The GOSPEL TRUTH

 

LIFE of

WILLIAM BOOTH

FOUNDER and FIRST GENERAL

of the SALVATION ARMY

 by

Harold Begbie

1920

In Two Volumes

Volume 1

 

CHAPTER I

THE TIMES INTO WHICH OUR HERO WAS BORN

1829

 

FROM a study of the Nottingham Date Book it would seem that the unchronicled occurrence of William Booth's birth in 1829 was preceded and accompanied by events almost as horrible and alarming as any that ever intimidated the decent inhabitants of a civilized English town.

Nature at that time showed her most ferocious face to the midland capital; and man, who is said to begin where Nature ends, seems to have had no difficulty in exceeding these excesses of his environment.

It was a period of tremendous storms and of horrible brutality: of thunder, lightning, and devastating rains: of hideous crimes and outrageous destitution. Nine months before the birth of William Booth the town was swept and flooded by the most angry tempest within living memory; three days after his birth immense masses of rock gave way both in the centre of the city and in the then neighbouring hamlet of Sneinton, plunging down in many hundreds of tons upon the houses beneath. A more or less formal revival in the religious life of the city which marked the year of the great Revivalist's birth may have been due in no small part to these alarming occurrences. Many churches and chapels in 1829 were restored, repaired, or reopened for public worship, the local dignitaries taking a ceremonial part in some of the celebrations which marked these efforts either to appease the heavens or to Christianize the people.

Two years before, the town had been deeply shocked by the discovery of a gang of resurrection men in its midst who went about at night "despoiling the sanctuaries of the dead." So sharply did this disclosure agitate and excite the minds of Nottingham people that, when the murders committed by Burke and Hare in Edinburgh became known in 1829, the whole town was thrown into a condition of panic which necessitated action by the magistrates. Burke and Hare were "connected with the murder by suffocation of thirty or forty persons, for the sake of the money arising from the sale of their bodies for the purposes of dissection"; and so alarmed were the inhabitants of Nottingham by these dreadful disclosures that "timid people dared not to venture out after dark, and all sorts of alarming reports were in circulation." Little was talked of, we are told, "but rumours of pitch-plasters being placed on people's mouths, and of others being missing and burked." The magistrates of Nottingham were obliged, so general was the panic, to issue a notice declaring that there was no foundation for the alarm.

Murders, highway robberies, mysterious stabbings of women in the streets at night, crimes of every kind, public executions and a public whipping witnessed by enormous crowds of people, escapes from the County Gaol in Narrow Marsh, riots and insurrections of a most demoniacal char acter, devastating fires, destructive floods, and thunder storms fatal to man and beast--these dire and dreadful things continued to agitate the life of Nottingham throughout the boyhood of William Booth. We may allow ourselves the conjecture that the child was influenced in no small measure by the continual excitement provoked by these events, particularly when we remember the isolation of provincial cities at that time and the general narrowness of the outlook upon life. He would have heard on every side of him breathless tales of murder and garrottings, descriptions of surging drunken crowds watching the hanging of criminals; he would have seen the maddened rioters when they tore down the iron railings in front of his father's house to use them as weapons against the soldiers and special constables; he did see, and on many occasions, bodies of men and women charging through the streets to sack bakers' shops, returning with their arms full of loaves; he was the witness again and again of such misery and destitution, such haggard want and infuriating depriva tion, as filled the streets with angry mobs shouting for food, compelled the authorities to read the Riot Act, and drove thousands of people to seek the relief of the rates.

Children in the poor streets of great cities hear nothing of political events; they are uninfluenced by the philosophy of the period. But their minds, in that region which psychologists name the unconscious, are influenced, and powerfully influenced, by all the sights and all the sounds of their environment. They take a passive part in the life of their own immediate world, but their minds are unconsciously active, and their characters are permanently affected by the most transitory excitements of their time.

It is doubtful whether William Booth heard any dis cussions touching Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill, Newman's work at Oxford, Negro Emancipation, and the stubborn conservatism of that "unmanageable naval officer," his sovereign lord, King William the Fourth. But it is quite certain that he heard a hundred stories of the dreadful murder that was followed by the last execution on Gallows Hill; of the funeral by night, without religious ceremony, of a young butcher who had committed suicide in so deliberate a fashion that the jury was forced to bring in a verdict of felo de se; of the great riot which led among other things to the gutting of Nottingham Castle by incen diaries; of the public execution of some of the rioters; of the frightful desolation wrought in the town by Asiatic cholera; of the fight between two young men on Mapperley Plains for the love of a girl who had promised to marry the winner, one of the men being killed in the contest; of more than one execution of men for atrocious offences committed against young women; of people transported for life on trivial charges; of the last public flogging to take place in Nottingham; of many a disastrous fire that swept through the city; and of the crashing down of rock in Sneinton Hermitage, close to his own home, with a noise that seemed like the thunders of Judgment Day.

Gossip of this kind must have been general in the town, Particularly among children, and we know that it made a dark impression on the mind of William Booth. "When but a mere child," he says in his preface to In Darkest England, published in 1890, "the degradation and helpless misery of the poor stockingers of my native town, wandering gaunt and hunger-stricken through the streets, droning out their melancholy ditties, crowding the Union or toiling like galley slaves on relief works for a bare subsistence, kindled in my heart yearnings to help the poor which have continued to this day, and which have had a powerful influence on my whole life." He spoke on one occasion of his troubled childhood, saying with some bitterness, which the reader will readily understand, "From the earliest days I was thrown into close association with poverty in its lowest depths." His mind, before it was penetrated by religious illumination, must have been depressed by the gossip of Nottingham back-streets and by the sights of misery and want which confronted him at every turn.

In 1837, the year which witnessed Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, there was distress in Nottingham of a most grievous and heartbreaking description. William Booth, though only eight years of age, was powerfully impressed by the horrors of that year. A public meeting was held in the Exchange at which five thousand pounds was subscribed for "the relief of the widely-spread distress amongst the operative classes, arising from an utter pros tration of the manufacturing interest." The number of persons thrown for subsistence upon the poor rates was greater than ever before known. "The enumeration was as follows:--Within the walls of the house, 971. Two hundred men on the roads, with families of four on an average, 1,000. Fed twice a day in a temporary erection on Back Commons, 258. Children fed and educated, 20. Aged, infirm, sick, etc., receiving outdoor relief, 1,200. Total relieved from the rates weekly, 3,629; or about one in fourteen of the entire population of the union." An entry in the Nottingham Date Book shows that the local wages, although shamefully inadequate, were higher than those of the stockingers (4s. 6d. a week) mentioned in the Life of Thomas Cooper.

The year 1838 was famous for a severe winter and the freezing of the River Trent. The first stone of the new church at Sneinton, where William Booth had been baptized, was laid by Lord Manvers. Grace Darling's heroic exer tions to save the lives of people on board the wrecked Forfarshire thrilled the whole country, and in Nottingham, because a Mr. Churchill of the town was among those who had perished, made a deep impression; a monument was set up in the General Cemetery.

In 1839 the new church at Sneinton was opened by the Bishop of Lincoln, and we may take it as fully certain that William Booth was present at this elaborate ceremonial. Worse distress than ever occurred among the operatives, lasting from that autumn to the spring of 1840. Three thousand four hundred and eighty-one people received relief. A riot was anticipated, and the troops in the town were kept under arms.

In 1842 there was an attempt "to promote a general strike, or cessation from labour, until the document known as the People's Charter became the law of the land." I believe this is the first mention of a general strike, and it seems as if Nottingham gave birth to the idea. Now and again William Booth hung on the outskirts of the large crowds that gathered to hear the Chartist orators.

In 1844 the whole town was staggered by a calamity which could not fail to leave an impression on the mind of young Booth. A labourer named William Saville, aged 29, who had been married at Sneinton Church, murdered his wife and three children. He was executed on August 8, and an immense crowd gathered to witness the spectacle. "Eight was the hour of execution, but every available space was occupied long before it arrived. Occasionally, there came a cry from the surging mass that some one was fainting or being crushed to death, and if the sufferer were fortunate enough not to be entirely bereft of strength, he or she was lifted up, and permitted to walk to the extremity of the crowd on the shoulders of the people. Saville was led forth, and at three minutes past eight, the drop descended. Almost immediately after the mighty crowd broke, as it were, in the middle. The anxiety, deep and general, to witness the spectacle, was succeeded by an equally general and still deeper desire to get away from the overpowering and suffocating pressure. The result was positively awful. The greater portion of the house-doors along the Pavement were closed, and those who were crushed against the walls by the terrific resistless tide, had no means of escape. Twelve persons were killed, and more than a hundred received serious injuries; and of the latter, the deaths of five, after lingering illnesses, were clearly traceable to the same catastrophe."

William Booth had already started his life as a preacher when in 1847 the curate of his old church at Sneinton com mitted suicide in the grounds of Nottingham Castle, shooting himself on the refusal of a vicar in the town to accept him as the lover of his daughter, a girl of seventeen years of age.

These few events, however briefly related, will afford some idea to the reader, not only of certain local influences surrounding the childhood of William Booth, but of the spirit of the age in which he was born. How different was that period from our own may perhaps be better seen in one single occurrence, half grotesque and half scandalous, which is recorded in the Nottingham Date Book as late as 1852:

April 28.--About twelve o'clock, a female about 38 years of age, accompanied by her husband and two of his companions stood in the Market Place, near the sheep pens. The female was the wife of Edward Stevenson, rag merchant, Millstone Lane, and he had come to the determination, with her consent, to dispose of her by auction. A new rope, value sixpence, was round her neck. Stevenson, with his wife unabashed by his side, held the rope, and exclaimed, "Here is my wife for sale: I shall put her up for two shillings and sixpence." A man named John Burrows, apparently a navy, proffered a shilling for the lot, and after some haggling she was knocked off at that price, and they all went to The Spread Eagle to sign articles of agreement, the lady being the only party able to sign her name.

One cannot now imagine such an occurrence as this in any civilized town, and the remembrance of it, kept in mind during that part of our narrative which deals with the childhood and youth of William Booth, will enable the reader to enter more closely into the thoughts and feelings of the young evangelist. He was not only born in Notting ham at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he was shaped by the Nottingham of that period. And if he breathed the excited spirit of reform which filled the air of the town at that time, as certainly did he take into his soul the dark and squalid colour of his environment. He not only saw suffering, he experienced it. He not only witnessed the destructive force of sin, he was aware in himself of its power. From his earliest years he was thrown into close association with poverty in its lowest depths; and on the mountains he remembered the pit from which he was digged. In few instances of great and remarkable men is it more possible to trace throughout the years of their lives, up to the very last, so clear and deep a mark of the earliest influences upon their characters.

That there was some effort to reach the people of Nottingham with a more pressing sense of the claims of religion than was offered at that time by the established churches and chapels, may be gathered from the fact that an evangelist from Yorkshire visited the town, and preached the gospel of conversion with a fair measure of success. No mention is made of this John Smith in the Nottingham Date Book, but it is quite clear from other sources that his visit was memorable in the religious history of the town. 'Nottingham was dear to the heart of Wesley, and that great man has left behind him an affectionate tribute to the honesty and kindness of its generous people. He visited the town on several occasions. His preaching brought about numerous conversions and led to the establishment of a strong and enduring Methodism. But the zeal of the founder, the fire and passion which inspired his teaching as an evangelist, was cooling, and toward the middle of the nineteenth century, Methodism in Nottingham, as well as elsewhere throughout England, was becoming a somewhat formal school of religion. It was beginning to forget the poor.

The visit of John Smith wrought a change, and it is fair to regard him as a precursor of David Greenbury, James Caughey, and William Booth; although he is not to be reckoned one of the immortals among revivalists. He had neither the scholarly sweetness of Wesley, nor the deep humanity of William Booth; he believed in conversion, but people had to come to his chapel to experience it; he desired the salvation of sinners, but he did not seek them where they were to be found; whether he felt for the wrongs of the people we do not know, but he is certainly not conspicuous as a champion of their rights.

John Smith, we are told, "was exceedingly wild and wicked as a youth, but, getting converted in a revival at his native village in 1812, he became a local preacher." One who knew him tells me that he had the habit of praying at public meetings with his eyes tight squeezed, his arms outspread, his hands wide open, and with his fingers working rapidly--a fashion which was imitated by others. One of his phrases was, "God will stand to His engagements; His work must go on." Typical of his method is a "remarkable incident" which occurred at a love-feast over which Mr. Smith presided in the Halifax Place Chapel:

A local preacher rose and said that "he had once enjoyed the blessing of entire sanctification, but through unwatchfulness had in this respect suffered loss." With much feeling he added that he was now earnestly longing and waiting for the restoration of this great privilege. Mr. Smith instantly started from his seat in the pulpit, and cried, "The all-cleansing power is on you now!" For a moment he hesitated, it was but a moment, and he then exclaimed, while the whole of his body quivered with emotion, "It is; I feel it in my heart!" The congregation then united in thanksgiving and prayer; in a short time the windows of heaven were opened, and there was a rush of holy influence, such as by the majority of that vast assembly was never before experienced. It seemed like a stream of lightning passing through every spirit. At one time, twenty persons obtained the blessing of perfect love, and rose up rapidly one after another, in an ecstasy of praise, to declare that God had then cleansed their heart from all sin.

[The Love Feast was at this time a form of religious service peculiar to the Methodist communities. It was a meeting for public testimony, generally accompanied by partaking of bread and water as a sign of unity, mutual confidence, and good-will.]

David Greenbury, who exercised no small influence on William Booth, also came to Nottingham from Yorkshire. He seems to have been a different type from John Smith in many respects. He is described as looking like a country squire--a tall bearded man, not unlike the General Booth of later life. One of his favourite hymns, it is remembered, contained the lines--

 

Though in the flesh I feel the thorn, I bless the day that I was born.

 

He rejoiced in life, and found a deep pleasure in his work. It is said that he was the first man to encourage William Booth to continue his public speaking. One of his converts became the talk of Nottingham, and the story must have given an impulse to the spirit of young Booth--perhaps the first impulse of that kind. A notorious rascal called "Besom Jack," whose wife and children starved while he went from tavern to tavern--a lady is still living in Nottingham who remembers how his wife would come to her mother's backdoor begging for old tea-leaves--was converted at one of David Greenbury's meetings and became a sensible, good, honest man, a glad and cheerful Christian, who testified wherever he went to the blessings and the miracle of conversion.

But the greatest influence upon William Booth was exercised, beyond all question, by the American evangelist James Caughey, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. This man attracted enormous crowds to Wesley Chapel, and brought about an undoubted revival of religion in the town. He was a tall, thin, smooth-shaven, cadaverous person, with dark hair. One who often saw him and well remembers him tells me that he wore a voluminous black cloak folded about him in a Byronic manner; his voice was subdued, he gave no sign of an excitable disposition, his preaching warmed slowly into heat and passion which communicated themselves with magnetic instantaneousness to his audiences.

It will give the reader a faithful idea of this preacher and his method, and also a general idea of the prevalent religious feeling, if I quote at this point a rather striking description of one of his religious meetings which I was fortunate enough to discover in an ancient Nottingham newspaper. The reporter, it would seem, was unlucky in being born before the advent of the sensational press:

The preaching of Mr. Caughey creates a very great sensation in the town; the chapel is crowded even in the aisles during every service, and at its conclusion numbers of penitents make their way to the communion-rails, near the pulpit, to seek, under the terrors of guilty consciences, benefit there. It was announced on Wednesday evening, that two hundred persons had given in their names as having received conversion under Mr. Caughey's ministry since he came to Nottingham, and we believe his visit will not soon be forgotten. There is nothing in the manner in which the reverend gentleman commences the service to lead the reader to expect what is to follow. He gives out the hymn in a calm, easy, unappreciating style, and in a tone so conversational, that persons sitting in a distant part of the chapel find it impossible to gather the purport of his words. It is more with the air and tone of a man reading a paragraph from a newspaper to a select party than that of a preacher proclaiming an important message to a large congregation.

In his prayer, too, very few indications are given of the astonishing power he possesses over the mind; though it is not without its peculiarities. He lifts his hands towards heaven, and keeps them in that posture during the whole of his supplication, like Moses, when Israel fought in Rephidim; and once or twice, perhaps, at some point of deeper feeling clasps his palms together, and then re-elevates them into the same poetic attitude. But, generally speaking, his prayers have rather the tone of calm disquisition than address to the Deity; and nothing at all in them expressive of power, except when a gush of deep affectionate feeling makes its way through the mild tranquillity, or at rarer intervals flashes out for an instant the lightning which has been so calmly folded in its mantle of quiet cloud.

His reading of Scripture betrays even less of power than his prayer; it is not performed without a certain subdued feeling; but there is a peculiar off-hand style with it, and a certain tone of dramatic appreciation, without any great apparent solemnity or reverence in the delivery. It is not till he prepares to name his text, that any extraordinary power is manifested; he generally prefaces it with some observation on what he has felt during the day, or since he entered the pulpit; or with an appeal to a certain character whom he prophesies to be in the congregation. Then, indeed, it becomes plain, however the prejudiced visitor may have doubted it before, that the man is in earnest--terribly in earnest; and that every word he says he both feels and believes.

On Tuesday night, when the preliminary parts of the service had been gone through, and the Bible lay open before him, instead of taking his text, as it was natural to expect he would, he startled the congregation by a searching appeal to some backslider, whom he individualized as present among them; and in his manner of doing this showed great knowledge of human nature, and an intimate acquaintance with the subtleties of the mind. Such a character, if present in the place, unless his heart were triple brass, must have been struck as with a thunderbolt. Of the heart indeed his dissections are masterly; he is evidently well versed in its anatomy. As he represented a certain character, & backslider perhaps, or a defrauder, or a profane person, many eyes seemed fraught with the anxious inquiry, "Is it I?" until at length, as the lineaments of the portrait become clearer and more distinctly defined, the shrinking look and trembling frame declared in unmistakable language, "It is I!"

In his manner of looking at a text there is something original; ingenious and unexpected terms are given to the different parts of it; and as each is illustrated, it tells with surprising power upon the congregation. This effect is heightened by a certain abruptness of delivery, which, scorning all preface and apology, rushes instantly to its point, and takes possession of his hearers by storm. His eloquence, too, is not an even uninterrupted flow of words, but his speech is forced out in jerks of great intensity, with an interval between each burst. It must be allowed that his style is highly poetical; not that he indulges in fine unusual words and strings of epithets; there is no attempt at display of this kind; simple and plain, his style is yet remarkable for its poetic effectiveness; and to this he owes a considerable portion of the influence he exerts over his hearers.

