The Authoritative Life of General William Booth Part 6

The Church had got into the stagnant condition which is so commonly experienced wherever contentment with routine long holds sway. Mr. and Mrs. Booth were not only welcomed, but given a free hand to take any course they pleased to fill the building with hearers, and to secure their Salvation.

Fighting now together, as they had learnt to do at Gateshead, they saw results more rapid and striking than they had ever known before, although they found themselves face to face with a population more disinclined for novelty, and especially for the novelties they introduced, than any they had before had to deal with. The General thus described at the time for the Connexional Magazine some of his first battles in Cornwall:--

"Hayle, Cornwall.

"When in London, you requested me to send now and then a report of the Lord's working in connexion with my ministry, and thinking that the following account of the Revival now in progress here will be interesting to you, I forward it. We arrived here on the 10th inst., and commenced labour on the following Sabbath. The chapel was crowded. Gracious influences accompanied the word. Many appeared to be deeply convicted of sin, but no decided cases of conversion took place that day. On Monday afternoon we had a service for Christians, and spoke on the hindrances to Christian labour and Christian joy. Evening, chapel crowded. Very solemn season. Nearly all the congregation stayed to the Prayer Meeting that followed, and many appeared deeply affected, but refused to seek the mercy of G.o.d. A strong prejudice prevails here against the custom of inviting anxious inquirers to any particular part of the building. The friends told me that this plan never had succeeded in Cornwall; but I thought it the best, considering the crowded state of the chapel, and therefore determined to try it. I gave a short address, and again invited those who wished to decide for Christ to come forward. After waiting a minute or two, the solemn silence was broken by the cries of a woman who at once left her pew, and fell down at the Mercy-Seat, and became the first-fruits of what I trust will be a glorious harvest of immortal souls. She was quickly followed by others, when a scene ensued beyond description. The cries and groans were piercing in the extreme; and when the stricken spirits apprehended Jesus as their Saviour, the shouts of praise and thanksgiving were in proportion to the previous sorrow.

"Tuesday Evening.--Congregation again large. Prayer Meeting similar to Monday night, and some very blessed cases of conversion.

"Wednesday.--Chapel full. Mrs. Booth spoke with much influence and power. Glorious Prayer Meeting. An old woman who found the Saviour jumped on her feet, and shouted, with her face beaming with heavenly radiance, 'He's saved me! Glory to G.o.d! He's saved me, an old sinner, sixty-three. Glory to G.o.d!' Other cases of great interest transpired, and the people, with swimming eyes, and glowing hearts, sang--

"'Praise G.o.d, from whom all blessings flow.'

"Thursday.--Preached from 'Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out.' Had a blessed Meeting. A woman who had herself found Jesus during the week, pointed me to her husband. Found him fully enlightened and deeply convicted. I urged him to immediate decision and the full surrender of himself to G.o.d. He came out, and fell down among the Penitents. He remained there about an hour. The Meeting could not be concluded until near eleven o'clock, and many were very reluctant to retire even then.

"Friday.--The first thing this morning my host informed me that he had just heard of a mason who had been at the services every night, and who had resolved to stop work until he found the Lord. Soon after a young lady came in to tell us of a woman who had found peace during the night. At the family altar this morning, a woman in the employ of the gentleman with whom we are staying commenced to bemoan her sinful condition and to cry for mercy. I asked her to remain, and pointed her to Jesus, and she soon found rest through believing. In the afternoon, met several anxious persons for prayer and conversation. In the evening we had announced a public Prayer Meeting. Before we reached the chapel we could hear the cries and prayers of those already a.s.sembled. On entering, we found a strong man praising G.o.d at the top of his voice for hearing his prayer and pardoning his sins. It was the mason. He had been under deep concern for three days; had not slept at all the night before, but after a day's agony, he had found Jesus; and such tumultuous, rapturous joy I think I never witnessed. Again and again, during the evening, he broke out with a voice that drowned all others, and rose above our songs of praise ascribing glory to Jesus for what He had done for his soul. There were many other cases of almost equal interest. The Meeting was not closed until eleven.

"About midnight, the Rev. J. Shone, the minister in charge of the church, was called out to visit a woman who was in great distress.

He afterwards described her agony in seeking, and her joy in finding, the Lord, together with the sympathy and exultation of her friends with her, as one of the most thrilling scenes he ever witnessed."

In a later report The General wrote:--

"Hayle, Cornwall.

