have a complete statement as to the beginnings and principles of the work, so that we can see exactly how he wished it to be regarded.

1. By the Social Work, I mean those operations of The Salvation Army which have to do with the alleviation, or removal, of the moral and temporal evils which cause so much of the misery of the submerged cla.s.ses, and which so greatly hinder their Salvation.

2. Our Social Operations, as thus defined, are the natural outcome of Salvationism, or, I might say, of Christianity, as inst.i.tuted, described, proclaimed, and exemplified in the life, teaching, and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Here I would like to say that Social Work, in the spirit and practice which it has a.s.sumed with us, has harmonised with my own personal idea of true religion from the hour I promised obedience to the commands of G.o.d.

To help the poor, to minister to them in their slums, to sympathise with them in their poverty, afflictions, and irreligion, was the natural outcome of the life that came to my soul through believing in Jesus Christ.

Before many days--nay, before many hours--had pa.s.sed after my conversion, I was to be found praying in the cottages in the working-cla.s.s quarters of the town in which I lived, talking in the slums, comforting the dying, and doing, so far as I knew how and had ability, what seemed to me most likely to help the poor and miserable cla.s.ses, both for this world and the world to come.

3. But Social Work, as a separate ent.i.ty, or department of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, recognised, organised, and provided for, had to wait for The Salvation Army.

For many years after the commencement of my public work, during which time I had, as opportunity served, helped the poor in their distress, I was deterred from launching out to any great extent in this direction by the fear so commonly entertained that by relieving their physical necessities I should be helping to create, or at any rate to encourage, religious hypocrisy and pretence.

All this time, nevertheless, I felt, and often keenly felt, that there surely must be some way by which, without any evil consequences, I could legitimately fulfil the cravings of my own heart, as well as comply with the commands of my Lord, who had expressly told me that I was to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the prisoners. For a long time, however, I failed to see how this work could be done in any organised or extensive manner.

Gradually, however, the way opened, and opened largely, as a result of our determination to make the G.o.dless crowds hear the message of Salvation.

I said, "They shall hear; we will make them hear; and if they won't hear in any other way, we will feed them, and accompany the food we give them with the message to which they so determinedly turn a deaf ear." In the very earliest days of The Army, therefore, in order to reach the people whom we could not reach by any other means, we gave the hungry wretches a meal, and then talked to them about G.o.d and eternity.

4. Then came the gradual unfolding of our Social methods, which have been so remarkably successful.

My dear wife's heart had been particularly drawn out on behalf of the fallen outcasts of society, who, often more sinned against than sinning, appealed peculiarly to her large and tender sympathies.

More than once she found opportunity for extending help to individual cases of misfortune, obtaining homes amongst her friends for some of the children, and a.s.sisting the poor mothers to win their way back to virtue.

But it was not until the end of 1883, or thereabouts, that anything like a systematic effort in this direction was organised on their behalf. Touched by the helpless and pitiable condition of some poor girls who had sought Salvation at the Corps at which, with her husband, she fought as a Soldier, a baker's wife, living in one of the most wretched streets in Spitalfields, took the girls, in distress and trouble, into her own home. Before long it was crowded to its utmost capacity, and still other women were clamouring for admission. She implored us to help her, and we engaged and opened a house as our first Rescue Home, placing it under the direction of Mrs. Bramwell Booth.

The breaking forth of the same spirit in different directions in other lands quickly followed.

At about this time our first Prison Rescue Brigade, in the Colony of Victoria, was organised by the late Colonel Barker. So striking was the success attending his effort that, before many months had pa.s.sed by, magistrates in the city of Melbourne were actually giving delinquents the option of being sent to prison or to our Prison-Gate Home, and the Government placed the former Detective Police Building at our disposal, at a nominal rental.

Not only does the genuine Christian spirit carry the soul out in sympathy with misery, but it often leads it to prefer certain particular cla.s.ses of sufferers or wrongdoers, on whom to lavish its self-sacrificing love, and restlessly spend itself in efforts for their benefit. In the case of one Salvationist, it will be the dying; in another the daughters of sin and shame; in another the homeless; in another the children, and in yet another the drunkards.

With Colonel Barker, as with other comrades under our Flag to-day, it was the criminals.

This spirit thrives and becomes more effective by what it feeds upon. It must, therefore, be wise to favour its preferences, so far as it is possible to do so without losing sight of the well-being of the whole.

We did this with Colonel Barker, and we are acting on the same principle with others to-day.

Then came our first Women's Rescue Home in Melbourne, to help us in the establishment of which the Colonial Government gave 1,000.