On Tuesday night, the force with which he imaged a fold of sheep, to illustrate the conduct of the newly converted mind, was singular; it was not only quite evident that every word he said, he saw visibly before him, but he made his hearers see it too; the swine prowling about the fold and leering at the flock, manifesting no desire to be numbered among the sheep, was forcibly contrasted with the lamb which went bleating around to spy an entrance, and at last, when the door was opened by the shepherd, darted in. The effect of such passages as these was very much increased by the minister's appropriate attitudes and gestures; not his mouth only but his eyes and hands, and his whole person combining to give utterance to his eloquent thought. Every scene he drew was visibly before the eyes of the congregation; where he pointed with his hand, they looked; and the vacant air in front of the pulpit which he chose as the canvass on which to paint his vivid designs, was evidently no longer a vacancy to his hearers, as was quite manifest from the fixed stare with which they gazed into it. When he spoke of angels as hovering over the people, and occupying the ring enclosed by the gallery of the chapel, and invented conversations which he said they might be then holding with respect to certain individuals in the place, the silence that prevailed among the people was profound: they scarcely dared to breathe, and seemed as if they really were hearing the rustling and flapping of the invisible wings. But as this picture was allowed to fade away, and an appeal to the feelings of the people followed; and when the solicitude of the souls of the departed after the eternal welfare of their friends below was dwelt upon, a universal sob burst from the assembly, and even the faces of the rugged and weatherbeaten men were illuminated by the reflection of the lamps in the water upon their cheeks. At times this emotion assumed a more frantic character, shouts, groans, and all manner of pious ejaculations rising from all parts of the house, until the preacher's voice became inaudible, and the whole place resounded with the wailings and cries.

The arrangements were extremely well ordered and efficient; during the prayer-meeting which succeeded the service, numbers of persons were observed in all parts of the chapel, who had been appointed to lead up to the communion-rails those who were desirous of being publicly prayed for; and as they obtained assurance of what they sought, led them out orderly at the vestry door.

The Rev. Isaac Page, who was a boy at the time of Caughey's visit, remembers seeing crowds of people clambering over the iron railings in front of Wesley Chapel an hour or more before the meeting opened. The chapel, which seated eighteen hundred people, was densely thronged in every part, and numbers were unable to enter at the crowded doors. People remember seeing the tall figure of Caughey standing up to preach in a breathless silence, and being startled by the suddenness with which he thrust out an arm, pointing upwards with a straight accusing finger, and exclaiming, "There is a young man in the gallery who had an awful dream last night; he thought the Day of Judgment had come!" A hymn introduced by James Caughey was sung all over Nottingham, as seventy or eighty years afterwards the "Glory Song," introduced by another American evangelist, was sung all over London. Caughey's hymn contained these verses:

 

O Thou God of my salvation, My Redeemer from all sin,

Moved by Thy divine compassion,

Who hast died my soul to win: Glory! Glory! Glory! Glory!

Glory! Glory! God is Love! Glory! Glory! GloryI Glory!

Hallelujah! God is Love!

 

This has set my soul on fire,

Strongly glows the flame of love, Higher mounts my soul and higher,

Longing for the rest above: Glory! Glory! Glory! Glory!

Glory! Glory! God is Love! Glory! Glory! Glory! Glory!

Hallelujah! God is Love!

 

The Wesleyan Methodist Society, in one of those years, increased, I am told, by 30,000 members.

The visit of this American evangelist, though it did nothing to associate religion with humanitarian idealism, and little to create a social conscience, nevertheless revived the flames of Wesleyan Methodism and breathed some sense of greatness into the sordid air of a much troubled manufacturing town. It exercised a profound influence upon William Booth's astonishing career, and in the shout of "Glory! Glory! Glory!" one may trace the dawn of Booth's great central preaching, that religion is not imposed as a difficult and laborious thing by an exacting God, but given as a blessing and deliverance to poor sorrowful creatures punished and afflicted by their own wrongdoing.

As regards the orthodox religious life of the town, it would seem that Nottingham did not suffer so greatly as other parts of the country from disreputable or sporting clergymen. Parson Wyatt, for instance, the vicar of Sneinton Church, was a Puseyite, and is remembered by many Nonconformists as a good, earnest, and zealous man. But, on the whole, the churches of the town seem to have been conducted on the principle that those who wanted religion would come and ask for it, and those who stayed away had deliberately elected for evil. There was no missionary spirit. Men's minds were taken up with political and industrial questions. Christianity was distinctly in shadow. It may be said with a fair degree of truth that throughout the length and breadth of the land Anglican clergymen were Tories before everything else, and dissenting ministers, as they were then called, in spite of a subdued interest in revivalism, were in large measure concerned with Liberal politics.

 

CHAPTER II

HIS PARENTAGE, A TALE OF THE HOUSE IN WHICH HE WAS BORN, AND THE CHARACTER OF HIS ENVIRONMENTS

1828-1838

 

IT is an interesting coincidence that the father of Herbert Spencer came from Derby into the neighbourhood of Nottingham at about the same time that the father of William Booth migrated from Belper to a Nottingham suburb. Both men speculated with their savings, moved by the same hope of fortune from the extraordinary prosperity of lace manufacture by machinery, and both were disappointed in this ambition. The father of Herbert Spencer withdrew before he was quite ruined; the father of William Booth clung stubbornly and avariciously to his speculations, finally dragging down his wife and family into a condition of penury.

In Herbert Spencer's Autobiography an amusing anecdote is recorded which shows that his father had something of the same spirit which animated William Booth. "If he saw boys quarrelling he stopped to expostulate; and he could never pass a man who was ill-treating his horse without trying to make him behave better." This incident is recorded: "While he was travelling (between Derby and Nottingham, I think) there got on the coach a man who was half intoxicated. My father entered into conversation with him, and sought to reform his habits, by pointing out the evil resulting from it (sic). After listening good-temperedly for a time the man replied, 'Well y' see, master, 'there must be sum o' all sorts, and I'm o' that sort.'"

If heredity were an exact science one might expect William Booth to be a son of George Spencer, and Herbert Spencer to be a son of Samuel Booth.

According to Mr. Phillimore, the author of County Pedigrees, distinct evidence runs back through the local register "associating the Booths with Belper at least as early as the reign of Elizabeth." Whether the family distinguished itself in any way we do not know, but before the days of Elizabeth the fifty-first Archbishop of York was a William Booth, who had his favourite residence at Southwell, which is close to Nottingham, and where the William Booth of our present history spent a part of his childhood. A brother of this older William Booth, Lawrence, became fifty-third Archbishop of York, and also made Southwell his chief residence. He was a grievous failure as Lord Chancellor, but it is written that he took no bribes. In private life, we are told, he was "an amiable and benevolent man, expending large sums of money on educational and charitable objects."

There seems to be no doubt that the family of General Booth is connected by marriage with that family of Gregory which gave in the person of Robert Gregory, a contemporary of General Booth, a popular and picturesque Dean to St. Paul's Cathedral. A William Booth of Belper, apparently the great-grandfather of the evangelist, was married in 1742 to Elizabeth Gregory; the bondsman at the first marriage of Samuel Booth in 1797 was Robert Gregory; and the evangelist, on being told late in life of this coincidence, said that he remembered being taken as a child to see an old lady who was always spoken of as "Aunt Gregory."

Samuel Booth, father of the evangelist, was born at Belper in 1775. It was in the town of Belper that Primitive Methodists were first called Ranters; and since Samuel Booth was nominally a Churchman, and a hard, taciturn, unemotional man, it may be assumed that he shared in this local contempt for the new sect. He appears to have been a nail manufacturer, for on the occasion of his marriage in 1797 to one Sarah Lockitt he described himself in the register as a nailer. Later he added to this business the trade of builder and the profession of architect, earning a fortune which enabled him to live in a fine house at Colston Bassett and to describe himself sometimes as a "gentleman," sometimes as a "yeoman." One child was born of this first marriage, a son named William, who died of consumption at the age of twenty-four, five years after his mother's death in 1819.

Mary Moss, the second wife of Samuel Booth, and mother of the evangelist, was born in 1791, six years before the first marriage of her husband. Like Samuel Booth, she came of Derbyshire stock, probably, as the name suggests and her wonderfully handsome face corroborates, of Jewish origin. She was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer. Her mother died when she was quite young, and she went to live with relations, the second marriage of her father not being conducive to a happy family life. She encountered Samuel Booth at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, whither he had gone to drink the waters as a cure for rheumatism. On his first proposal she refused him. He left the town indignant, but returned, and renewed his proposal, leaving her no peace till she accepted him. Of this marriage there were five children. The eldest son, a boy named Henry, died in his third year; the second child was a daughter, Ann, destined to exercise some little influence on the evangelist in his early years; the third child was the evangelist himself, named William after the son of the first marriage, who had died five years previously; and the two remaining children were girls--Emma, a lifelong invalid who died unmarried, aged forty, and Mary, who became Mrs. Newell, and died at the age of sixty-nine. William Booth, therefore, grew up the only son of the family, with an elder sister and two younger sisters.

Samuel Booth did not come to Nottingham until he had more or less impoverished himself by speculation, and in leaving Colston Bassett it is quite certain that he not merely hoped to retrieve his fortunes, but was positively obliged by his altered circumstances to seek a very much humbler way of living.

In those days Nottingham was just beginning to lose its ancient charm of a beautiful and pleasant market-town distinguished by a romantic history. Deering had boasted in 1750 that the town, "adorned with many stately new buildings, the castle on the left, and Sneinton and Wolwick Hills on the right, presents the traveller coming from the south with a surprisingly grand and magnificent prospect, in the framing of which it is hard to say whether Art or Nature has the greatest share; a prospect which puts even a person the most acquainted with all parts of England, to stand, to name its equal."

But a later writer had to paint a more sombre picture. He exclaims:

Could the worthy Doctor rise from the graveyard of St. Peter's with his flowing surtout, his powdered wig, three-cornered hat, high-heeled shoes, and silver buckles, and be placed in the Meadows, his surprise would be, that so fine a view should have been so woefully damaged; and those modern architectural embellishments, the chimney-stalks, the low and dingy habitations, wharf buildings, and other graceful erections, which so greatly mar the prospect, would doubtless provoke an expression of indignant disapproval.

The extraordinary prosperity of the lace industry, which attracted thousands of workmen and speculators into the town in 1823, suffered a check in 1825, and soon afterwards spent itself, plunging a large population into poverty, distress, and ruin. But the effect of the fever, or, as Spencer called it, "the mania," was horribly and permanently to disfigure the town. Herbert Spencer's father came to Nottingham as a lace manufacturer; William Booth's father came as a builder; and an entry in the Date Book in April, 1825, will give the reader some notion of how the speculative builders, even when they lost their money, succeeded in changing the character of the town:

The only feature in connection with the fever that remains for notice was the extraordinary difficulty in finding house accommodation for the amazing influx of population. Thousands of houses were erected by greedy speculators, who studied, not the convenience and health of those obliged to take them, but how they might best secure 20 per cent per annum for their outlay. Many more would have been built had not the prices of land and materials been extravagantly enhanced. Bricks, for example, rose from 3os. to £3 per thousand; and a plot of land on Gilliflower Hill, not quite an acre in extent, was sold by auction for 14,000. No sooner was a row of dwellings roofed and glazed, than the kitchen fires began to smoke and the rentals to commence. The inquiry was not so much, "What is the rent?" as, "Will you let me a house?" In one instance, a butcher who had been exhibiting from town to town, a "wonderful pig," in a common showman's caravan, ousted the porkine tenant, and stationing the vehicle in his garden at the back of York Street, actually let it as a dwelling-place for 2s. 3d. per week.

In spite of all this, it must not be supposed that the Nottingham of the present day resembles the Nottingham of William Booth's boyhood. There were certainly in his days "chimney-stalks," low and dingy habitations, wharf buildings, and those other "modern architectural embellishments," against which the chronicler in 1850 brought his sorrowful and quite ineffectual accusation. But one who knew William Booth's family in the 'forties, and who was brought up in Sneinton, visited the town with me in I913, going over as much of the old ground as was possible, and from beginning to end of our journeys he expressed amazement at the obliterating effects of recent development and the pervasive change, infinitely for the worse, which has taken place quite lately in the town's aspect.

In the time of William Booth's boyhood the streets of Nottingham ended where the Midland Station now stands. The area between that and the River Trent was known as the Meadows, which in spring were blue with crocuses. Paths led to Witford Ferry, with Clifton Woods beyond. The whole character of the scenery was tender and endearing. To William Booth the fields, the woods, and the river were full of pleasure, and to the end of his days he never spoke of these scenes without an instant lapse into gentleness and reverie.

Mary Howitt describes the Meadows in her autobiography:

The greatest beauty in the landscape was one peculiar to our meadows--our inimitable crocus-beds. It is impossible for any who do not see them to conceive their extraordinary beauty, shining out clear and bright in many places to the extent of twenty acres, one entire bed of lilac flowers. Not a faint tint of colouring, but as bright as the young green grass, with which they so charmingly contrast. There is another charm attached to these flowers besides their beauty, and it is the pleasure they afford to children. You see them flocking down, as if to a fair, all day long, rich and poor carrying their little baskets full, and their hands and pinafores full, gathering their thousands, and leaving tens of thousands behind them; for every day brings up a fresh supply.

Sneinton, which must be pronounced Snenton, was in the days of William Booth's boyhood a suburb of Nottingham; but with its windmills, wooded hills, generous views over a gentle valley, and fields that were yet unblackened by factory smoke, it preserved something of the character of a hamlet. It was, however, a crowded place in certain parts; and the house to which Samuel Booth moved on his coming into the district was closed in at the back by houses in the occupation of stockingers. William Booth could very easily escape to the fields and the woods: but in his home, from the first years of his infancy, he was in close contact with the noise and crowding of industrialism. Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind, as we have already said, that both the Sneinton and the Nottingham of those days were very different from the vast wilderness of ugly houses and dreary streets, of enormous factories and towering workshops, of roaring markets and incessant traffic, which now characterize the bigger, uglier, although more flourishing modern town.

The house in which William Booth was born is still standing, and is still known by its former designation, 12 Nottintone Place, Sneinton. It stands in a tree-shaded cul-de-sac, one of a small terrace of red-brick villas sloping slowly up to a modest knoll crowned by a substantial house which blocks the end of the street. The houses of this terrace are built back from the road, and are guarded by tall railings rising from a low brick wall. Number 12 is one of three houses which share a single gate in these railings, the path diverging inside the wall to the three separate front doors.

The interior of this dwelling deserves description. The front door opens straight into the parlour, without passage or lobby of any kind. An inner door, directly facing the front door, admits to a small square hall in the centre of the house, which is dimly lighted by a lantern in the roof invisible from below. A door in this tiny hall, opposite to the parlour door, gives entrance to a fair-sized scullery kitchen at the back; a staircase on the left descends to a dark basement and ascends to the two floors above.

On each floor there are two rooms, one in front and one at the back, the whole house being of an exceedingly narrow description. The parlour is some twelve feet by ten, and the room in which it is most probable William Booth was born is of like dimensions. From the outside, the house has a somewhat dignified appearance, and not at first does one realize that only three windows, one above another, belong to the front door, which has the three similar windows of the next house on its other side, after the manner of a double fronted house.

When I visited 12 Nottintone Place in the early months of 1913, making bold to ask if I might see the interior of No. 12, I found several pictures of General Booth hanging on the parlour walls. I inquired of the occupant, who was kind enough to let me see the house, whether she belonged to the Salvation Army. "Oh, yes," she replied with some warmth; "why, we owe everything to the Army!" Later she told me her story, and I think that never was tale so extraordinarily apt told in the birthplace of a great man.

Her husband had been a cashier for some years, she related, in the house of a Newcastle firm. He fell ill, seriously ill, and was unable to work. His employer kept his place open for eight months, and then felt himself obliged to make an end of the engagement. (He died, by the way, not long ago leaving over £400,000.) The clerk, his wife, and their six little children, in order to husband their slender resources and also to get back to health as soon as possible, removed to a village. The clerk grew slowly better in health, but his efforts to find employment were unavailing. Their money became exhausted. No one in the place knew anything about them. They were too sensitive to ask for help. They began to sell their furniture. Bit by bit everything went, till the family possessed nothing on this earth and no hope of anything beyond five pillows. They starved. The eyes of the poor woman filled with tears as she told me of that awful time. "I shall never forget those days," she exclaimed; "never, never! We had just five pillows, that was all, and our little ones were crying for bread."

One day the husband happened to pick up a copy of perhaps the most impudent and unworthy journal published in London. The copy contained a violent attack upon General Booth, charging him, among other things, with gross hypocrisy, and asserting that he did not spend upon the poor and needy the money he received for their assistance. The clerk, struck by this article, spent his last two coppers on two stamps, and wrote one letter to General Booth and another to the proprietor of this paper, telling his story and asking for help.

"By return of post," said the woman, "we got a letter from General Booth--such a kind letter!--saying it was shameful that a man with references such as my husband's should be out of work, and telling him that an Officer would call and inquire into his case the next day. We never heard from the paper at all! But next day an Officer of the Army called; and the Army took charge of my children, they gave my husband work, and they carried me off to one of their nursing homes, where they wouldn't let me do a stroke of work, though I begged them to; they said that I must be nursed back to health and strength. It was wonderful. I never experienced such love in my life. Oh, how kind they were! Fancy, not letting me do any work, not a stroke! Ah, I learnt much in that Home. And, wasn't it a funny thing?--soon after they sent us to Nottingham this house fell vacant, and nothing would content my husband, who had also been converted in the Army, until we had taken it. So here we are, living by chance in the very birthplace of the dear General, all Salvationists, and my husband working heart and soul for the Army,--we who must have died of starvation but for General Booth!"

In this house, then, William Booth, the greatest religious force of modern days and one of the most picturesque and heroic figures of the nineteenth century, was born on the 10th of April, 1829--the birthday of Grotius and William Hazlitt. Nineteen years afterwards, in connection with a Chartist insurrection, the name of this day became a phrase, "almost the only one applied in England, in the manner of our French neighbours, as a denomination for an event"; but happily, as the chronicle records, "the Tenth of April remained only a memory of an apprehended danger judiciously met and averted."

Two days after William Booth's birth, no time being lost at that period to secure either immediate regeneration or a Christian burial in case of death, the infant was baptized at Sneinton Church. The entry in the parish register reads as follows:

William, son of Samuel Booth, Nottintone Place, gentleman, and Mary his wife. Ceremony performed by George Wilkins, D.D., Perpetual Curate, Vicar of St. Mary's; baptized 12th April, 1829.