"The work of the Lord here goes on gloriously. The services have progressed with increasing power and success, and now the whole neighbourhood is moved. Conversion is the topic of conversation in all sorts of society. Every night, crowds are unable to gain admission to the sanctuary. The oldest man in the church cannot remember any religious movement of equal power. During the second week, the Wesleyans opened a large room for united Prayer Meetings at noon; since then, by their invitation, we have on several occasions spoken in their chapels to densely crowded audiences; services being simultaneously conducted in the chapel where the movement originally commenced. One remarkable and gratifying feature of the work is the large number of men who are found every night amongst those who are anxious. Never have I seen so many men at the same time smiting their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and crying, 'G.o.d be merciful to me a sinner,' Strong men, old men, young men, weeping like children, broken-hearted on account of their sins. A number of these are sailors, and scarcely a s.h.i.+p has gone out of this port the last few days without taking among its crew one or more souls newly-born for Heaven."

Can it be believed that just such victories as these led to the closing of almost all the Churches against him?

"In these days," The General has more recently written, "it has become almost the fas.h.i.+on for the Churches to hold yearly 'revival'

or 'special' services, but forty years ago they were as unanimously opposed to anything of the kind, and compelled me to gain outside every Church organisation the one liberty I desired--to seek and save the lost ones, who never enter any place of wors.h.i.+p whatever.

"Let n.o.body suppose that I cherish any resentment against any of the Churches on account of their former treatment of me, or that I have a desire to throw a stone at any of them. From any such feelings I believe that G.o.d has most mercifully preserved me all my life, and I rejoice in the kindness on this account with which they load me now in every land, as testimonies to that fact.

"But I want to make it clear to readers in lands far away from Christendom why I was driven into the formation of an Organisation entirely outside every Christian Church in order to accomplish my object, and why my people everywhere, whilst having no more desire than myself to come into dispute, or even discussion, with any Church near them, must needs act as independently of them all as I have done, no matter how friendly they may now be to us.

"Nothing could be more charming than the present att.i.tude towards us of every religious community in the United States, from the Roman Catholics, whose Archbishop has publicly commended us, to the Mormons, who are generally regarded as enemies of all Christianity, and the Friends (commonly called Quakers) whose ideas of wors.h.i.+p seem to be at the uttermost extreme from ours. All are satisfied that I and my people are not wishful to find fault with any religious body whatever, but to spend all our time and energy in combating the great evils of G.o.dlessness and selfishness which threaten to sweep away all the people everywhere from any thought above material things.

"Yet we have had to forbid our people to accept too often the pressing invitations that pour upon them from all sides to hold Meetings in Church buildings, lest they should lose touch with the ma.s.ses outside, and begin to be content with audiences of admirers.

"The thirty-six years of my life whilst I was groping about in vain for a home and fellows.h.i.+p amongst Churches gave me to understand, as only experience can, what are the thoughts and feelings of the millions in Christian lands, who not only never enter a church, but who feel it to be inconceivable that they ever should do so.

"If this experience has been invaluable to us in Christian lands, how much more so is it in the far vaster countries of Asia and Africa, where our work is only as yet in its beginnings. When I went to j.a.pan, the entire missionary community everywhere united to uphold me as the exemplar of true Christlike action for the good of all men. But the leaders of all the five sects of Buddhism were no less unanimous in their welcome to me, or in their expressions of prayerful desire for the success of my work.

"In India and Africa I have repeatedly seen supporting me in my indoor and outdoor demonstrations the leaders of the Hindu, Pa.r.s.ee, Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish, and Mohammedan communities, who had never met with the Christians in so friendly a way before. I cannot think this would have been the case had I ever become settled amongst any Christian body in this country.

"Can any one wonder then that I see in all the unpleasant experiences of my early days the hand of G.o.d Himself, leading me by a way that I knew not--that I could scarcely believe indeed at the time to be His way. Why should it have been so difficult for a man, who only wished to lead the lost ones to the great Shepherd who seeks them all to get or to remain within any existing fold, if it was not that there lay before me and my Soldiers conquests infinitely greater and more important than had ever yet been made?

"Oh, with what impatience I turn from the very thought of any of the squabbles of Christian sects when I see all around me the millions who want to avoid any thought of their great Friend and Father, and of the coming Judge before whom we must all, perhaps this very day, appear."

How easily excuses, which sound most plausible, are found for every sort of negligence in the service of G.o.d--indeed, for not serving Him at all!

"It is not my way, you see," says some one, who does not like to make any open profession of interest in Jesus Christ, as though our own preferences or opinions were to be the governing consideration in all that affects the interests of "our Lord"!

The General has proved that the old ideas connected with "the Master"

can not only be revived but acted up to in our day, and the sense of shame for idle excuses drive out all the paltry pleas set up for indifference to the general ruin.

"At this season, nothing can be done" is as coolly pleaded to-day as if "in season, out of season" had never been written in our Divine Order-Book.

How often our forces in the midst of fairs, and race-days, and "slack times," have demonstrated that real soldiers of Christ can s.n.a.t.c.h victory, just when all around seems to ensure their defeat!

