The Authoritative Life of General William Booth Part 3

Chapter IV

Early Ministry

We cannot wonder that G.o.d Himself rarely seems to find it wise, even if it be possible, to fit men for His most important enterprises in a few years, or by means of one simple process of instruction. Consider the diversity of men's minds and lives, and the varying currents of thought and opinion which are found in the various parts of the world at different periods of even one century, and it will at once be seen how impossible we should all immediately p.r.o.nounce it to fit one man by means of one pathway of service to be the minister and leader of the followers of Christ in every part of the world.

Christ Himself was kept in an obscurity we cannot penetrate for thirty years before He was made known to the comparatively small people amongst whom all His time on earth was to be spent. Moses was not called till he was eighty years old, having spent forty years amidst the splendours of one of the grandest courts of the ancient world, and forty more amidst the sheep on a desert border!

How was the ardent English lad who came to serve in a London shop during the week, and to do the work of a lay preacher on Sundays, to be fitted to form and lead a great Christian Order of devotees out of every nation, and to instruct and direct them in helping their fellow-men of every race in every necessity that could arise? To prepare a man merely to preach the Gospel a few years of service in that work might suffice; but then we should probably have seen a man merely interested in the numbers of his own audiences and the effect produced upon them by his own preaching.

For William Booth a much more tedious and roundabout journey was needed.

He must first of all preach his way up from the counter to the pulpit, and he must then have twenty years of varied experiences in ministerial service amongst widely differing Churches, before he could be fit to take up his appointed place, outside all the Churches, to raise from amongst every cla.s.s a new force for the exaltation of Christ amongst all men.

For so great a work he must needs have a helpmeet, and he was to find her when she was still physically as weak and unlikely for the great task as he was, and as entirely severed from all existing organisations.

Catherine Mumford, like himself, innocent of any unkind feeling towards her Church, had been excluded from it, simply because she would not pledge herself to keep entirely away from the Reform party.

Unable really at the time to do more than teach a cla.s.s in the Sunday School, and occasionally visit a sick person, she nevertheless, by the fervour of her action, made herself a power that was felt, and threw all her influence on the side of any whole-hearted religious or temperance effort. The anxiety of both these two young people not to allow any thought for their own happiness to interfere with their duty to G.o.d and to their fellows delayed their marriage for years; and when they did marry it was with the perfect resolve on both sides to make everything in their own life and home subordinate to the great work to which they had given themselves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHERINE BOOTH

Born January 17th, 1829. Died October 4th, 1890.]

Neither of them at the time dreamed of Mrs. Booth's speaking in public, much less that they were together to become the liberators of woman from the silence imposed on her by almost every organisation of Christ's followers. Having known both of them intimately during the years in which The Salvation Army was being formed, I can positively contradict the absurdly exaggerated statement that The General would have had little or no success in life but for the talents and attractive ministry of Mrs. Booth. She was a helpmeet in the most perfect sense, never, even when herself reduced to illness and helplessness, desiring to absorb either time or attention that he could give to the great War in which she always encouraged him as no other ever could. Remaining to her latest hour a woman of the tenderest and most modest character, she shrank from public duty, and merely submitted so far as she felt "constrained," for Christ's sake, to a.s.sociation with anything that she was convinced ought to be done to gain the ears of men for the Gospel, however contrary it might be to her own tastes and wishes. Perhaps her most valuable contribution to the construction of The General's life was her ability to explain to him opinions and tastes differing widely from his own, and to sustain and defend his general defiance of the usual traditions and customs of "society."

His own feelings about it all he has described in these words:--

"The sensations of a new-comer to London from the country, are always somewhat disagreeable, if he comes to work. The immensity of the city must especially strike him as he crosses it for the first time and pa.s.ses through its different areas. The general turn-out into a few great thoroughfares, on Sat.u.r.day nights especially, gives a sensation of enormous bulk. The manifest poverty of so many in the most populous streets must appeal to any heart. The language of the drinking crowds must needs give a rather worse than a true impression of all.

"The crowding pressure and activity of so many must almost oppress one not accustomed to it. The number of public-houses, theatres, and music-halls must give a young enthusiast for Christ a sickening impression. The enormous number of hawkers must also have given a rather exaggerated idea of the poverty and cupidity which nevertheless prevailed. The Churches in those days gave the very uttermost idea of spiritual death and blindness to the existing condition of things; at that time very few of them were open more than one evening per week. There were no Young Men's or Young Women's Christian a.s.sociations, no P.S.A.'s, no Brotherhoods, no Central Missions, no extra effort to attract the attention of the G.o.dless crowds; for miles there was not an announcement of anything special in the religious line to be seen.

"To any one who cared to enter the places of wors.h.i.+p, their deathly contrast with the streets was even worse. The absence of week-night services must have made any stranger despair of finding even society or diversion. A Methodist sufficiently in earnest to get inside to the 'cla.s.s' would find a handful of people reluctant to bear any witness to the power of G.o.d.

"Despite the many novelties introduced since those days, the activities of the world being so much greater, the contrast must look even more striking in our own time."

Imagine a young man accustomed to daily labour for the poor, coming into such a world as that!

Thought about what they sang and said in the private gatherings of the Methodist Societies could only deepen and intensify the feeling of monstrosity. They sang frequently:--

He taught me how to watch and pray, And live rejoicing every day.

But where were the rejoicing people? Where was there indeed anybody who, either in or out of a religious service, dared to express his joy in the Lord--or wished to express anything. It was as if religious societies had become wet blankets to suppress any approach to a hearty expression of religious faith. Nevertheless, by G.o.d's grace, it all worked in this case not to crush but to infuriate and stir the new-comer to action.