Samuel Booth is described by one who knew him as "tall and fine-looking." He was noticeable for dressing in the fashion of the Quakers, wearing a drab-cloth suit, a cut-away coat, and knee-breeches. Very little is known about him, and what is known only tends to deepen the mystery which appears to have surrounded him in life, even to his own children. On meeting a Sneinton contemporary in his extreme old age, the first greeting of General Booth was a question concerning his father. "Tell me something," he said, taking his friend's two hands in his and holding them vigorously in his own, "about my father; I want to know about him." From a paper he left behind, as we shall see, it is quite evident that he had no clear notions in this matter. He spoke often, and eloquently, of his mother; seldom of his father, and then with a note of uncertainty--sometimes with unwilling harshness, sometimes with a too evident effort to discover a virtue. "Criminal instincts?" he exclaimed to me once in a discussion on heredity; "why, we have all got them. I have got them. My father was a Grab, a Get. He had been born in poverty. He determined to grow rich; and he did. He grew very rich, because he lived without God and simply worked for money; and when he lost it all, his heart broke with it, and he died miserably. I have inherited the Grab from him. I want to get." And his arm shot forward, the hand clawing at the air, to signify that he wanted to "grab" souls and get for them the treasure of eternal life. But there were other occasions when he sought to show his father in a kinder light, though his honesty always forced him at the last to emphasize the avariciousness and worldliness which had embittered his own childhood and brought his mother to suffering and poverty.

From the papers and memoranda left behind by the son, it would be quite possible to present two entirely different portraits of this father, the one almost pleasing, the other almost forbidding; and I think it is significant of William Booth's character, an index indeed to his whole life, that there should be this perplexing contradiction in his very earliest memories, in his very latest judgments. For William Booth was always struggling against the two antithetical qualities of his nature--a loving, warm-hearted, generous sympathy, and a rigorous, unsparing, religious honesty. At one moment he hungered to see only the good in human nature; at the next, he was stung to a passionate indignation by its badness---its deadness to God. In his generous moods he would speak with a broad and embracing charity, a large and kindly tolerance of mankind; in his moods of realism and intellectual honesty he could not find words sharp and piercing enough for the evil of the world.

It is also necessary to keep in mind, not only as touching his memories of his father and mother, but also in many other matters where his statements are under review, that William Booth belonged to a period when phrases were adopted without analysis and language was often used with an uncritical liberty. I have been over many of the religious magazines of the period, and studied numerous sermons by preachers of some standing at that time, and in numerous instances I have been struck, occasionally shocked, by the intellectual poverty, the rhetorical bombast, and the disagreeable sanctimoniousness which characterized much of the religious writing and preaching of that generation. William Booth never used a cant phraseology; he was one of the most honest, downright, and straightforward men that ever lived; but in his impatience to be at work saving the lost and rescuing the sorrowful, he did permit himself to use whatever language came quickest to his service, and seldom, I think, possibly never, set himself to acquire a nice carefulness in his terms, a judicious and a critical handling of the current phraseology.

"My father," he says in one place, "appears to have been a man of considerable force of character--of a high spirit, and a noble sense of truth and honour, combined with a strong desire to get on in the world." In another place he says that his father "knew no greater gain or end than money... used to task my patience to the utmost capacity by making me read to him . . . early part of his life spent in making money, latter part in losing it . . . a very unsatisfactory life." And speaking of his own childhood he says that he never received any help from his father, and declares that his early days were "blighted and made more or less wretched" by the ruinous condition of his father's affairs.

When he said that his father possessed "a noble sense of truth and honour," he was no doubt thinking of how Samuel Booth "became a bondsman, for a considerable amount, for a tradesman, who afterwards became bankrupt, and left him to pay the money, which he did, every farthing." "The punctual discharge of this liability," says William Booth, "precipitated the breakdown of his fortune. It was the last feather." In recalling this act, evidently at a generous moment, he seized the opportunity to speak of his father in such a manner as clouded out the sadder qualifies.

On the other hand, in moments of strict and courageous honesty, eager to impress upon men the danger of a life devoted to money-getting, he forgot the act which he could praise, and thrust forward, chiefly as a warning to others, only those miseries and deprivations which his father's avarice had inflicted upon his mother, his sisters, and himself.

One judges from these statements, when they are brought into relation with the impression made upon other people by those early days in the Booth family, that Samuel Booth was a man of business, honest where the law was concerned, just in his dealings, but with little conscience in his speculations; a man rather silent, selfish, and unfriendly; in his later years not kind to children, not interested in his family; dead to culture, indifferent to society, careless of religion.

William Booth's notes about his father suggest other qualities. I find, for instance, these disjointed memoranda:

Incident to show his enterprise. The purpose of his life to get money. Character. Perseverance. Enterprise. Schemes: Enlisting militia in the large towns. Shipping crockery to Holland. Advice to me against partnership. No scholar. His schooling very short. Expelled the school because on some occasion put his schoolmaster to shame by reckoning faster with his head than he, the schoolmaster, did with his slate. This capacity was remarkably developed. Religiously blind. Never remember him in a place of worship. Insisted on our regular attendance at church. No concern until his last illness.

Elsewhere he says:

He began his acquisitive career when but a child, and in many ways, and for many years persevered in it, until he succeeded in getting together a considerable fortune, which he invested mostly in tenement house property. By this he reckoned on having done a good thing for his family. When I was born he was looked upon as a gentleman and was spoken of by that designation by the people about him. But about the date of my birth, bad times set in, heavy losses followed one on the heels of the other, making in early days a season of mortification and misery.

There is very much the same difficulty when we come to his remembrance of his mother. At one moment he speaks of her in a manner that contradicts the memory of one who remembers her in his childhood, and would almost persuade one to think that Mary Booth had been to him the most gracious, helpful, and perfect mother. In this case, we think, the contradiction arises not only from William Booth's' natural anxiety, in his most generous moments, to dwell upon only the good and beautiful side of his mother, but from his seeing in the Mary Booth of later life the Mary Booth of his tragic childhood.

It appears to me quite evident that William Booth's childhood was unhappy. I think he got no help at all from his father, and very little encouragement from his mother. Mary Booth appears to have been absorbed during the whole of her married life in the anxieties and disasters of her husband's speculations. She seems to have felt her poverty acutely, and to have shrunk from the world in consequence. She worked for her children, she nursed her husband in his last illness, she did all she could to avert the final catastrophe of ruin; but she was a sombre, sad, silent, and tragic figure in that threatened home. William Booth says that he got no help, as regards school work, in his home. He says that no one told him anything about religion. He speaks of his early days as "a season of mortification and misery." He makes it clear that his childhood was dark and unhappy.

But when he comes, later in life, to write of his mother, it is as if he were describing an angel:

I had a good mother. So good she has ever appeared to me that I have often said that all I know of her life seemed a striking contradiction of the doctrine of human depravity. In my youth I fully accepted that doctrine, and I do not deny it now; but my patient, self-sacrificing mother always appeared to be an exception to the rule. I loved my mother. From infancy to manhood I lived in her. Home was not home to me without her. I do not remember any single act of wilful disobedience to her wishes. When my father died I was so passionately attached to my mother that I can recollect that, deeply though I felt his loss, my grief was all but forbidden by the thought that it was not my mother who had been taken from me. And yet one of the regrets that has followed me to the present hour is that I did not sufficiently value the treasure while I possessed it, and that I did not with sufficient tenderness and assiduity, at the time, attempt the impossible task of repaying the immeasurable debt I owed to that mother's love.

It is plain that the Mary Booth who overawed her daughter's only friend--as we shall see presently--who shrank from the world, who invited nobody to her house, who was silent and frightening, and "like a duchess," did not become the Mary Booth of her son's glowing tribute until after the death of her husband, when the end was reached of the long and dreadful tension wrought by impending calamity which had ruined her married life. She was, doubtless, kind to her children, but in their earliest years she was clearly not a mother who watched over their education, sought their innermost confidence, and deepened their sense of religion. "She had no time to attend to me," is one of William Booth's confessions. Afterwards, no doubt, when the crisis was over and the ruin had come, she came out from the cloud, and shone upon their lives with a beauty and a warmth and a solicitude which wakened her son's gratitude. But it is clear from the evidence, and important to remember, that William Booth's earliest years were dark and sorrowful, and that in spite of a kind mother he went hungry and thirsty for something that was never given.

Ann Booth's only girl friend was a Miss Sarah Butler, now Mrs. Osborne, who is still living at a great age--she was two years older than General Booth--and happily for herself, and this history, with all her faculties unimpaired. She tells me that there was always a mystery about Samuel Booth. Mystery, she says, pervaded the whole house. Ann was sent to the best ladies' school in Nottingham, but she made no friends there except Sarah Butler, and Sarah Butler tells me that on no occasion when she visited the family did she encounter another visitor. "They gave me the impression, even as a girl," she says, "of a very proud and very reserved family who felt their position acutely, and wished to keep to themselves. Ann sometimes spoke to me of her parents' former home near Colston Bassett, giving me to understand from her mother's description of it that it was 'a very beautiful place.' She never mentioned her father. I scarcely ever saw him, but I know that he made no friends in the town."

Mary Booth, the mother of the evangelist, is described by Ann's friend as "a tall, proud woman--very proud and austere." She was handsome, dignified, and splendid; some one describing her as "like a duchess." Her eyes are said to have been very remarkable, and her portrait even in old age confirms this memory. "She had the most wonderful eyes," says Ann's friend, "the most piercing eyes I ever saw. You could tell when she was looking at you !" But she, too, appears to have been reserved and silent. "I never remember her speaking to me all the years I knew her and called at her house," says this one remaining friend of the family. "Very often when I went to call for Ann she would open the door to me; and she would stand aside for me to enter, close the door, and then pointing to a chair in the parlour, say, 'Sit down, my dear,' quite kindly but without any friendliness or any attempt at intimacy, going out to send Ann to me, and not returning to bid me good-bye. She was not so great a mystery to me as Ann's father, but I was always in dread of her, and felt that she was different from other people. I am quite certain that Ann felt the same thing about her. She never liked to talk about either of them. There was something about the family which puzzled me, and puzzles me still."

This effect produced upon the child's mind seems to have had no other origin than in the reserve natural to many people who come down in the world. The Booths had been well off; they were now reduced to poverty; they desired that as few people as possible should know of their condition.

Ann Booth, according to the same authority, was a very sweet, amiable, and gentle creature. But she was shy and never made friends at school. She took after her mother and was good-looking. She always had a smile in her eyes, and spoke in a gentle voice, rather timorously. She adored her brother William, as did the other sisters, and in his youth exercised some control over him, but she was not in any way a favourite sister. That William Booth returned this love of his sisters, and never forgot their devotion, is attested by the fact that on calling to see Mrs. Osborne in his old age he quite begged her to go and see his married sister, Mrs. Newell, making this request almost the object of his visit, saying that it was the one favour he had to ask her. "She is lonely," he said; "she is sometimes sad; it will be a great kindness if you go and see her." It is interesting to know that at one time people in the neighbourhood thought that William Booth would marry a sister of Sarah Butler, who shared his religious enthusiasms, was sometimes consulted by him, and to whom he showed more attention than was his custom to the other devotees who attended his earliest meetings.

At the back of the house in Nottintone Place, as we have already said, and pressing close up to the back-yard, were dwellings occupied by framework knitters. These houses are standing at the present day, and throughout the modern streets of Sneinton and Nottingham similar houses are still to be seen. They are two-storied, red-brick dwelling-houses, topped by a working story which gives them their peculiar character and makes them easily recognizable. Instead of the ordinary square or oblong windows of the two lower floors, the windows of this upper story are of greater breadth than height, and are usually glazed with more or less opaque glass. Behind these windows William Booth would have seen from his earliest years the dim spectral figures of stockingers at their frames and have heard all day long the noise of the machines: hockety--hockety--shee, hockety--hockety--shee. On one side of his house were the decent, pleasant, and somewhat pretentious villas of a suburban terrace--very quiet, sleepy, uneventful; at the back, those dismal noisy tenements of the workers, who so often starved and so frequently filled the streets with the clamour of incipient revolution. It was indeed a case in this house of a "Queen Anne front, and a Mary Ann back."

When the family lost money, they moved to a broader street but a poorer neighbourhood. Opposite to the new home in Sneinton Road, the site of which is now occupied by a picture palace, was a smallware shop, kept by a remarkable old man called Grandfather Page, and on one side of this shop was a narrow entry leading to a back-yard which contained a slaughter-house. At every turn there were dingy habitations occupied by weavers; traffic passed continually to and from the market-place; numerous public houses hung their signs over the uneven pavements; in every way it was a move for the worse, another comedown in the world.

Some way up this road, and not far from Nottintone Place, was The Paul Pry Inn, which still swings its sign, bearing the legend I hope I don't intrude. A young lover, after parting from his sweetheart late one night, was in so fervorous a mood of happiness that soon after passing this inn, all shuttered and asleep, he threw his stick into the air and accidentally broke one of the upper windows in the private house next door--the noise causing a momentary panic. His apologies, however, were accepted, and his excuse was considered more than adequate; but the story spread throughout the district and caused a good deal of amusement at the cost of emotionalism. Another and more tragic incident occurred close to the second house of William Booth. A number of boys were playing in the streets with oyster shells, and one of them flinging a shell harder than he intended struck a man in the face, cutting out his right eye.

William Booth, from the very first, was a ringleader and a captain among his fellows. "Wilful Will" was his nickname, and a very old lady, who perfectly remembers him at this time, said to me with considerable decision, "Billy was always rather forward--not aggressive, not violent, you understand, but forward;--yes, Billy was a forward lad." He was noticeable in appearance by reason of his long legs and his long nose. His friends spoke of his nose as "the Wellington." In the game of soldiers, a game which he played in his childhood more than any other, he was usually "the captain"--an omen, perhaps, of his afterlife. In spite of physical delicacy--he was outgrowing his strength--he appears to have been a leader in games and a boy of remarkable spirit.

Grandfather Page, who kept the smallware shop in Sneinton Road, remembered Samuel Booth striding into his premises one day demanding a cane. "I'm going," he announced, "to give my son the best hiding he ever had in his life." Grandfather Page, who exercised a wonderful religious influence in the neighbourhood, and who seems to have been a most amiable and gracious person, replied to this announcement: "Mr. Booth, you must not strike your son while you are in this temper. You are in no fit mood to punish a child. You must wait till your anger is gone." Samuel Booth bridled his rage, returned to his house, and said to William, "You may go and thank old Mr. Page for saving you from a good hiding." What the offence of William had been we do not know; but one perceives that he had spirit enough to aggravate and perhaps to withstand a father who inspired almost everybody with a sense of awe and who was choleric in his bouts of rheumatism.

It is interesting to know that the old man who saved William Booth from a flogging, and whose influence on his life is nowhere recorded, had already in those days started a system of religious services in the slums. This Mr. Page had been a rich man, a racing man, and a lover of wrestling. On his conversion he surrendered his business to his sons, and lived with great simplicity, devoting all his time to religious work. But, to the surprise of every one, quite late in life he fell in love with a young girl in his Sunday School and married her. In order to support the new family that came to him, the old man took a humble smallware shop in Sneinton, and there made his home. He had a garden far away from the house, being a great lover of flowers, and in this garden was a summer-house where he made tea for himself and sat meditating on religion. Later in life one of his rich sons by the first marriage sent a carriage to the smallware shop every afternoon, and the old man would drive up to his garden. When he became blind a rope was slung beside the garden path, and he would walk to and fro among the flowers he could no longer see, singing hymns, and guiding himself by a sliding hand-support on the rope. He used to say, "I have been walking by faith for over forty years, and have not known what it is to have a gloomy hour." He worked among "the neglected, the sick, and the sorrowful," started a ragged school in the slums, and prayer meetings in the cottages of the poor. During race meetings he stood at the roadside distributing tracts.

William Booth, although he makes no mention of Grandfather Page, was perhaps influenced by that gentle and unselfish life, for the old man was regarded as a character, and lived exactly opposite the Booths' house in Sneinton Road. When William Booth crossed the road to thank this old man for saving him from chastisement, there was probably a conversation, or a few words, which may have left some impression. In any case it is certain that William Booth must often have heard in boyhood of the strange work which Grandfather Page was doing so effectually in the slums of Nottingham.

He played hockey in the streets with a wooden nog, much to the annoyance of the village constable, who was a cobbler; he entered into the fun of Plough Mondays, when men dressed up in ox-skins with horns on their heads went about the town thrusting their faces into doorways and windows demanding money--very much after the fashion of Mussalmans during the feast of Mohurrum. Later he took to reading the poetry of Kirke White, to devouring three-volume novels, and to fishing--some one remembering how he once exploded with rage at the breaking of his rod. He may have seen the prize-fighter Bendigo--who was the brother of a well-known optician in the town--walking about the streets; a son of Grandfather Page, who once spoke to Bendigo when the mighty man was fishing in the Trent, became in consequence a hero among his mates. One may be quite certain that "Wilful Will" shared in all the games and excitements of Sneinton boys, and that he spent as much time as any of them in the market, in the fields, and on the riverside, having little love for the home which was dark with misery and oppressive with the sense of ruin. His ardent, passionate, and impulsive nature made him a leader among his companions, and looking back on those days, when there was no religious influence on his character, no restraining hand upon his tendencies, and no attempt of any kind to shape him nobly, he exclaimed, "I have often wondered I did not go straight to hell."

But his faults were evidently of no very serious nature, for he was able to declare with a good conscience, "I have heard my mother say that I never caused her an hour's real anxiety in her life." It would seem that his chief deprivation lay in the absence from his childhood of any high and gracious influence, with the consequent danger that he might drift into a dull and useless manhood, if not into actual wickedness.

Here was a child of fiery temper and impetuous will growing up without definite guidance, forming his own opinions from the chaos of ideas which presented themselves without explanation to his mind, seeking adventure with the most spirited boys of his acquaintance, taking the lead in every game and every device for killing time which these companions could hit upon, and hating more than anything else on earth the black unmoving cloud that darkened the dullness of his home. What could come of such a childhood? What could the Nottingham of that epoch make of this young citizen? One does not see the necessity for going "straight to hell"; but very devious, obscure, and improbable at present is the path to glory.

 

CHAPTER III

WHICH TELLS OF A DIFFICULT ROAD LEADING UP TO A YOUTHFUL CONVERSION

1838-1844

 

"CE qu'on dit de soi," says Renan, "est toujours poésie." He would have us believe that a man only writes of "such things"--his childhood and the least detail of his private life--in order to transmit to others his theory of the universe. He applauds Goethe for having chosen as the title of his memoirs, Vérité et Poésie; for, according to his thesis, autobiography, like biography, must of necessity partake of both truth and imagination.