When The General began to form his Army, it was ordinarily a.s.sumed as a settled principle that Open-Air Work could only be done in fine weather, and the theory is still existent in many quarters. As if the comfort and convenience of "the workers," and not the danger and misery of the people, were to fix the times of such effort!

"But the people will not come," is even now pleaded as an excuse for the omission or abandonment of any imaginable attempt to do good. As if the people's general disinclination for anything that has to do with G.o.d were not the precise reason for His wish to "send out" His servants!

"Such a plan would never succeed here," is an almost invariable excuse made for not undertaking anything new. The General was never blind to differences between this and that locality and population. But he insisted that no plan that could be devised by those on any given spot, and especially no plan that has manifestly been blessed and used by G.o.d elsewhere should be dismissed without proper, earnest trial.

"But that has never been done, or has never done well here," seemed to him rather a reason for trying it with, perhaps, some little modification than for leaving a plan untried. The inexorable law to which he insisted that everything should bend was that nothing can excuse inactivity and want of enterprise where souls are peris.h.i.+ng. And he was spared to see even Governments beginning to recognise that it is inexcusable to let sin triumph in "a Christian country." He proved that it was possible to raise up "Christian Soldiers," who would not only sing, or hear singing, in beautiful melody about "Marching, onward as to War"; but who would really do it, even when, it led to real battle.

Chapter VII

East London Beginning

What were Mr. and Mrs. Booth to do? They were excluded from most of the Churches in which during the last twenty years they had led so many souls to Christ. They found themselves out of harmony with most of the undenominational evangelists of the day, and, moreover, they had experienced throughout even the brightest of their past years a gnawing dissatisfaction with much of their work, which The General thus described in the preface to his book, _In Darkest England, and the Way Out_:--

"All the way through my career I have keenly felt the remedial measures usually enumerated in Christian programmes, and ordinarily employed by Christian philanthropy, to be lamentably inadequate for any effectual dealing with the despairing miseries of the outcast cla.s.ses. The rescued are appallingly few, a ghastly minority compared with the mult.i.tudes who struggle and sink in the open-mouthed abyss. Alike, therefore, my humanity and my Christianity, if I may speak of them as in any way separate from each other, have cried out for some comprehensive method of reaching and saving the peris.h.i.+ng crowds."

The Booths had settled in a London home, finding that they must needs have some fixed resting-place for their children, and that abundant opportunities of one kind or another could be found for them both in the metropolis. But The General, who was "waiting upon G.o.d, and wondering what would happen" to open his way to the unchurched ma.s.ses, received an invitation to undertake some services in a tent which had been erected in an old burial-ground in Whitechapel, the expected missioner having fallen ill! He consented, and he thus describes his experiences:--

"When I saw those ma.s.ses of poor people, so many of them evidently without G.o.d or hope in the world, and found that they so readily and eagerly listened to me, following from Open-Air Meeting to tent, and accepting, in many instances, my invitation to kneel at the Saviour's feet there and then, my whole heart went out to them.

I walked back to our West-End home and said to my wife:--

"'O Kate, I have found my destiny! These are the people for whose Salvation I have been longing all these years. As I pa.s.sed by the doors of the flaming gin-palaces to-night I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears, "Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for your labours?" And there and then in my soul I offered myself and you and the children up to this great work. Those people shall be our people, and they shall have our G.o.d for their G.o.d.'"

Mrs. Booth herself wrote:--

"I remember the emotion that this produced in my soul. I sat gazing into the fire, and the Devil whispered to me, 'This means another departure, another start in life!' The question of our support const.i.tuted a serious difficulty. Hitherto we had been able to meet our expenses out of the collections which we had made from our more respectable audiences. But it was impossible to suppose that we could do so among the poverty-stricken East-Enders--we were afraid even to ask for a collection in such a locality.

"Nevertheless, I did not answer discouragingly. After a momentary pause for thought and prayer, I replied, 'Well, if you feel you ought to stay, stay. We have trusted the Lord _once_ for our support, and we can trust Him _again_!'"

"That night," says The General, "The Salvation Army was born."

Before long G.o.d moved the heart of one of the most benevolent men in England, Mr. Samuel Morley, to promise them his influence and support without any condition but the continuance of the work thus begun. But no amount of monetary help could have placed The General in a position to establish anything like the permanent work he desired. He writes:--

"I had hardly got successfully started on this new path before my old experience of difficulty met me once more. On the third Sunday morning, I think it was, we found the old tent which formed our cathedral, blown down, and so damaged by the fall, as well as so rotten, that it could not be put up again. Another tent was impossible, as we had no money to buy one; so, as no suitable building could be obtained, there was nothing for it but for us to do our best out of doors.