Preaching, under such circ.u.mstances, was a relief to such a soul, and necessarily became more and more desperate.

One hearing of William Booth was enough for Mr. Rabbits, a practical, go-ahead man, who had raised up out of the old-fas.h.i.+oned little business of his forefathers one of the great "stores" of London, and who longed to see the same sort of development take place in connexion with the old-fas.h.i.+oned, perfectly correct, and yet all but lifeless inst.i.tutions that professed to represent Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world. His sense of the contrast between this preacher and others whom he knew was proportionately rapid and acute. The effects produced on hearers were the same at every turn.

This living preaching was and is a perfect fit with all the rush of the world outside, and the helplessness of the poor souls around.

William Booth was, as we have seen, only seventeen when he was fully recognised as a preacher of the Gospel according to the custom of the Methodist Churches, and at nineteen his minister urged him to give up his life to the ministry. At that time, however, he felt himself too weak physically for a ministerial career, and in this view his doctor concurred. So determined was he to accomplish his purpose, however, that he begged the doctor not to express his opinion to the minister, but to allow the matter to stand over for a year. Unless a man with a nervous system like his was "framed like a bullock," and had "a chest like a prize-fighter," he would break down, said the physician, and seeing that he was not so built, he would be "done for" in twelve months. The doctor went to the grave very soon afterwards, whereas The General continued preaching for over sixty years after that p.r.o.nouncement.

At this period, some of the Wesleyans who were discontented with their leaders in London broke into revolt, and there was so much bitter feeling on both sides, that the main object of John Wesley--the exaltation of Christ for the Salvation of men--was for the moment almost lost sight of.

Mr. Booth joined with the most earnest people he could find; but though they gave him opportunity to hold Meetings, he wrote to one of his old a.s.sociates:--

"How are you going on? I wish I knew you were happy, living to G.o.d and working for Jesus.

"I preached on Sabbath last to a respectable but dull and lifeless congregation. Notwithstanding this I had liberty in both prayer and preaching. I had not any one to say 'Amen' or 'Praise the Lord'

during the whole of the service. I want some of you here with me in the Prayer Meetings, and then we should carry all before us."

Thus we see emerging from the obscurity of a poor home a conqueror, fired with one ambition, out of harmony with every then existing Christian organisation, because of that strange old feeling, so often expressed in the Psalms of David, that the praises of G.o.d ought to be heard from all men's lips alike, and that everything else ought to give way to His will and His pleasure.

In speaking to his Officers later on he said:--

"When the great separation from the Wesleyan Church took place, Mr.

Rabbits said to me one day: 'You must leave business, and wholly devote yourself to preaching the Gospel.'

"'Impossible,' I answered. 'There is no way for me. n.o.body wants me.' 'Yes,' said he, 'the people with whom you have allied yourself want an evangelist.'

"'They cannot support me,' I replied; 'and I cannot live on air.'

"'That is true, no doubt,' was his answer. 'How much can you live on?'

"I reckoned up carefully. I knew I should have to provide my own quarters and to pay for my cooking; and as to the living itself, I did not understand in those days how this could be managed in as cheap a fas.h.i.+on as I do now. After a careful calculation, I told him that I did not see how I could get along with less than twelve s.h.i.+llings a week.

"'Nonsense,' he said; 'you cannot do with less than twenty s.h.i.+llings a week, I am sure.'

"'All right,' I said, 'have it your own way, if you will; but where is the twenty s.h.i.+llings to come from?'

"'I will supply it,' he said, 'for the first three months at least.'

"'Very good,' I answered. And the bargain was struck there and then.

"I at once gave notice to my master, who was very angry, and said, 'If it is money you want, that need not part us.' I told him that money had nothing to do with the question, that all I wanted was the opportunity to spend my life and powers in publis.h.i.+ng the Saviour to a lost world. And so I packed my portmanteau, and went out to begin a new life.

"My first need was some place to lay my head. After a little time spent in the search, I found quarters in the Walworth district, where I expected to work, and took two rooms in the house of a widow at five s.h.i.+llings a week, with attendance. This I reckoned at the time was a pretty good bargain. I then went to a furniture shop, and bought some chairs and a bed, and a few other necessaries. I felt quite set up. It was my birthday, a Good Friday, and on the same day I fell in love with my future wife.

"But the people would have nothing to do with me. They 'did not want a parson.' They reckoned they were all parsons, so that at the end of the three months' engagement the weekly income came to an end; and, indeed, I would not have renewed the engagement on any terms. There was nothing for me to do but to sell my furniture and live on the proceeds, which did not supply me for a very long time.

I declare to you that at that time I was so fixed as not to know which way to turn.

"In my emergency a remarkable way opened for me to enter college and become a Congregational minister. But after long waiting, several examinations, trial sermons and the like, I was informed that on the completion of my training I should be expected to believe and preach what is known as Calvinism. After reading a book which fully explained the doctrine, I threw it at the wall opposite me, and said I would sooner starve than preach such doctrine, one special feature of which was that only a select few could be saved.[A]

"My little stock of money was exhausted. I remember that I gave the last sixpence I had in the world to a poor woman whose daughter lay dying; but within a week I received a letter inviting me to the charge of a Methodist Circuit in Lincolns.h.i.+re, and from that moment my difficulties of that kind became much less serious.

"The Spalding people welcomed me as though I had been an angel from Heaven, providing me with every earthly blessing within their ability, and proposing that I should stay with them for ever. They wanted me to marry right away, offered to furnish me a house, provide me with a horse to enable me more readily to get about the country, and proposed other things that they thought would please me.

"With them I spent perhaps the happiest eighteen months of my life.

Of course my horizon was much more limited in those days than it is now, and consequently required less to fill it.