William Booth, a less reflective and infinitely more active man than Renan, had no ambition to write the story of his life. He was entirely innocent of that miserable conceit--mesquine vanité---of which Renan complains. He was urged by others at the extremity of his age to set his memories on paper, and with much annoyance and a great deal of grunting half-humorous disapproval, the old, worn, weary, and near-blinded prophet, bowed down by the business of the world, essayed this most difficult task--a task only possible of success, perhaps, in the case of an exact thinker, like Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer, or a morbid and brilliant egoist, like Rousseau.

The result is deplorable, more deplorable even than "the dim disastrous details" contained in the famous Paper Bags of Professor Teufelsdröckh. Confusion is everywhere, and not only the confusion justly attributable to the fact that these attempts at autobiography had been used by other people before they came into the hands of the present writer. One encounters at the outset a scornful indifference to chronology; unbridgeable voids of silence at those very junctures where meticulous narrative is essential; a welter of propagandist eloquence and octogenarian reflection where a single incident or one clear natural phrase would be invaluable; and throughout this dismembered and amorphous scrap-book of memory there is a spirit of revolt, the writer struggling to escape from himself to the work that was more to him than life.

Unfortunately, because he could not think himself out of the language of religious fervour, he exemplifies the truth of Renan's epigram, that what a man says of himself is always poetry. In his case there was no patient stooping of the ear to catch from the deepest fathoms of his heart trembling vibrations from the sea-buried city of his childhood--the bells of those faery churches still calling to worship the faithful who could no longer hear them. Rather was he a much busied man of affairs, practical and impatient, hard-headed and beset with a thousand troubles, who in a hurried moment seized upon his past with a violence which at once scared and scattered delicate memories to the four winds of heaven, and began at once to expound his theory of the universe from the cradle to the satchel, and from the satchel to the shop-counter.

It would seem, though I can find no confirmation elsewhere, that during William Booth's infancy the family removed for a time to Bleasby, where Samuel Booth apparently attempted to make money at "fancy farming." William Booth says that he learned his letters at the village school, and was presently sent to a boarding school at Southwell, the favourite residence of his namesake the fifty-first Archbishop of York. At six years of age the family returned to Nottingham, and the boy, who was encouraged to believe that he had a gentleman's prospect before him, was sent to a good school kept by a Mr. Biddulph. Ann, it will be remembered, was learning to be a young lady at the best ladies' school in Nottingham.

William Booth has nothing good to say of Biddulph's School. "No stimulus," is his laconic judgment. But his father had determined that he should be a gentleman; Biddulph's School was the select academy of Nottingham, and to Biddulph's School therefore he had to go. He complains, "Mr. Biddulph never fairly woke up my ambition to learn until the year before leaving." He records a breakdown in his health with the explanation, "school hours too long."

He remembers signing the pledge at six or seven years of age. He kept it--"no teetotal friend near me"--until he was thirteen, when his mother, who believed, in common with nearly everybody else who passed at that time for a sensible person, in the health-giving virtue of beer, insisted upon her delicate son taking alcohol as "medicine."

During his schooldays there was a serious crisis in his father's affairs. Mrs. Booth had to make a journey to Derby and Ashbourne to see some mysterious gentleman, probably to gain assistance for her husband. She took William on this journey; and he writes of that event: "Walk to Ashbourne. Coach gone. Walk of eleven miles. Last mile an hour. Gentleman not to be moved." A dismal journey for a young child, the memory ineffaceable at eighty years.

There was no religious atmosphere in his home at this time, but the children were sent on Sunday to the parish church of Sneinton. William Booth was not attracted by the services; they gave him little notion of religion and its relation to the soul. But he remembers the clergyman, who was something of a character, and perhaps, in the social sense of the word, the only gentleman in the neighbourhood.

Parson Wyatt was a tall, dark-haired, solemn-visaged, ruminative man, who jerked his head as he walked, and moved about his parish, chin to breast, lost in remote reflection. He was thought to be a Puseyite, and there was opposition in the parish to his innovations. But a certain Wesleyan minister remembers him as a sincere and a good man, one who was friendly with the dissenters of his day, and a clergyman who truly and earnestly sought to do his duty. William Booth himself says that this Mr. Wyatt was "no doubt a good man according to his light," adding, however, the characteristic judgment:

But his rueful countenance and icy manner all seemed to say that his performances meant--"Do as I advise, or not; be what the prayers have asked that you might be, or not; do what the Scriptures have said, or not--it does not matter very much whether you comply with these requirements or not." He may have felt a great deal more than this, but it did not make any very great impression upon my boyish mind, and, so far as I can remember, I do not think that the bulk of the congregation were ever carried very much further by what he said.

It is of course extremely doubtful whether the boy felt any more need for religious instruction than the schoolboy of Anatole France who invented sins in order to satisfy his confessor:--"The first difficulty is to find them. You may perhaps believe me when I tell you that, when I was ten, I did not possess the gift of self-analysis in a sufficiently marked degree to enable me to make a thorough examination of my inner consciousness." William Booth was no doubt perfectly satisfied with the ministrations of Parson Wyatt at the time, using the church railings for thrusting his head through--the game consisting in getting it back again--playing in the churchyard, looking about him during the services, and only voting it a considerable bore that he had to attend these religious services at all. It was not, perhaps, until much later in his life that he became aware of Parson Wyatt's deficiencies.

But he did become aware, even as a child, of something lacking in his own life. His first religious impressions came from one of his cousins, a Methodist named Gregory, who was a humble shoemaker. William Booth was struck by this man's "separate and spiritual life." On one occasion Gregory said to him, "Willie Booth, do you know that religion is something that comes to you from outside of you?" This idea haunted the boy, and repeating it later on to his minister, he was told that he would soon be teaching in the Sunday School! He remembers, too, that a great impression was made upon his mind by the singing in Sunday School of the hymn, Here we suffer grief and pain; the idea oppressed him and gave a new turn to his thoughts. His cousin's persistent religiousness made him later on "a sort of teacher"; and this, he says, was "an altogether new influence." But he complains, even after this beginning, that no one ever spoke to him about the spiritual life. "I do not remember," he says, "a direct word about my soul--the necessity and possibility of my being converted---or of encouragement being spoken to me up to the date of my conversion, and very few afterwards."

His father, he says, was "religiously blind"; his mother's moral instruction in those years was, "Be good, William, and all will be well." Parson Wyatt never spoke a direct word to him; no one, not even Cousin Gregory in the Sunday School, ever attempted to get at the innermost privacy of his soul. The first faint beginning of that revolution in his personality which was to have so wide and wonderful an effect for mankind was simply a feeling in his childish consciousness that Cousin Gregory lived a separate and spiritual life. He does not go back for his first religious impressions to a prayer learned at his mother's knee, but to an indefinable, incommunicable reverence in his mind arising from contact with a humble shoemaker who, though he said little to the boy in a personal or direct way, conveyed a feeling to the child's soul of respect for the spiritual life. "Religion is something that comes to you from outside of you."

This feeling, however, was destined to fade; and the hymn and its tune, Here we suffer grief and pain, ceased to haunt his mind. He says he grew "utterly regardless with respect to religion," that he "altogether settled down in the uttermost indifference," that thoughtlessness would be the best term to describe his state at that time. But he avers that he can remember "an inward dissatisfaction with his condition." "My heart," he says, "was a blank."

He acknowledges that he was wilful, headstrong, passionate. He was allowed to have his own way. Mischief he underlines in the disjecta membra of his reminiscences as the spirit of his boyhood. He would do anything for fun. Among his playfellows he was a lord of misrule. Nevertheless this devotion to mischief of every kind went hand in hand with a love of reading. He was affected by poetry--the Night Thoughts of Young, and the poems of Kirke White. He also read many novels, as we have already said, and he gives us a hint that his favourite authors were Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper. He complains of that period, "There was no one to direct me." He considered on reflection that he was saved from ruin in boyhood by the financial sorrows of his family. "Doubtless the trials of my early days caused by my father's failing fortunes had a beneficial effect on my character. I felt them most keenly; it is not too much to say that they embittered the early years of my boyish life." Always there is the shadow of the father on his childhood. He might play mischievously in the churchyard, go gratefully to fish in the Trent, bury himself in poetry and novels, dream of greatness in manhood--for he was decidedly ambitious--but always his thoughts, his hopes, his headstrong audacity, and his cheerful games were darkened by the shadow of that silent and unlovable father going steadily down to ruin.

A strange incident occurred while he was still at school. A lady and gentleman passing William Booth while he played in the streets would turn so often to look at him that at last he became aware of their interest. He would look up at them as they appeared, and watch them as they passed on, wondering what it was that caused them to regard him so affectionately. One day they stopped and spoke to him, the gentleman asking how he was getting on at school. The lady then made it clear why they were interested in him. Her eyes filled with tears, as she told the boy that he greatly resembled their son whom they had lost by death.

After this a friendship sprang up between the old people and the boy. They asked him to their house, treated him with the greatest kindness, and would even have adopted him. They were Wesleyans, and, with his parents' permission, occasionally took him to chapel. This was his first introduction to Methodism. "My religious training," he says, "was nil"; and he adds that attendance at this chapel made some slight impressions upon him, but nothing more.

Then came an event that did away with every thought about religion. The calling in of a mortgage precipitated his father's ruin. The family was plunged into poverty. "The purpose of making me a gentleman," says William Booth, "was defeated." He was taken away from school and sent into business. He was thirteen years of age.

To the end of his days William Booth could seldom bring himself to speak freely of his first acquaintance with business life. There is no doubt that the memory was a sad one. He shunned it. In all his writings I can find no direct reference to the nature of this employment. He speaks always of "a business," or of "a trade," never once can he force himself to say outright that the business to which his father apprenticed him was a pawnbroker's. And yet there cannot be any doubt at all that it was the associations of this business which had a determining effect upon his after life. He became deeply acquainted with the misery of other people. There had been misery enough in his own childhood, but it was a form of misery which isolated him from the world. He felt his position, and knew that his parents endeavoured to hide their poverty from their neighbours, as though all the neighbours were respectable and prosperous, they alone poor and struggling. But now he learned that many other people were fighting against poverty, and grew to know that suffering and sorrow, deprivation and shame, positive penury and positive want, drag their net in a wide sea of human misery.

Furthermore, it is also certain that the subsequent shame which he felt for his work deepened in his soul a longing for a life more beautiful and more satisfying, embittering his bitterness still further, agitating his unrest still more violently, and driving him more and more outwards from himself, outwards from that centre of his consciousness where all was dark, unhappy, and without peace.

Why did his father choose this particular business? Because, says William Booth, "he knew no greater gain or end than money."

The boy had been trained to regard himself as a gentleman's son. He had been told that his father intended to make a gentleman of him. He was adored by his sisters. He was the leader of his playfellows. He had been sent to a good school. He was in every way something of a hero. And now, at the age of thirteen, he was told that he must go and work for his living, and learned that he was to serve in a small pawnbroker's shop situated in the poorest part of Nottingham.

His father had a talk with him. He held forth to the boy the allurements of money. He told him it was a business that paid well, a business by which fortunes were not only easily but quickly made. He counselled his son to give all his attention to the work, and keep ever before him the prospect of setting up for himself, avoiding partnerships.

William Booth was only a boy. The business promised freedom from school. He liked the idea of earning money. "I went into it," he says, "with a will." Then he adds the characteristic notes: "My after hatred of the trade. A proper estimate of the business. The use and abuse of it." He also remarks that this work "continued my association with the poorest and lowest."

He was too honest a man not to perceive that pawnbrokery has a good side--a side, indeed, which is of distinct benefit to the poor. His full dislike of the trade came to him after his actual experience of the business. He himself had enormously developed when he perceived the deadening effect it is apt to exercise on the highest sympathies of human nature. He disliked it, there is no doubt, more in his old age than in his youth; in his youth it was an interruption of his spiritual life, a disagreeable dislikable employment, but not a thing of loathing or disgust.

At this time he made companionships whose influence, he says, was anything but beneficial. "I went downhill morally, and the consequences might have been serious, if not eternally disastrous, but that the hand of God was on me in a very remarkable manner." One must bear in mind that this memory was written many years afterwards, and one may be forgiven the doubt if the boy of thirteen had really gone very far down the hill that leads to moral disaster. It is more probable that the phrase means carelessness in ideas, frivolity in conduct, and indifference to religion.

He had not been a year in this shop when he was hurriedly summoned from his bed one night and told to come quickly, for his father was dying. This was in September, 1842. Samuel Booth had manifested spiritual concern in this last illness, chiefly through the persistent appeals of "Cousin Gregory." He was at last willing, he at last had time, to attend to religion. "Very sincerely," the son believed, "he turned his heart away from the world that he thought had used him so badly."

The Sacrament was administered. The group round the bed sang Rock of Ages. Samuel Booth committed his wife and children to the care of God, and died in peace. "So ended," wrote his son, "his career--devoted to moneygetting." It was a death-bed repentance. "Though this skin-of-the-teeth sort of business of getting to heaven is to be in no ways recommended, yet because he impressed me and all else who knew him as such a real honest-hearted man according to his light, and seeing that the transaction was in keeping with his character, and therefore a reality, it is a ground of hope concerning my meeting him again where fortunes made shall be lost no more."

He says in another place, as we recorded before, "Deeply though I felt his loss, my grief was all but forbidden by the thought that it was not my mother who had been taken from me."

No doubt the death of his father made a deeper impression upon his young mind than he remembered in his old age. One does not think that any child, but particularly a child of this temperament, could be called suddenly at night to the death-bed of his father, could witness and share in the spontaneous service at the bedside, and finally behold, in the wavering and ghostly candle-light, the solemn almost terrifying mystery of death, without thinking of his own soul and the life beyond death as it touched him in his innermost thought.

Certain it is that with no other change in his circumstances, with no help or guidance from any other creature, William Booth began from this time to be more interested in religion. He had almost parted company with the Church of England, and was now a frequent attendant at Wesley Chapel. He formed more reasonable friendships. His life began to be coloured by the religion of other people. Among these friends was one who outlived him, a Mr. Newbold, who remembers William Booth, and recalls how he met him one day, "near to Broad Street," and asked him to become a member of "Brother Carey's Class." William Booth consented, and joined this class in the Chapel, which was "led," as the Wesleyans say, by a Mr. Henry Carey--a very good and upright man of considerable position, whose wife took some share in his ministrations.

In the notes which he left behind him of this period, after remarking that he got nothing but impressions from the services in Wesley Chapel, and making two strokes after the full stop as if to indicate an emphatic termination to this part of the story, he sets down the name, Isaac Marsden. But nowhere else in these records does he again mention the name, and one would be left to conjecture whether Isaac Marsden definitely began the new chapter in his life, or was only a ghost haunting the dim horizon of his oblivious past, but for a reference to the matter in a book called Isaac Marsden of Doncaster, where the author quotes William Booth as saying:

 

I shall never forget the words I first heard from Mr. Isaac Marsden. I was walking out one evening with two friends at Nottingham, when I was fourteen years of age. Mr. Marsden was conducting special services at a Wesleyan Chapel, and at that time no one could hear him who had any belief in the great truths of the Bible without being deeply impressed and stimulated.

We entered the Chapel late--in the dusk. I could hardly see the speaker; but just at that moment he was saying, "A soul dies every minute."... I have little doubt that, but for my two friends, I should have stayed that very night and given my heart to God.

 

Inquiry leads one to surmise that Isaac Marsden gave to William Booth his great intelligent notion of a vital religion. It is credible that Isaac Marden's influence not only led to the conversion of William Booth, but sowed in the boy's mind the seed which was destined to grow into a great tree overspreading the whole world. For Isaac Marsden was half a John Wesley and half a General Booth.

He is described to me by one who remembers him as a somewhat eccentric lay preacher whose head and mouth gave him a noticeable likeness to John Bright. He was "very strong mentally, a great saver of souls. A man of originality and power from the first; rough and wild before his conversion, a very lion in courageous faith ever after." Mr. Isaac Page has written an account of Marsden:

 

He preached on Sunday when I heard him, and followed up the work during the week. Each night an old-fashioned revival service was held--a fervid sermon, strong appeals, a rousing prayer-meeting, many penitents, and shouts of praise to God. In those days nothing was said about closing the meetings at nine o'clock. They continued as long as there were souls seeking salvation, sometimes till a very late hour. Not unfrequently groups of happy people proceeded homewards at midnight, making the stillness lively with their songs of praise.

He used to hold an early Sunday morning prayer meeting, says Mr. Page, "and if, as he returned, he saw a servant girl washing the door-steps, he would speak a word or two, and then down on his knees in the street to pray for her salvation."

He would speak to men in his walks, or in houses or shops where he called, in such fashion that they were fain to go and hear him preach. One day, as he went along the street, he saw a woman hanging out clothes. His eyes glanced along the line of garments, and he said, "I say, missus, if your heart is not washed cleaner than those clothes, you'll never get to heaven."

He was devoted to children, and carried sweets in his pockets when he went to give a Sunday School address. He would teach them a little prayer to say daily: "Lord, make me good, and keep me good; and bless Isaac Marsden."

 

Such a man must have had some fascination for William Booth. Nevertheless, when he came to look back on those far-off days, William Booth could recall no penetrating word addressed to his soul, no arresting hand laid upon his throbbing pulses. He could see nothing of human agency in the new-birth which was then shaping in his soul. One thinks, however, that a more rigorous examination of his memory, with the name of Isaac Marsden as a clue, might have led at least to some modification of this opinion.

"Although the change that came over me was sudden," he says, "it was nevertheless reached by stages. There was the realised superiority of the religious life over the purely worldly form of existence which I had lived so long." (The reader will remember with a kindly smile that the worldly form of existence had extended to fourteen completed years of troubled childhood.) "Although my heart was very largely unaffected by the form of service in which I joined, my mind was nevertheless convinced of the rightness, and dignity, and profitableness of the service of God that was set before my eyes. I realised its satisfying nature, and, consequently, I gradually became convinced of its superiority, and, more than this, a hunger sprang up for its realisation. Whatever the circumstances that may have led to my conversion, that conversion was a definite and decisive event in my history. I was utterly without any experience of religion; in fact, wholly given up to a life of self-indulgence."

The reader will remember the caution I ventured to express in the last chapter concerning William Booth's memories of the past and also concerning his phraseology. It is surely misuse of language to speak of his boyhood as "a life of self-indulgence," and to say that he was living a "purely worldly form of existence." This is self-evident. And it is also very probable that his other recollections of this important period of his life are saturated with the Aberglaube of later years. One cannot think that a boy between thirteen and fourteen years of age was "convinced of the rightness, and dignity, and profitableness of the service of God," or that he "realised its satisfying nature, and consequently... became convinced of its superiority." Boys do not argue. This is the language of the old man, the old man so used to that language of his maturity that he cannot quite think himself back into the moods of his childhood, moods destitute of a vocabulary.

It is plain that nothing more took place at this time in the boy's mind than a gradual pressure of its former unhappiness. He was unhappy, and he knew that he was unhappy. In chapel and in class he heard about the religious life which is said to take away unhappiness. He desired that life, because he was unhappy. He says, and there is no doubt a profound truth in the remembrance, "I wanted to be right with God. I wanted to be right in myself. I wanted a life spent in putting other people right." Yes; but all this was cloudlike, inexpressible, and vague in the boy's soul.

Almost immediately he adds: "How I came to this notion of religion, when I saw so little of its character manifested around me, sometimes puzzles me." It was of course --save only the humanitarian impulse which probably came later--a not uncommon experience of childhood. Children, as well as adults, are "tortured by divine things." They have a consciousness of unrest, a longing for satisfaction, a feeling towards and a longing after some mysterious beautiful and rapturous embrace which they feel is coming towards them from the invisible kingdom of dreams. They are inarticulate, they cannot express what they feel, and their longing is confused by a thousand influences from fairy-tale, legend, and belief in magic and witchcraft; but it is there, torturing their souls, a disbelief in the material world, a hatred of all dullness and mechanical exercise, a longing for romance, a repetition of the miracle.

One thing is certain. Throughout his childhood William Booth was overshadowed by a feeling of the nearness of God. He never knew the isolation of even a transitory atheism. Whether he was mischievous or good, whether he was "worldly" or unselfish, he believed in God. He was by no means in love with this faith, the sense of God by no means contributed to his happiness. But he was perfectly certain of God's existence. He speaks of "that instinctive belief in God which, in common with my fellow creatures, I had brought into the world with me." Oppressed by this faith, and with no guidance from any one, the boy whose whole childhood had been darkened and embittered, the boy whose nature was passionate, headstrong, impulsive, and charged with the spirit of leadership, came at last to long for escape from himself, determined to make a fight for his own peace of mind.

While this pressure of unhappiness and this sense of God's reality were deepening in his soul, he was devoting himself with natural zeal to the interests of his employer. He was quick, he was thorough, he was energetic, he was orderly and trustworthy. There was no thought in his mind of forsaking this business. He was ambitious, and he meant to get on in the world. Side by side in his soul were these two equal forces--one driving him to religious safety, the other urging him to material prosperity. Nothing of the mystic showed in his nature. No violent change in personality was manifest in these early stirrings of his spirit.

Soon after the father's death Mary Booth was obliged to leave the humble house in Sneinton Road. She was robbed right and left, says her son, by those who had the handling of her husband's ruined estate. It became necessary not only for her to leave the house in Sneinton Road, but to earn money for her children. She took a very small shop in one of the poor quarters of Nottingham.

A strange incident, of which William Booth never heard, occurred at this time. Opposite to the house in Sneinton Road, as we have said, was the smallware shop of Grandfather Page, and one of his sons, Isaac, now a retired Wesleyan minister, was a little boy when Mrs. Booth and her children moved from the neighbourhood. He said to me, "The first knowledge I had of the Booths' removal came in an odd way. I woke up one morning, went to the window of my bedroom, and looked out. I noticed something moving against the upper window of the house opposite, and calling my brother we both saw quite distinctly that a big white bird, like a swan or a stork, was beating its wings against the glass, jumping up and down as though struggling to get out. Then we observed that the curtains of all the other windows had gone, and knew that the house was empty. This was our first knowledge that the Booths had gone. And we never solved the mystery of the white bird at the window." This is one of those weird and gratefully mysterious stories of which no wise man will ask an explanation. But Mr. Page refuses to see in it a supernatural significance. "I have no doubt," he says, "that some travelling showman had taken advantage of the empty house to place the creature there for the night." Fortunately, no child will be satisfied by this interpretation of a mystery.

William Booth's wages as an apprentice were so meagre that he could do little to help his mother. Her establishment was a smallware shop, where she sold toys, needles, tape, cotton, and similar necessaries of a good housewife--a very humble business with few customers and small profits. It is significant that even in these altered circumstances Ann Booth's friend, Sarah Butler, a young lady of some social distinction, still remained a visitor to the family, and that the first friends of William Booth were young men of position who had known him in the days of Nottintone Place. The family still remained "proud and austere," as Sarah Butler says; but there was evidently a deeper warmth and an entirely new feeling of freedom in the spirit of the household. Ruin had come; a definite poverty had fallen; but the shadow of the embittered man had lifted and the family drew closer together.

In this same year, 1842, there was great excitement in Nottingham over a Parliamentary election. Mr. John Walter, of The Times, was opposed by a Radical reformer from Birmingham, Mr. Sturge. Feargus O'Connor descended upon the town, and the scenes in the street, the oratory of the hustings, the procession of rival clubs, and the language of the newspapers were as picturesque, violent, and grotesque as the more famous election in Eatanswill. In this case there was a very serious collision between the Chartists and the soldiers in the town; hundreds of men were arrested, and in several instances offenders were sentenced to six months, four months, and two months, with hard labour. In the same year Cobden and Bright came to Nottingham, and took part in a great Free Trade demonstration which further quickened the political feeling in the town.

William Booth was affected by this storm. He sympathized with the Chartists and attended their meetings. Mr. W. T. Stead says that he "grew up in an atmosphere of unrest, in a hot-bed of quasi-revolutionary discontent." It should be borne in mind, however, that almost everything demanded by the Chartists is now a commonplace of our constitution. William Booth was never a revolutionary, and became more conservative as he grew older. "My father," says Bramwell Booth, "did not believe that you could make a man clean by washing his shirt." In his fourteenth year, however, he was a hot reformer. "The poverty," says Mr. Stead, "that he saw on every side filled him with a spirit of passionate revolt against constituted authority. He was but a boy of thirteen when Feargus O'Connor first visited Nottingham, but in all the thousands the great Chartist orator had no more enthusiastic disciple than William Booth. He was a Chartist--a physical force Chartist of course, being a boy, and therefore uncompromising. He went to their meetings, he cheered their speeches, he subscribed to the Charter, and, if need had arisen, he would have been disappointed if he could not have shouldered a pike or fired a musket .... 'The Chartists were for the poor,' so the boy reasoned, 'therefore I am for the Chartists.'"

There was now a threefold pressure on the boy's mind. He desired to succeed in business and make money for his mother and sisters; he was enthusiastic for political reform--and somewhat ambitious to play the orator; he was. vaguely but hauntingly anxious to arrive at some religious understanding with his own soul. In his home he was distressingly aware of poverty; in the streets and in his shop he saw little else but poverty; and in his spirit he was conscious of another and more insistent poverty.

One can picture the boy leaving his mother's little shop early in the morning, probably rather hungry, and posting at a great pace to the pawnbroker's shop. He was tall beyond his years, exceedingly pale, with hair as black as a raven, and dark luminous eyes that flashed at the least provocation; a thin, pinched, pallid boy, who walked quickly with a raking stride, stooping at the shoulders, the arms swinging with energy. He would be one of the multitude hasting to work, pushing his way through a multitude unwillingly out of work, the noise of the frame-knitting machines in his ears, the sight of hungry children before his eyes. And one can see him walking back through the dark streets at eight o'clock at night, fagged, hungry, and tortured by his thoughts, but eager for something to happen, willing to take part in any vigorous action, never listless or inert.

So passed two years of his "blighted childhood." Occasionally he stole away from this wretchedness and forgot the pain of the world in his favourite sport of fishing in the Trent. Occasionally he was happy in the flowering fields, which he loved with a real and poetic fervour. Occasionally he threw himself into some merry adventure with the new companions of his employment. But the three steady things in his mind were: first, the determination to get on in the world; second, the ambition to work for political change; and, third, a longing to right himself with God.

In the year 1844, with no outside human influence of any kind upon his soul, this headstrong and impulsive boy determined to make that total and mysterious surrender of personality which is a condition precedent to what we call conversion. He was unhappy, and he desired to escape from unhappiness. Without language to describe his feelings, without the faculty to analyse his sentiments, he came to the decision that he would change the whole character of his life and divert the energy of his soul into a new channel.

"I felt," he says, "that I wanted, in place of the life of self-indulgence to which I was yielding myself, a happy, conscious sense that I was pleasing God, living right, and spending all my powers to get others into such a life."

In these words William Booth justifies the definition of William James that "to be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right, superior, and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities."

From the beginning of his life to the end, in spite of much language which might seem to exhibit religion only as an escape from punishment, only as an escape from wrath, only as an escape from eternal damnation, the heart and soul of William Booth's religion was happiness--an uprush of feeling from obstruction towards the central pivotal sense of unity with God, a triumphant and penetrating blessing, a victorious and suffusing solution of all sorrow, trouble, difficulty, and spiritual confusion.

He desired in his distracted boyhood "a happy conscious sense" that he was pleasing God.

"I saw," he avers, "that all this ought to be, and I decided that it should be. It is wonderful that I should have reached this decision in view of all the influences then around me." His employer, a Unitarian, "never uttered a word to indicate that he believed in anything he could not see, and many of my companions were worldly and sensual, some of them even vicious."

He speaks of his instinctive belief in God, and goes on to say, "I had no disposition to deny my instincts, which told me that if there was a God His laws ought to have my obedience and His interests my service."

Then follows a characteristic sentence: "I felt that it was better to live right than to live wrong; and as to caring for the interests of others instead of my own, the condition of the suffering people around me, people with whom I had been so long familiar, and whose agony seemed to reach its climax about this time, undoubtedly affected me very deeply."

It may puzzle some people to believe that a boy of fifteen was powerfully moved by the humanitarian spirit; and no doubt William Booth saw in the darkness of those early days, when he came to look back upon them, something of the reflected light of the great master-passion which transfigured his after existence. Indeed, this history will clearly show that he grew into humanitarianism, and that this humanitarianism was the developed fruit of his religion. Nevertheless, it is quite certain that the germ of humanitarianism was present in his soul from a very early age, and there is definite proof that he was conscious of it at the time of his conversion.

In all his papers dealing with this period of his life--and he made more than one attempt at autobiography--there is reference to the spectacle, in 1844, of children crying for bread in the streets of Nottingham. This is perhaps the most definite of all his youthful memories, transcending, of a certainty, any influence made upon his mind by the oratory of Feargus O'Connor. He could remember not a word of the fiery speeches he had cheered till he was hoarse; he could remember not a sermon he had listened to in chapel, not an address, not "an experience" he had heard in class; but the visual memory of ragged children weeping bitterly for food in the streets of the town was a picture printed on his soul with a sharpness that could not be blurred. This he remembered; and it will be seen that after his conversion he did at least one little act of humanitarian charity typical of the work which has ever since characterized and honoured the Salvation Army.

He had now reached that point when the soul determines to act with decision. He came nearer to the great step at the services in which he took part, at the occasional Class Meetings, where he answered the questions of his Leader concerning the state of his soul; but he could not bring himself to the actual deed of a public surrender. Something held him back. It was the memory of a sin. "The inward Light revealed to me," he says, "that I must not only renounce everything I knew to be sinful, but make restitution, so far as I had the ability, for any wrong I had done to others before I could find peace with God." The boy was now tormented by a guilty conscience. He carried about with him not only a guilty conscience, but a visible and tangible possession which upbraided him with the wrath of God. It was a silver pencil-case. And this silver pencil-case, going to and from his work, and all the time he was at his work, burned like fire against his flesh. Suddenly, though the approach had been gradual and, in a sense, dilatory, the struggle ceased. The moment came one night, at eleven o'clock, in the streets of Nottingham.

"It was in the open street," he says, "that this great change passed over me, and if I could only have possessed the flagstone on which I stood at that happy moment, the sight of it occasionally might have been as useful to me as the stones carried up long ago from the bed of the Jordan were to the Israelites who had passed over them dryshod."

He tells us what had hitherto held him back: "The entrance to the Heavenly Kingdom was closed against me by an evil act of the past which required restitution. In a boyish trading affair I had managed to make a profit out of my companions, whilst giving them to suppose that what I did was all in the way of a generous fellowship. As a testimonial of their gratitude they had given me a silver pencil-case. Merely to return their gift would have been comparatively easy, but to confess the deception I had practised upon them was a humiliation to which for some days I could not bring myself.

"I remember, as if it were but yesterday," he goes on, "the spot in the corner of the room under the chapel, the hour, the resolution to end the matter, the rising up and rushing forth, the finding of the young fellow I had chiefly wronged, the acknowledgment of my sin, the return of the pencil-case--the instant rolling away from my heart of the guilty burden, the peace that came in its place, and the going forth to serve my God and my generation from that hour."

He was happy, but happy in a frame of mind which may be described as one of dead earnestness. He is careful to say that he had no experience at this time of emotional religion. He looks back and envies those who have had that experience from the first. But he was happy. "I felt . . . that I could willingly and joyfully travel to the ends of the earth for Jesus Christ, and suffer anything imaginable to help the souls of other men."

There was something thorough in the effect of this conversion, and he was troubled by no disenchantment of reaction. "One reason," he says, "for the victory I daily gained from the moment of my conversion was, no doubt, my complete and immediate separation from the godless world. I turned my back on it. I gave it up, having made up my mind beforehand that if I did go in for God I would do so with all my might."

But one must be careful of this language.

There was scarcely a "complete and immediate separation from the godless world." He remained in his employment for some years, and was a very clever and industrious assistant to his Unitarian employer, as we shall see in the next chapter. He was still obliged to rub shoulders with his former companions of this shop, some of whom were "worldly and sensual, some of them even vicious." What he means is this, though the language is the language of a far later period, that, living in the same surroundings as before, and pursuing the same commercial goal as before, he now separated himself from the more questionable of his former companionships, abandoned all selfish amusement in his leisure moments, and was conscious in his soul of a solemn dedication of himself to high and lofty purposes. "Rather than yearning for the world's pleasures," he says, "books, gains, or recreations, I found my new nature leading me to come away from it all. It had lost all charm for me. What were all the novels, even those of Sir Walter Scott or Fenimore Cooper, compared with the story of my Saviour? What were the choicest orators compared with Paul? What was the hope of money-earning, even with all my desire to help my poor mother and sisters, in comparison with the imperishable wealth of ingathered souls? I soon began to despise everything the world had to offer me."

The language is not extravagant in the light of after events, but it is probably exaggerated as a contemporary expression of those first early movements of the boy's soul. There is no doubt that he relinquished the reading of novels; no doubt that he abandoned many of his former friendships; no doubt that he ceased to envy the oratory of Feargus O'Connor; and no doubt that he ceased to feel pleasure in the diversions of his former life. But one must be careful to remember that he still continued to be the cleverest and most dependable of his employer's staff, and gave no public signs of desiring a life with greater religious opportunities. The phrase, "I soon began to despise everything the world had to offer me," is somewhat too exuberant for this phase of his experience.

But the great step was taken. Nothing is more characteristic of the man than the simple, downright, blunt, almost horrisonant statement in which he declares that he had made up his mind, "if I did go in for God," to do so with all his might. To William Booth at that time, and to William Booth at the last stage of his long journey, the choice lay for all mankind between God and Devil. He believed emphatically in both. He could see no escape from belief in both. And he knew already, had known it throughout his "blighted childhood," that men definitely or indefinitely, consciously or unconsciously, by all their thoughts and by all their actions, with consequences visible here, and direr consequences unimaginable hereafter, serve the One or the other. To "go in for God," however the phrase may strike upon the ear, meant with him a rational decision for the Best, a whole-hearted loyalty to the Highest, and a life of logical self-sacrifice devoted to Righteousness. He had inherited from his father a commercial mind; the imagination of his mother's ancestry gave warmth and fervour to his disposition; the hard, vigorous, uncompromising spirit of the north inspired his soul. Such a youth could speak about going in for God without offense, and in speaking about it he would mean it with an iron logic and a fixed determination. His instincts told him "that if there were a God His laws ought to have my obedience"; and "one feeling specially forced itself upon me, and I can recollect it as distinctly as though it had transpired only yesterday, and that was the sense of the folly of spending my life in doing things for which i knew I must either repent or be punished in the days to come."

There was something of a bargain in his decision. Consciously or unconsciously, logic was at work in his soul. But chiefly he came to religion as an escape from the unhappiness, the unrest, and the dissatisfaction of his troubled heart; came to it, too, almost unhelped, unencouraged, and unbefriended. The child who had grown up with the idea that he was "to be made a gentleman"; who had seen the shadow of poverty deepening every day upon the shabbying walls of his unhappy home; who had been left to form his own friendships and find his own amusements in the playing-fields of a manufacturing town; who had been thrust into a very exacting and dispiriting employment at the age of thirteen; who had seen his father die, and helped his mother while he was yet a boy to move into a humble shop and begin life over again; who had witnessed the utmost miseries and depressions of a commercial reaction which spread ruin on every side; who had listened with enthusiasm to the oratory of so-called revolutionary politicians--this boy came of his own choice, so far as we can judge, to the religion which makes a supreme demand and confers an exclusive benefit. He came to it for release. He came to it, one may say, selfishly. And it is certain that he neither realized the demand it was to make of him, nor dreamed of the triumph to which it was destined to carry him.

In the year 1844 William Booth was a very youthful shop-assistant who had decided to live a religious life, and who was working exceedingly hard to improve his material prospects. Happiness had come to him, and he had escaped from the wretchedness of unrest by confessing to a sin that haunted his conscience, and by deciding to live henceforth in the knowledge and service of God.

No conversion could be simpler, less dramatic, and more natural; few in the long history of Christianity have brought a richer harvest to the whole world.

 

CHAPTER IV

BEGINNINGS OF THE NEW LIFE AND THE FIRST SERMON EVER PREACHED BY WILLIAM BOOTH

1845

 

"DIRECTLY after I was converted I had a bad attack of fever. I was brought down to the edge of the River."

This emphatic statement, occurring abruptly in the disjecta membra of autobiography, might lead the reader to suppose that conversion had been approached in a morbid and unhealthy manner, that the great submission had been made in a feverish or hysterical frame of mind. But, fortunately for the truth, the statement is typical of William Booth's indifference to chronology. The attack of fever did not come till nearly two years after his conversion, when he was seventeen years of age, and at the threshold of his extraordinary career. Conversion was followed, unfortunately for our present purpose, by about two years of autobiographical silence.

Three things alone are known with any degree of definiteness concerning these important years. We know that the chief friendship of his youth was deepened by his new religious experience; we know that the humanitarian instinct manifested itself in at least one act of touching kindness; and we know that romance for the first time knocked at the heart of this young voyager, whose chart was not yet marked for boundless adventures of quite other kind.

When the friendship of William Booth and William Sansom began is not clearly known, but it was probably as early as the days of Nottintone Place, where the two boys would have been close neighbours. Will Sansom, as he is affectionately called, was the son of a well-to-do lace manufacturer. His social circumstances were superior to William Booth's, his prospects altogether of a more enviable nature. Yet from very early days, just as Ann Booth was the chosen friend of Sarah Butler, so William Booth was the chosen friend of this fortunate young man; and in both cases, it is worthy of noticing, the friendship persisted when the Booths were reduced from a proud poverty to a staring and emphatic penury. Something there must have been in these Booths very attractive and admirable.

I asked Mrs. Osborne, the Sarah Butler of those days, if William Booth was at all violent in the first enthusiasm of his preaching. "Not in the least," she replied; adding, "if he had been, Will Sansom would have curbed him." This answer not only exhibits Sansom as a refined and gentle nature; it shows that he exercised a decided influence over William Booth.

Will Sansom is described as a very handsome young man, romantic-looking, and marked from boyhood by the intense and dreadful signs of consumption. He was one of those whom Maeterlinck calls the Pre-destined. "The men among whom they dwell become the better for the knowledge of them, and the sadder, and the more gentle." He was of the company "who look at us with an eager smile, and seem to be on the point of confessing that they know all; and then, towards their twentieth year, they leave us, hurriedly, muffling their footsteps, as though they had just discovered that they had chosen the wrong dwelling-place, and had been about to pass their lives among men whom they did not know." In this case the youth was profoundly religious. He had the deep absorbing faith of a Gratray, the fervour of a Pascal, the hastening evangelical eagerness of a Wesley. The nearer he approached his youthful death the more passionately did he seek to spread his knowledge of the truth. But always he was refined in manner, persuasive in method, winning and ingratiating by nature.

"We were like David and Jonathan," says William Booth; and Mrs. Osborne described to me how these two young men were always together, how they walked about arm-in-arm, how they both had the same stoop, the same pallor, the same brightness of the eyes. The friendship was noticed by other people. The young men were regarded by their circle as "bosom friends."

It is not often in biography that such a friendship as this is recorded, the deep and affectionate friendship of a young man prosperous and well-stationed with the apprenticed shop-assistant. Religion had much to do with it, but the first cause appears to have been the commanding character and extraordinary attraction of Wilful Will.

Some time after William Booth's conversion, these two youths were attracted by the friendless condition of a poor old withered beggar-woman who shuffled about the streets in horrid rags, endured the mockery of street boys, suffered the persecution of Nottingham "lambs," and slept in doorways or under hedges--a grotesque parody of womanhood. William Booth must have seen her a hundred times before his conversion, for she was a character of the streets; but it was not until after his conversion that her deplorable destitution, the infinite pity of her forlorn and friendless state, appealed to his compassion. He determined to rescue her from this state, and consulted Will Sansom as to the best way of ensuring her welfare. Then they went about among their friends, collected money, took a little cabin, furnished it, and installed the old woman within, making provision for her support. The most wretched creature, the most ridiculed and neglected of all Nottingham's miserables had moved the heart of William Booth to compassion, and upon such an one as this he made his first experiment in social work.

During this period in his life he imagined that his earthly happiness was bound up with the life of a girl into whose society he had been thrown for some years. She was the daughter of the old couple who had first introduced him to Methodism, the old people who loved him because he resembled their dead son. For a number of months William Booth walked about the world believing that he was in love. He probably discussed the matter with Will Sansom. He was elated by the discovery, and cherished the thought of this wonderful passion at his heart with a fervour of sentimentalism. The young lady sang well, and William Booth, who then could not sing himself, loved music very keenly. It was a great pleasure for him to sit and listen to the singing of this pretty girl, who was a little older than himself.

But before many amorous moons had waned, the young zealot made another discovery, as startling and much more liberating than the first. He discovered that he did not love this person at all, that she was not his inamorata, and certainly should never be his wife. It was a case of "calf-love," he says, and laughs it out of his memory. His only obsession was religion.

He does not seem to have suffered at this period from any healthy or unhealthy disquiet of soul. His disposition was too headlong and impulsive, his anxieties too outward and unselfish for moonings within the depths of his own consciousness. He was no mystic, and he was no prig; but he suffered, some men may say suffered all his life, from what Arnold called Hebraism. God was the supreme concernment of his life. Everything else brought into relation with this immense interest dwindled to insignificance. He had something of Carlyle's contempt for Art. Science had no vital attraction for him. The sports and amusements of mankind filled him with contemptuous impatience. So tremendous was his sense of God that he never questioned it, rarely scrutinized it, refusing to paralyse his devotion and his senses by a moment's incredulity concerning this subjective conception of the Infinite. He had one thought, to live absolutely in accordance with God's will.

In the year 1846, when he was seventeen, came the attack of fever which brought him "to the edge of the River." He had outgrown his calf-love, he was deep in the friendship of Will Sansom, he was still keen about succeeding in business, above all other things earnest in religion.

The visit of James Caughey, of whom a description is given in the first chapter, occurred at this time. William Booth caught fire from the flame of this revivalist's oratory.

He was deeply and pervasively influenced by the uncompromising realism of the American preacher. It may have been that his attack of fever was in some measure due to the excitement occasioned throughout Nottingham by this missionary. He went to all the services he could attend, he joined in the singing of some of Charles Wesley's triumphant battle-songs, he witnessed scenes of conversion which were extraordinarily exciting, and he saw in the lives of many of his neighbours the veritable miracle of new birth. Here, at last, was religion in action, the real and living religion of his dreams. He gave himself up to it, thought of scarce anything else, and presently was laid by with a raging fever.

While he tossed on his bed, over the dim, struggling, and shabby shop in which Widow Booth sold tape and cotton, a message was brought to him from Will Sansom--a message which very probably saved his life. Sansom sent word to him that he was starting an open-air mission in the slums of Nottingham, and bade him get well quickly and come and help him. Here was medicine and vocation in one! The message rallied the spirit of the sick youth; it was like a trumpet-call to his drooping soul; and he rose from his bed as soon as he had strength to stand, and went back to his work and out, for the first time, to religious activity.

More memorable in his life than 1844 was this year of grace 1846; and, fortunately, it is from this point that the stream of biography begins to flow with strength and certainty. If his souvenirs d'enfance are misted with a Lethean miasma, if his memories of boyhood are little more than a concordia discors, from his seventeenth year onward we possess almost every detail and every fact, almost every lineament and every expression, almost every thought and shade of feeling, for the composition of a faithful portrait. The life of the man begins from 1846; and it was a life lived so frankly and honestly, so far away from the morbid centre of self-introspection, so completely at that uttermost circumference of being where self is consumed in a passionate care for others, that one can be sure of a veritable likeness. No man ever lived who kept back less of himself from the gaze of the world, or who gave more of himself to the service of humanity.

Will Sansom had not long to wait for an answer to his message. "No sooner was I able to get about than I gladly joined him." But William Booth, the leader of everything, was shy and self-conscious of speaking in the open, or of speaking at all in public. He joined in the services, but would neither preach nor pray. Will Sansom sang, prayed, and preached. He was helped by a friend named Samuel Hovey, by Sarah Butler, and by one of her sisters who sang beautifully. William Booth contented himself with standing in the group, with singing in the hymns, with exclaiming Amen in the prayers, and with speaking privately to those who surrounded the company.

But the influence of David Greenbury effected a change. This evangelist from Scarborough, of whom mention has been made in the opening chapter, was the first man to realize the force and power of William Booth as a preacher. He was struck by Booth's earnestness, by the vigour of his personality, and by his remarkable appearance and emphatic manner. He urged upon the young man that it was his duty to speak, that he owed it to God to conquer his timidity, which was a form of selfishness. One of Booth's favourite hymns came to his assistance. He was haunted by the verse--

 

And can I yet delay

My little all to give?

To tear my soul from earth away

For Jesus to receive?

Nay, but I yield, I yield!

I can hold out no more;

I sink, by dying love compelled,

And own Thee conqueror.

 

With the same sudden abandon that had characterized his surrender two years before to the urgence of conscience, he now not only threw himself into the work of street preaching, but became the recognized leader of the group.

"The Meetings we held," he says, "were very remarkable for those days. We used to take out a chair into the street, and one of us mounting it would give out a hymn, which we then sang with the help of, at the most, three or four people. Then I would talk to the people, and invite them to come with us to a Meeting in one of the houses." Of Will Sansom he says, "He had a fine appearance, was a beautiful singer, and possessed a wonderful gift in prayer. After I had spoken in our Open-Air Meeting he would kneel down and wrestle with God until it seemed as though he would move the very stones on which he knelt, as well as the hearts of the people who heard him."

At this period in his life there was nothing of that humorous spirit which characterized so much of his later work. Sarah Butler says that his nature was rather "morose and melancholy." He was "tremendously in earnest."

There is still living in Nottingham a very old woman who knew the Booths in Sneinton, and remembers the first sermon preached by William Booth. She gave me an account of that sermon, and described the meetings in the cottages, her dim eyes shining with pleasure through their thick spectacles, her face illuminated by a deep joy.

"The first sermon he ever preached," she said, "was in Kid Street. I remember it very well. The Meeting was held in a small cottage. It was at eight o'clock at night, and he had come straight from his work. There was a box placed upside down on the table for a desk, with two candles burning, one each side of the Bible. The door stood open, and poor women came into the tiny parlour, bringing their own chairs with them. In the doorway was a group of men, afraid to come in lest they should be converted, but interested in this new way of preaching religion. They filled up the doorway, a dark little crowd that extended into the street. Will Booth's sermon--ah, how well I remember it!--was very gentle and tender, quite different from anything else I ever heard him say to the people, and so strange for a young man to preach that it almost made some of the women smile. He talked of little children learning to walk. He described how they toddled, and swayed, and came near to falling. He said how difficult a thing it was for little babes to learn the use of their legs, to trust their tiny feet, and to advance with courage. And then he asked if any mother, watching her child's first efforts to walk, would be cross with the infant's failure, would shout at it when it swayed, would sit still, unmoved, when it fell and hurt itself. Then he said that it was just as difficult to live a true Christian life, and that we should always be on the look-out for helping people, especially those who were only just beginning to live that life. He said it was wrong to judge them when they failed, and just as wrong to sit idle when they fell. We should run, and lift them up, and help them. Hard words would not help them; sitting still would not help them; we must go and do something to make it less hard for them to walk straight."

She told me, too, that she heard one of his earliest preachings in the open street. The scene was Red Lion Square, and he was surrounded by a crowd of poor people.

"That was a very different sermon!" she exclaimed. "He called out in his great voice that all the suffering and sorrow of the world came from sin. I remember how he said, 'Friends, I want to put a few straight questions to your souls. Have any of you got a child at home without shoes to its little feet? Are your wives sitting now in dark houses waiting for you to return, without money? Are you going away from here to the public-house to spend on drink money that your wives need for food and your children for shoes?' It was all like that. And then he read out the Wesleyan hymn which has the verse:

 

Misers! for you His life He paid;

Your basest crime He bore:

Drunkards! your sins on Him were laid

That you might sin no more.

 

I think there had never been such preaching in the open streets before. One of his other favourite hymns had the verse:

 

Outcasts of men, to you I call.

Harlots and publicans and thieves!

He spreads His arm to embrace you all;

Sinners alone His grace receives:

No need of Him the righteous have,

He came the lost to seek and save.

 

I remember, too, how he was insulted, and how calmly he bore it. Once, while he was preaching in Pump Street, a man who had stopped to listen suddenly shouted out, shaking his fist at the preacher, 'You liar! you liar! 'And Will Booth just looked at him, and said in a very soft, kindly voice, 'Friend, it was for you He died; stop, and be saved.' He was always like that."

There is another old body living in Nottingham who remembers those early days, a very rigid, ultra-respectable, demure, and eloquent spinster. Her brother was one of William Booth's earliest friends, one of the first to join the little group of street preachers. She spoke throughout our conversation with emphatic gravity, very plainly conscious of her importance, and maintaining an aspect of preternatural solemnity. "To begin with," she said, "Billy was rather forward." So far as my researches go, this old lady is the only person in the whole world who ever referred to William Booth as "Billy." He was sometimes called by his father in childhood "Bill," and among his associates he was known as "Will"; but no one else that I can find trace of ever ventured to speak of him with the extreme familiarity of "Billy." The lady seemed to use this name with a relish, as though it increased the prestige of her venerable position and diminished the world-wide fame of the great evangelist to a humility relatively suitable.

"You must not misunderstand me," she said; "he was not overbearing; he was not violent; he was not what you would call domineering; but he was forward, distinctly forward. Yes, he was a forward lad. You could never have kept him down. You could never have held him back. He was bound to push forward and take the lead in everything."

"Can you describe him to me?" I asked.

"Describe him? Who? Billy? Oh, yes. Well, he was what you would call nice-looking. I shouldn't say he was handsome. At any rate he was not so handsome as you, not nearly."

I protested--as well I might.

"He was too pale to be handsome," she continued critically, ignoring the protest. "He was not so handsome as you, but his legs were longer. I should describe him as a nice-looking lad. He was tall, yes, decidedly tall, and thin; remarkably so. He was clean-shaven in those days; he wore his hair long, it was the fashion then, and his hair was as black as coal; he had a stoop in his shoulders, and looked as if he had outgrown himself. I should say that he was perhaps something more than nice-looking. I should call him strange-looking, romantic-looking. If you saw him once you would never forget him. Of course his nose was very striking-looking. We always called that 'the Wellington.' A strange face, very; so pale, so white, and with all that black hair, and those piercing eyes--yes, a romantic face--decidedly so."

Her insistence upon the romantic character of his appearance prompted me to ask a question to which I had long been anxious to get an answer.

I began by asking if he had been surrounded from the first days of his preaching by a number of young ladies.

"Well, it began with one or two," replied the demure spinster, "but the number increased."

"Now, I wonder if you can tell me," said I, as non-chalantly as the circumstances permitted, "whether there is any truth in the story that he was in love with one of those young ladies?"

As though I had made a most scandalous suggestion, the venerable lady straightened her back, regarded me coldly, and replied with a trenchant scorn, "As for that, I will only say, speaking from a long experience of life, that the number of young ladles who imagine that every young man they meet is in love with them is only equalled by the number of young men who go about the world fancying that every young lady that looks their way is in love with them. It is a pity it should be so, but so it is. As for Will Booth, I never heard that he was in love with anybody, though there was some talk that he might make a match of it one day with a very sweet young lady who sang at his meetings. But I should be at a standstill, my dear sir, I really should, if I was to try and tell you the number of young ladies who were in love with him. He was a favourite. He was worshipped, as you may say. And I think he was certainly a very romantic-looking, attractive, and interesting young man."

The "very sweet young lady who sang at his meetings" was a sister of Sarah Butler, and although no mention is made of her in William Booth's autobiographical notes, it is probable that he did look upon this follower with a somewhat more particular and personal interest than the others. It is certain that he never spoke to her except about religion; it is certain that he did not in any way "keep company" with her; but in one way or the other his followers came to regard it as a possibility that William Booth and the sweet singer might some day make a match of it; while, many years after, when as a very old man he was reminded of this young lady, and told of the expectation which existed among the others, he smiled and made answer, "Ah, I remember there was such a person!"

It seems that after they had conducted their open-air meetings and finished their preachings in the cottages, this body of young enthusiasts would sometimes go for a walk before returning to their homes. But there was never, I am told, any mingling of the sexes on these occasions. "The men always walked together in front, and we would follow behind," says Sarah Butler. Conversation was about religion. Schemes for spreading Christianity were discussed, Particular sinners were marked down for personal appeals and private prayer.

"I remember, however," Sarah Butler told me, "one of those walks when we more or less travelled together, and conversation turned upon other things beside religion. Some one proposed that we should go and look at the new railway line that was being laid at Colwick. It was a wonderfully quiet night. The moon was shining. And it was summer-time. Well, we were very happy and elated. We loved the stillness, the fields, the woods, and the moonlight. We sang as we walked. We rejoiced in our happiness. And I think William Booth did walk with my sister, for a little time, but I can't be certain. However, nothing came of the walk. or of any other meeting. I used to think they were in love with each other, but I see now it was only a fancy. William Booth had no other thought in his mind at that time than preaching to the people and saving sinners from their sin. He was the most earnest and enthusiastic man I ever knew--he was really burning, really on fire, to save souls. He used to say that we were saved to save. He could not stand people who said their souls were saved and who did nothing to save other people. If he thought of my sister at all, it was only a passing thought. No one could make a romance out of it. I assure you he was too much in earnest about this street-preaching to think of falling in love."

We see this group of young people, preaching and praying in the streets, holding their little services in cottages, going for walks in sexual separation, whether with moon shining or not shining, meeting in chapel on Sunday, attending classes, discussing sermons and gossip of chapel life a group of earnest young lives conscious of God, conscious of God's demand upon them, and preoccupied with business of the next world--a strange and lonely group in Nottingham, making no great stir there, incurring some local ridicule, and occasioning some distinct alarm and misgiving in the strait minds of rigid chapel orthodoxy.

It would seem that the great humanitarian spirit of the Christian religion had not yet developed in the soul of William Booth. He was a member of the Church, he attended the services of that Church, and his labours were directed to preaching his gospel of salvation in order to save people from hell and bring them into membership with his Church. The Chartist was dead in him. The Methodist was very much alive. Years were to pass before he broke free from sectarianism, before he reached Christianity as a spirit that could not be bound, and before he perceived the concurrent necessity of social betterment with spiritual welfare.

In the lives of few religious leaders is growth more evident. He was haunted now and again, as we shall see, by dogmas and theological practices which had once formed part of his religious life, but he was never deeply perturbed by these old clothes of his youth, and in his normal moods he was conscious of no need for any theology in his service to the world but that which led men to the heart of Christ. He grew wonderfully, he developed amazingly, and at the end, though a certain hard and rigorous strain endured, his spirit was one of the sweetest, tenderest, most tolerant and gentle that ever longed for spiritual perfection.

He was asked, when he was an old man, by a friend of his youth if he still insisted upon some particular doctrine of his youth. The answer is a key to the man's soul. Tapping his friend impatiently on the breast with the back of his hand, he said, "Look here, when a fellow speaks to us like that we tell him to go and do something." This may have been uttered only as the expression of a mood, for he held this doctrine himself, but such utterance shows that his emphasis was upon service, not upon speculation.

But it was years before he could give such a great and splendid answer, an answer so robust with the health of true and manful religion. He himself had to grow to that answer. For years he was interested in such speculations, for years he was plagued by theology, for years he was blind to the natural and shameful causes of human misery; but, although to the end of his days he believed in such a doctrine as that of Entire Sanctification, and although he never tore up the documents of abstract theology, he certainly grew more and more impatient of egoistic introspection, more and more insistent upon work for God.

Nevertheless, even at this epoch in his life, there are signs of the wonders that were yet to be. One catches glimmerings of an original mind, flashes of a spirit that could revolt passionately from orthodoxy, and sparks of a soul that well might burst into flame for the salvation of unhappy people.

The respectable citizens who attended Wesley Chapel--good, solid Christians of the commercial variety, the gentlemen in broadcloth, and the ladies in bombazine, or some other notable material of the period guaranteeing moral value and financial stability--these goodly and satisfied souls were one Sunday morning astonished out of their senses by such a scuffling of broken boots, such a rustle of shoddy rags, and such a stentorous breathing of congregated misery as never before had desecrated their brick-and-mortar habitation of Wesleyanism.

William Booth had made himself an apostle to the lads of Nottingham slums; he had preached to them in the open, gathered a circle about him, and was on fire to bring them within the fold of the Methodists. If he was happy kneeling in the streets at night and praying with them, he desired to be happier still by praying with them on Sunday, praying with these ragged Roughs and Toughs within the consecrated walls of Wesley Chapel. And so it came about one Sunday that he marched his first regiment of the ragged and neglected into the aisles of this most respectable Temple, conducted them into the best pews he could find, and sat among them almost quivering with satisfaction and delight. But the effect of this invasion was not what he had hoped. The young enthusiast was called before Authority, was argued with, was instructed, and was finally told that he might bring these outcasts into the chapel only if he entered by the back door (invisible behind the pulpit) and seated his converts in obscure benches reserved particularly for the impecunious and shabby.

One of the most notable Wesleyan preachers of the present time cannot think of this and other incidents connected with Nottingham Wesleyanism, presently to be described, without an angry indignation. He can see perfectly well that if Hugh Price Hughes or many another Wesleyan preacher of later times had been minister of that chapel in Nottingham, William Booth would never have been lost to the Methodists. But I think it is truer to say that Hugh Price Hughes, and men like him, both among the Methodists and the Anglican communion, owe their enthusiasm and their democratic Christianity to the Salvation Army, and that this Army was too spontaneous and original an expression of religious experience to have grown up within any of the fixed and settled Churches.

As for this particular incident, plainly enough there is much to be said for the judgment delivered by Authority. One may be indignant about it from afar off, but to sit for hours among a company of unwashed, malodorous, and possibly diseased humanity is not an experience healthful for the body nor conducive to religious concentration. It is a merit in William Booth that he saw the validity of this objection; that, young and headstrong as he was, he did not immediately abandon the work; that, hurt and chilled as surely he must have been, he yet bowed to the ruling, accepted the judgment, and obeyed his religious superiors.

But he felt more and more the call of the streets. As soon as ever his work would allow, he was preaching to the miserables and outcasts of Nottingham, seeking sinners, interesting the indifferent, thundering the wrath of God against wickedness and transgression. He won one man who was famous in the town as a "character," the drunken, wife-beating, humorous-minded rascal, known as "Besom Jack," of whom mention has been made. This man had lived an utterly abominable life. He went about the streets selling brooms, and every penny that he gained in this manner was spent upon drink. His poor wife had to beg at the doors of her neighbours for a few used tea-leaves, which she boiled up afresh, and so lived, starving and terrified. Booth won this man, won him so completely that he became a faithful follower of the street preachers, working for them, helping them, saving the old companions of his drunken days, and devoting himself in his home to making amends for his past iniquity. His conversion created something of a sensation. It was not recognized as a miracle, but it was talked about as something either amusing or interesting, something for mockery and sneers, or for discussion and timorous questioning, according to the faith or no faith of the talkers.

"The leading men in the Church to which I belonged," says Booth, "were afraid I was going too fast, and gave me plenty of caution, quaking and fearing at every new departure, but never a word of encouragement to help me on. But I went forward all the same."

He remarks that there were many indications in those early events of the organization which he was destined to bring into existence several years afterwards. Not only was there preaching in the streets, not only was there a tracking down of particular sinners, not only was there a total insistence on the absolute necessity of a changed heart, but every opportunity was seized by the young enthusiast for striking the torpid imaginations of the people with the realities of spiritual life. One of his followers, for instance, a young girl of humble parentage, was brought to her death-bed; William Booth and his friends prayed and sang at her bedside; she died with the expectation of heaven shining in her face, and her funeral was made an occasion for triumph and rejoicing. To the end of his days he never forgot that funeral. He remembers that it was snowing, and he tells how a procession was formed in the white streets, and how the body of the girl was borne to her grave through the snowfall between rows of watching people, and followed by his regiment of helpers singing hymns of victory and joy.

So consumed was he by the passion for saving souls that reticence and restraint to him were like ropes about the legs of a starving man seeking for food. He was working hard for daily bread, it must be remembered, from early in the morning until seven, often eight, o'clock at night; it was only for a few dark hours that his fiery soul had opportunity for seeking the welfare of his fellow-creatures; all the passion and tremendous sincerity of his impetuous spirit, pent up during the hours of uncongenial toil, burst their bonds in the brief evenings of his ministration and made him what men call a zealot and a fanatic.

It is important to observe, however, that the thought of entering the ministry, of giving up everything for the preaching of religion, had not yet even occurred to his mind. He regarded himself as a layman. He considered that one of the first charges on his life was the support of his mother and sisters. He was very much in earnest about his future, terribly distressed by the extreme difficulty of earning a living. Again and again the complaint breaks out that he was stung with bitterness by the pitiful position in which he found himself placed--a position of bound apprentice to a niggardly employer, earning but a small wage, and forced to witness, he, the only son of his mother, the calamitous poverty of that shabby smallware shop in Goose Gate.

He had been sent to the best school in Nottingham; he had been encouraged to regard himself as a gentleman; the talk of his father had been all of fortune-making and fine living; until he was thirteen years of age it had never once occurred to him that he would have to work hard, and, working hard, find himself unable to support life. His mother was a proud woman, of better family than his father; his sisters were girls of strong character and impatient of poverty. He was galled by his helplessness, vexed with his destiny.

At the beginning of his religious zeal he was opposed by his family. His efforts to spiritualize the life of his home were met with impatience and counter-attacks upon his newfound theology. Presently he gained his elder sister, Ann; later he won his invalid sister, Emma; and later still Mary Booth, his mother, surrendered to his insistent appeals. But for some years he received scarcely any encouragement in his home, and at the beginning was definitely withstood and gainsaid.

Therefore we have the drama presented to us of a young man straining every nerve to support a family opposed to the divine interests of his innermost life, a young man committed to a form of employment extremely distasteful to his mind, who felt himself urged and driven by the Spirit of God to seek sinners and to save the lost, and who used every minute of his leisure in this work against the discouragement of his religious superiors and the opposition of his family. If those who later in his career did not scruple, but actually hastened, to attack this singular and pure minded man, charging him, among other sins, with hypocrisy and cant and self-seeking--if they had known of these first chapters in his religious life, had known of his courageous devotion, of his intense solitude of soul, of his manful struggle against forces which crush heroism and turn enthusiasm to bitterness and despair, surely they had laid their hands upon their mouths. He experienced in those years, and for many years afterwards, a ceaseless hindrance to the clamour of his soul; and, impulsive, masterful, and wilful as he was by nature, even while he pressed forward on the path of spiritual duty, he yet loyally bowed his back to the burden of necessity and carried his load with a stout heart. He not only helped, so far as he could, to support his mother and sisters, but he looked forward to the future with this objective always before his eyes.

 

CHAPTER V

WHAT HE BELIEVED AT THIS TIME

1845

 

IT is time to examine the theology of this seventeen-year-old youth, the theology which had changed the direction of his life and laid a powerful and constraining hand upon the impulses of his passionate nature.

At its centre this theology remained the religion of his long life, without change or modification of any kind. In the radius of its circumference there were changes--changes making for a less partial outlook on human life, and producing greater tolerance and deeper kindness in the heart of the man; but the centre was constant and unshakable.

He had been guided, he tells us, largely without human intervention, almost entirely by the Spirit of God, to perceive that the very soul of the Christian Revelation--making it a religion altogether different from every other religion and every other philosophy under heaven--is the divine miracle of conversion. And by conversion he understood a totally changed attitude of soul. He himself had experienced this mystery, he himself had been the human means of producing it in other people; nothing in the world was of such certain and absolute reality to his brain and heart.

[A well-known psychologist has argued that conversions are known outside the Christian religion; but the conversion which makes Christianity different from every other religion is the conversion which results in a life of love to God and unbroken service to humanity, particularly to the humblest and the most sorrowful.]

He became at this time impatient of political agitation, abandoned altogether his sympathy with Chartism, regarded his previous pleasures and amusements as the mere follies of childhood; nothing was of moment now but the mystery of conversion. To the drunkard and the sensualist who were striving to fight against their sins, he said, "It is useless for you to struggle, the sin is stronger than you; nothing can come of your efforts except defeat and death; but, seek a change of heart, surrender yourself entirely to God, leave it to Him to overcome your temptations, and you will find victory is yours."

He saw that temptations which were overpoweringly seductive to natural man, which became invested with all the glamour and magic of a strong passion to souls conscious only of their bodies, and striving only with human strength to contend against them, became instantly reduced to the impotence of their true triviality in the eyes of a soul really and profoundly conscious of God and Eternity. Conversion with him was the divine focus revealing all thoughts and all things in their absolute perspective. If, by the power of Christ, he had been saved by this simple miracle of conversion, and if such a creature as Besom Jack had been saved by the same means, then surely here was medicine for all the ills of the whole world and the true path to everlasting salvation.

He held then, and held to the end of his days, that directly a soul is converted--that is to say, directly the spirit of a man looks upon earthly life with the sure and certain knowledge that a living God exists, and that by faith in Christ he is brought into harmony with that God--temptation loses its power and the soul is impelled towards holiness. Other theological doctrines, with which now we need not concern ourselves, flowed from this fixed centre of his life; but this centre, this immovable and absolute centre, was the heart and soul of his religious existence. How a man was to gain conversion--this carried him into the field of doctrine; but the dogma of his daily life, the conviction of his active soul, was the central and illuminating dogma of a New Birth.

In a sense this dogma was faithfully preached at Wesley Chapel, was indeed the very spirit of contemporary Methodism. But it was held formally and preached, if not coldly, at least without passion. Above all things it was preached mainly to the converted. Here was the secret of life, the Open Sesame of distracted and perishing mortality, hidden away in respectable chapels and kept as a treasure by those already rich with blessings. But, outside Wesley Chapel: far and wide under the smoke of a roaring God-scorning city, stretched the slums and warrens and rookeries of Nottingham; and there men were living in sin and infamy, women going down to hell in a legion, children perishing like flies. Was no one to tell these doomed multitudes that the way to everlasting felicity was plain and straight before them? Was no one to go out into the highways and byways? Was no one to go as a physician to those who had no physician? Clearly some one must go to them; he and his friends would go; and since time was short, since the issues were of such awful importance, he and his friends would stop at nothing to rouse these miserable poor people to the glorious news of salvation. They must be told before it was too late. And yet when he went to them, at the end of his hard day's work, he found them for the most part indifferent to his good news, largely inclined to make a mock of him, in some cases definitely disposed to obstruct and molest him.

It would seem that he did not scrutinize this apathy or examine this antagonism. He was too young in years, too impetuous in temperament, too absorbed in the truth of his doctrine for calm and dispassionate reflection. Social wrongs presented themselves to his eyes, but not pressingly to his political conscience. Many years were to pass over his head before he admitted the political question to his mind and transformed it into a religious question. For the present he was a preacher of conversion, those who heard him had the power either to decide for God or to decide for the Devil--his business was to declare the truth and leave the rest with heavenly Powers.

One perceives that if he had been more strictly, rigidly, and exactly honest with himself--the rarest virtue in the world, and among headlong and impulsive natures almost impossible--he would have realized that conversion had not solved even in his own life all its difficulties and all its heartbreaking obstructions. He was very poor, in spite of incessant toil; he was rendered irritable and impatient by the blank prospect which confronted him; he was often cast down and utterly dejected by the misery of his physical existence. Conversion had saved his soul and sent him out to save the souls of other people, but it had not eased the burden weighing on his shoulders, had not cleared the horizon of banked and minatory clouds, certainly had not as yet flooded his soul with the peace that passes understanding.

But the boy of seventeen, an age when seriousness is rare and introspection is almost unnatural, stopped on his path for none of these considerations. His soul was certain of the one mighty fact that a spiritual change of most wonderful and divine power is produced by conversion, and his burning nature, as well as an iron sense of duty, impelled him forward to declare this Gospel of God.

He believed in hell, as he believed in hell to the end of his life, but whether he deliberately and full-consciously believed that all those who heard him and rejected his message would perish everlastingly in undying flames we cannot determine. It would seem that he did not at this period of his life penetrate below the surface of dogmatic religion, or trouble himself with any of those dark and awful mysteries which his practical common sense would inform him are insoluble to human understanding. He believed in God, he believed in Satan; he believed in heaven, he believed in hell; he believed that Christ had died to save sinners, he believed that without conversion no sinner could be saved--and there his theology stopped. It was the theology of Wesley, Whitefield, and of George Fox. It was the theology of the newly-born evangelical school in the Anglican Church. It was also the theology of an impassioned boy, headstrong and wilful, who had his living to get and his soul to save from damnation. Not a whisper had found its way to his mind of a possible ascent of man through a long and blood-stained cycle of ages from a state of animalism to a condition of comparative civilization; no blinding realization of astronomical discovery had startled his soul into the conception of a universe so appallingly mechanical and so infinitely vast that the mind at first shrinks from it with physical dizziness and a kind of spiritual anguish. No discipline of literature had made him sceptical of historical records and suspicious of words too big for human experience. No large or general acquaintance with life had brought him into knowledge of disabilities of temperament, inhibitions of heredity, the fatigues of middle-age, the necessity for human happiness. No "calm and critical theology" had paralysed his soul with doubts that are a check to enthusiasm, with compromises that are death to self-sacrifice and zeal.

To this youth, slaving for a paltry wage, with the hopes of a gentleman's life abandoned, all promise of his childhood utterly dissipated from before his eyes, the problem of human existence was simple and emphatic. This earth occupied the central place in the stellar universe; man, created in perfection, had chosen sin and had rejected God; God, in His mercy. had visited and redeemed man; man had it in his power, every man, to accept or to disdain that redemption; everlasting happiness would be the lot of those who accepted, everlasting misery the lot of those who rejected, the Divine mercy. This was his theology, the theology of his particular Church, the theology of all the Churches, the absolute and indubitable theology of the whole of Christendom. But William Booth believed in it with all the honest passion of his soul, and believing it so passionately and realistically, how could he go through life hugging to his soul the certainty of his own salvation, careless of, indifferent to, the equal certainty of damnation for all those who did not believe? He was too honest a man for that, too genuine a realist for such self-deception.

But not yet had his soul seized the fulness of the faith that was in him. He was very much set upon improving his worldly prospects; he was perfectly content that the greater part of his life should be spent in earning money for his self-support; he was satisfied if he gave his brief leisure to this work for the Kingdom of God. He differed from the great majority of his fellow-believers chiefly in this respect, that so intense was his faith in the blessing and necessity of conversion, so fixed was his conviction that a man was "saved to save," that he used every moment of his leisure to extend the knowledge of this truth. And because of this "the leading men in the Church gave him plenty of caution,"--afraid that he was "going too fast."

 

CHAPTER VI

OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY COUPLED WITH THE DETERMINATION TO ACHIEVE GREATNESS

1845-1848

 

WESLEY CHAPEL is a building typical of Victorian Methodism. A slight concession is made to architecture in the facade, which aims in stucco at a Grecian Ionic effect with fluted columns and a triangular pediment over the portico; but for the rest everything is severely ordered for useful service and downright hard work. No effort is made to lay a spell upon the senses with dim windows, branching pillars, timbered roof, and twilight aisles conducting to a holy of holies. Worshippers here are evidently expected to bring with them their own warmth and tenderness, their own passionate but invisible sense of beauty, their own mood of thanksgiving, aspiration, and worship.

Historians of the nineteenth century will probably pay some attention to this architecture of Nonconformity--this deliberate effort of the religious conscience to do without aids, this evident suspicion and dislike of beauty, this rather hard and insensible insistence on utility. What monuments exist more eloquent of the stern and pugnacious spirit which accompanied the middle classes of England from the ruins of aristocracy to the first foundations of democracy? More than a touch of the Puritan is in this early Victorian architecture of Nonconformity; one sees there, visible and proud, the firm, masterful trade-mark of a practical commercialism. Not only was a chapel intended to defy the pagan traditions of architecture, not only was there to be an entire absence of Popish ornamentation and sacramental imagery, but advantage was to be taken of every possible contrivance that bricks and mortar could give for the work of a businesslike and organized religious centre. A chapel was intended to be not only a place of worship but a place of business. It was no longer merely a humble and obscure dwellingplace for despised dissenters, but a prosperous and challenging headquarters of a conquering Church.

In some measure this spirit indicated a return to the middle ages, when churches were not kept locked and empty for six days and only dismally opened for a few lugubrious hours on the seventh, but when they were the scene of many astonishing festivities throughout the week. The Nonconformist rightfully regarded with horror the locked door of the State Church. He determined that his protesting chapel should be open from week-end to week-end, not for the wicked festivities of the dark ages, not for the vain repetition of ritual and liturgy, but for every possible function which would serve the religious life of the district.

In the case of Wesley Chapel--likely, on account of William Booth, to be a place of pilgrimage so long as it stands--one may see very perfectly this spirit of practical and business-like Nonconformity. The building is lofty and spacious, with wide galleries, a large central platform for the minister, a clear view from side to side, and no suggestion whatever of a sensuous purpose. Only behind the preacher's back are there any seats of obscurity--the free seats hidden away by the back entrance to which William Booth's ragged regiment was condemned in the late 'forties. But it is under the floor of the chapel, in the basement, that the spirit of the place most clearly communicates itself to the visitor. Here, in a rather bad light it is true, and with no very satisfactory supply of fresh air, are numerous class-rooms, vestries, offices, and minor halls for meetings, Sunday schools, and choir practices. One feels in going from room to room of this immense basement, penetrating gloomy corridors, opening endless doors, and passing up and down flights of stone stairs with iron banisters, that one is exploring some centre of local government--a town hall or a court of justice. It is all so entirely different from the crypt of a church, that one is not in the least surprised to see men with hats on their heads, or to hear loud voices and laughter. It impresses one with the sense of a spirit which is active, thorough, economical, and practical--a spirit which has no time for celebrating a victory or keeping a memorial, so eager is it to drill and marshal every soldier of religion for the battle of the present hour.

It was in this great cold barrack of a chapel that the soul of William Booth opened to religious influences. It was within these bare and chilling walls that he was first conscious of spiritual warmth, first felt his life kindled by the imagination of God. Untouched by the beauty of the Anglican liturgy, utterly unmoved by the innovations of the Puseyite clergyman of Sneinton Church, this dissatisfied and unruly youth, this excitable boy interested in Chartism, found himself quickened into new and most wonderful life under the whitewashed ceiling of a Methodist chapel, there discovered for the first time his possession of a soul. Something came to him in this chapel which had hitherto not come to him anywhere--neither in his home nor his church, neither in the crocus meadows of the Trent nor the stirring streets of Nottingham. And when the illumination came, the magic which transformed at the same moment his own inner life and the whole world surrounding him, he threw himself with a passionate ardour into the mechanic activities of this thriving chapel, became one of the workers, progressed till he was a street missionary, and finally found himself at the age of nineteen an accredited local preacher.

We have already seen in what manner he was converted; it is now our work to study the life of the eager boy as an orthodox and unquestioning Methodist. On the surface these years of his existence would seem the most dull and the least interesting, but in truth they are years of singular significance to the history of his life. For they witness, almost more than all the other changes in his career, to the principle of growth and development; they show us that William Booth grew gradually to be what he was, and that he was veritably forced into Salvationsim by the pressure of circumstances; they reveal to us that at the threshold of manhood William Booth was a disciplined and obedient member of an organized and earnest sect, a youth only different from other youths who attended this same Chapel in the capacity of his soul to grow, in the force and power of his character to increase its energies.

The minister of this chapel at that time was the Rev. Samuel Dunn, superintendent of the circuit, a man of some scholarship, autocratic, hard, obstinate, and incurably radical. He was destined to become one of the Reformers who rent the Wesleyan body in twain, one of the famous five ministers expelled from the Wesleyan Church on a question of its government. William Booth spoke always well of this man, saying that he was kind to him, encouraged him, helped him: but it was the kindness of a headmaster to a boy in the second form, the encouragement of a general to a private soldier, the help which a bishop may stoop to give to a sacristan or a Sunday School teacher; there was nothing of warmth and generosity in this kindness; it was always cold, formal, and aloof. Nevertheless, in the austerity of the minister, in his unbending rigidity, and his severe earnestness, the young William Booth saw something to honour and respect, something to which he could look up, and something of which he stood always in a little awe. And in the services of the chapel conducted by this austere minister, he got all the warmth, fire, and excitement that his soul desired.

There were Love Feasts on Sunday afternoons, when men spoke freely of their religious experiences; at night the great chapel, which held at that time eighteen hundred people, was filled chiefly with working-class members, and after this service there was a Prayer Meeting, free of all ritual and formality, at which men uttered their supplications with a fervour and a freedom unknown at the present time. Conversion was the central doctrine of the Methodists, and at the evening services sinners were invited to confess their sins, to elect then and there for God, and to prove the reality of their hunger after Divine mercy by coming inside the communion rails and there giving themselves up to Christ. The oratory of James Caughey had given fresh impulse to this revival of the old Methodist teaching, and none who worshipped in that chapel was more convinced of the need for conversion than William Booth, none more earnestly proclaimed this doctrine of the miracle. Caughey had preached an unforgettable sermon on the words recorded in St. Mark, "Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them "--words whose meaning is only now coming home to the minds of multitudes of men with a significance scarcely glimpsed by the American revivalist. Prayer was regarded as the wrestling of a soul with God; it did not suffice the Methodists to kneel in decent propriety, listening to the recital of a printed prayer, or repeating in low and reverent voice a supplication as familiar to the mind as the alphabet. This might serve on occasion, at the fashionable morning service, for instance; but at Love Feasts, at certain of the evening services, and at the Prayer Meetings, a fervent and even clamorous supplication led the way to remarkable conversions.

They believed that conversion was a distinct and instantaneous experience, and that the soul thus converted received "the Witness of the Spirit" to the forgiveness of sins and adoption into the family of God. They believed also that the converted soul may press forward to a higher experience of Grace, that known as the state of Entire Sanctification. A man decisively and instantaneously converted might of course grow cold in his faith, might fall into sin, might even lapse into the darkness of atheism; but a man, advancing from conversion and achieving through the Spirit of God the condition of Entire Sanctification, could become so purified that sin had no more lure for him; he was not only saved, he was at unity with the purpose of his Creator. Therefore at these Love Feasts and Prayer Meetings, not only did men pray that sinners might be converted, but that they themselves might deepen their spiritual life, and that they might enter into this blissful condition of Entire Sanctification and be free of the stain of sin for evermore.

"They like to dabble!" was one of William Booth's disdainful remarks in later life concerning those who talk on the surface of these great matters and never plunge below to the actual experience of holiness. He was emphatic from those early days to the end of his life on this doctrine of persistent faith, on this doctrine of Entire Sanctification. He never changed his mind in this respect. He could as easily have changed his skin as changed in this belief which had become the very core of his character.

The dangers of this doctrine do not concern us at this point in the narrative, nor need we defend such a man as William Booth from the charges of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and spiritual intoxication which odious or foolish creatures have so often and disastrously associated with it in their efforts either to exalt themselves or to deceive their fellow-men. Conversion was preached in Wesley Chapel, and this conversion was the conversion that turned a radically bad man into a radically good man, a miracle visible to all, provable by all. William Booth, himself converted, believed in conversion as the only way of entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven; and he believed in entire sanctification as the great proof that his spirit was advancing in holiness.

It was because he found this depth of religious teaching among the Methodists that he gave himself with unquestioning loyalty to their Church. Had there been any other church in existence which more earnestly proclaimed the same doctrine, or more fervently practised the same method of religious propaganda, beyond a question his ardour would have carried him into their midst. But there was no other church, and therefore for him this was the veritable Church of Christ, and he loved it with so great a love that at the very end of his days he spoke at times of the Wesleys and the Methodists with a deep, almost wistful affection.

One might have thought that a nature so strong and imperative would have found even in youth many points of divergence in the Methodist body, would have been critical of them, impatient of his elders, scornful of any authority over him. But so far was this from being the case that William Booth was for some time a contented member of a Class "led by" an old man who acted as the chapel-keeper, one known familiarly as Sammy Statham--a genial, fatfaced, side-whiskered old man who is said to have looked like an alderman's coachman. On one occasion the minister of the chapel, Samuel Dunn, wanted a young man to do some village preaching for him, and mentioned the matter to his chapel-keeper, then holding his Class. Starham said that he knew the very man, and summoned William Booth before the minister. When he was asked if he thought he could preach, Booth replied confidently that he had been preaching now in the streets for some time. And to this the great Dr. Dunn made answer, "By whose authority? Have I given you leave?" Instead of revolt William Booth bowed his head and accepted the rebuke.

He was so far from being a rebel that he hesitated before the dignity of becoming a regular minister of this Church. There is no doubt whatever that he regarded his preaching in the streets and his labour among the sinners of Nottingham slums as religious duties of his leisure time; that he considered it the first necessity of his life to earn money, provide for his mother, and make his own way in the world. He was tremendously in earnest about his religious work, inordinately earnest perhaps; but this great earnestness was only the earnestness of a good layman. He was poor; he suffered the deprivations of poverty; and life was embittered by the financial struggle to exist even in the most humble circumstances. His proud spirit, his ambitious nature, urged him away from this hateful inhibiting poverty; and if he worked for his Church, and gave almost every moment of his scant leisure to religious labours, in the busy hours of his daily life he dreamed of commercial greatness and success in the world of toiling men.

One of his companions at this time, Walter James of Sneinton Hollows, remembers walking with William Booth past Sneinton Church one day, and suddenly being asked the inconsequent question, "Have you no ambition?" James looked at him, surprised, and asked, "What do you mean?" He replied, "Because I have; I intend to be something great; I don't mean to belong to the commonalty."

This desire to accomplish something was always smouldering in the heart of the youth. He did not realize that greatness was to come to him in the religious life which as yet he loved only as one loves a favourite crotchet. He saw this greatness, to which the qualities of his nature impelled him, as victory to be wrung after immense struggle from a hard world--victory and success, wealth and power, position and honour. Always he would be a faithful Methodist, always he would be a devout and earnest Christian, always he would be a worker for religion; but also he would be a man of position and power in the secular world.

That religion was, nevertheless, the most potent force in his life is abundantly manifest. A loss which might have quenched his ardour and driven him into privacy occurred in his nineteenth year. Will Sansom died. There were others among the chapel youths who accepted Booth's leadership, but Will Sansom was the friend of his soul and the supremest human inspiration of his missionary labours. And, as it happened, with Will Sansom's death, the chilling hand of authority was laid upon William Booth. "I had to go forward all alone," he says, "in face of an opposition which suddenly sprang up from the leading functionaries of the church." With no Jonathan at his side, and followed only by timorous youths who looked to him for leadership, the lad went on with his street preaching, his cottage prayer meetings, and his face-to-face encounters with notorious profligates; using means which startled orthodoxy and inventing methods wholly unsanctioned by traditional authority. Moreover, he was ready to sacrifice for his religious instincts, his very means of subsistence, was prepared to kick away from his feet the ladder by which his father had promised him that he should ascend to riches, and to which he now clung desperately enough for daily bread.

I have told you how intense had been the action of my conscience before my conversion. But after my conversion it was naturally ever increasingly sensitive to every question of right and wrong, with a great preponderance as to the importance of what was right over what was wrong. Ever since that day it has led me to measure my own actions, and judge my own character by the standard of truth set up in my soul by the Bible and the Holy Ghost; and it has not permitted me to allow myself in the doings of things which I have felt were wrong without great inward torture. I have always had a great horror of hypocrisy--that is, of being unreal or false, however fashionable the cursed thing might be, or whatever worldly temptation might strive to lead me on to the track. In this I was tested again and again in those early days, and at last there came a crisis.

Our business was a large one, and the assistants were none too many. On Saturdays there was always great pressure. Work often continued into the early hours of Sunday. Now I had strong notions in my youth and long after--indeed, I entertain them now--about the great importance of keeping the Sunday, or Sabbath as we always called it, clear of unnecessary work.

For instance, I walked in my young days thousands of miles on the Sabbath, when I could for a trifling sum have ridden at ease, rather than use any compulsory labour of man or beast for the promotion of my comfort. I still think we ought to abstain from all unnecessary work ourselves, and, as far as possible, arrange for everybody about us to have one day's rest in seven. But, as I was saying, I objected to working at my business on the Sabbath, which I interpreted to mean after twelve o'clock on Saturday night. My relatives and many of my religious friends laughed at my scruples; but I paid no heed to them, and told my master I would not do it, though he replied that if it were so he would simply discharge me. I told him I was willing to begin on Monday morning as soon as the clock struck twelve, and work until the clock struck twelve on Saturday night, but that not one hour or one minute of Sunday would I work for him or all his money.

He kept his word, put me into the street, and I was laughed at by everybody as a sort of fool. But I held out, and within seven days he gave in, and, thinking my scrupulous conscience might serve his turn, he told me to come back again. I did so, and before another fortnight had passed he went off with his young wife to Paris, leaving the responsibilities of a business involving the income and expenditure of hundreds of pounds weekly on my young shoulders.

 

From this incident it will be seen that William Booth had established himself in the confidence of his employer, and was first among the assistants of the establishment, a position remarkable for a youth of nineteen.

He had now made sufficient mark as a missionary to attract the attention of his minister. Dr. Samuel Dunn sent for him, and urged him to offer himself for the ministry. William Booth hung back. He says he shrank from the responsibility. No doubt there were other causes, and in all likelihood ambition was one of the reasons for his refusal. I do not mean that he found it difficult to sacrifice any lingering ambition for worldly success, but rather that he had so accustomed himself, "with a long persistency of purpose," to shouldering the responsibilities of his domestic position that no idea of the ministry had ever presented itself to his imagination. He had his living to get; his mother was struggling with poverty; the responsibility of providing for his mother and sisters had been present in his mind, like a torture, since his thirteenth year. Therefore, when the Superintendent of the Circuit suggested to the youth that he should become a minister of the Wesleyan Church, the thought was so foreign to the drift of his purpose, that he could do nothing but refuse. He was asked for an excuse. He pleaded ill health. The minister, not to be baffled, sent him to a doctor. The doctor justified the excuse. He declared that if the young man attempted the life of a minister he would be done for in twelve months. "I remember him saying," relates William Booth, "that unless a man with a nervous system like mine was framed like a brute, and had a chest like a prize-fighter, he would break down."

So the lad continued the daily round of his former life. He was a local preacher, and went far afield to preach the gospel of conversion. He worked from early morning until late in the evening to earn a pitiful wage. He had no thought in his mind, no other purpose before his eyes, but to work for his mother and sisters, and use every hour of his leisure as a layman in the service of Christ.

His eldest sister, Ann Booth, married one of his schoolfellows, then a well-off business man, and went to live in London. Mrs. Booth and the two other sisters remained in the smallware shop, working industriously to keep a roof over their heads. The son William, with the six years of his apprenticeship drawing to a close, began to look about him for a fresh start in life.

The position of the family at this period was the position of William Booth--a hard and deadly struggle to exist. The golden dreams of Samuel Booth had vanished. The former comforts and respectabilities of the household had disappeared. Definitely and decisively, it seemed, this little circle of humanity had sunk into a dark obscurity from which it was impossible that they should ever emerge. Only in the son did the determination to be "something great" persist; and the widow and her daughters saw with something like despair this last hope of their lives wasting his strength and consuming his most precious time in a quixotic effort to convert the disreputable mob of Nottingham slums to the religion of Christianity.

And to William Booth himself it seemed at last that he was losing time and squandering opportunities. He saw nothing in Nottingham that offered him any hope.

At nineteen the weary years of my apprenticeship came to an end. I had done my six years' service, and was heartily glad to be free from the bitter and humiliating bondage they had proved. But I was still under the necessity to work, and a situation had to be sought. I tried hard to find some kind of labour that would give me more liberty to carry out my aggressive ideas in the way of saving the lost, but failed. For twelve months I waited. Those months were amongst the most desolate of my life. You may say, Where was the Church to which I belonged? Where were its rich business members who might surely have found employment for one who was already giving promise of a useful life? Yes: well, it was the question we asked. For no one took the slightest interest in me.

 

Twelve desolate months in the life of a very exceptional youth, twelve desolate months at the threshold of his manhood; and at the end of them, nothing. It was in those twelve months that his mother and sisters came nearer to him; he was cast down, dejected, humiliated, and almost crushed; it was impossible for them to look upon this tragedy of romantic youth unmoved. For there was William Booth hunting the streets of prosperous Nottingham for honourable employment, working by night in the slums, giving himself on Sunday to the work of the Chapel, seeking sinners, praying in cottages, visiting the sick and dying, reading Finney's Sermons and Lectures, studying the works of Whitefield and Wesley, protesting his faith at home that God would surely provide for him--and at the end of twelve months not a door had opened.

"I had to move away," he says; and, like many another adventurer with empty pockets and a fighting spirit, he set his face towards London.

 

CHAPTER VII

LONDON; THE EARLY VICTORIANS

1849

 

LONDON was full of great men and concerned with many matters of high importance, when William Booth arrived with his Bible during the autumn of the year 1849. This work-seeking youth, almost friendless and penniless in the multitudinous city, was presented with no immediate opportunity for setting the Thames on fire, could indeed see nowhere any provision made by which he might even earn bread enough to keep his soul in his body. If Nottingham could cheerfully do without him, London was certainly able to keep its anvil ringing with no help from his arm.

The times were serious enough. Palmerston, declaiming the false gospel of a bullying patriotism, was dragging the nation to the edge of war with France, and perhaps Russia, over the matter of a Portuguese Jew in Athens; Newman--with a brilliance and charm of style surpassed only by his indifference to history and science--was urging the Anglican Church of England towards a path which led backward and not forward; Carlyle was thundering his gospel of moral earnestness to an age which had lost respect for authority and was mindful only of commercial earnestness; the ruinous condition of Ireland had brought into existence the deadliest of all social evils--secret societies and bands of conspirators who sought to gain their ends by physical violence; and deep down among the dim and squalid millions of industrial England, the ignorant, degraded, overburdened, socially despised and politically neglected wealth-getters of this troubled England, there was unrest deeper than ocean and fiercer than flame.

It was an age in which only science held a taper into universal darkness. Everywhere else that one looked this darkness reigned and deepened. It reigned and deepened over religion, which had lost the creative sense of joy, which was more concerned with words than life, and was here surrendering to the tyranny of tradition and there donning the vesture of the ethical philosopher. It reigned and deepened over the great art of architecture, which had played the traitor to beauty and sold itself with both hands to utility and vulgar ignorance. It reigned and deepened over the whole field of politics, which was saturated with corruption and surrounded on every side by the barriers of privilege. It reigned and deepened over the immense region of industry, where men who made a profession of religion, side by side with those who more honestly rejected religion, brutalized and destroyed their fellow-creatures, using up even the lives of children, in galloping efforts to lay up treasures upon earth. It reigned and deepened over the arts of the painter and musician, where a contemptible ideal of prettiness usurped the appeal of truth, beauty, and righteous passion. It reigned, too, even in the kingdom of literature, where the revolt of Shelley, the mournful and despairing classicism of Keats, had yielded room to a conventional and ignoble propriety oblivious of beauty and fatal to truth. It reigned and deepened, too, over the entire field of national production and national life--visible in the ugliness of domestic furniture, in the frighthful monstrosities of national monuments, in the painful conventions of respectable society, and in the appalling ignorance, destitution, and degradation of the masses.

One looks in vain, even from the giants of that age, for any recognition of this universal darkness. From the first page of his Apologia to the last Newman is concerned with a reconstruction of traditionalism, and says not a single word either about the progress of science or the ignorance and suffering of the common people. Macaulay, who retired into private life at this time, and had just published the first volumes of his auriferous history, never wrote one word which was in the nature of an alarum; "he did little," says Morley, "to make men better fitted to face a present of which, close as it was to him, he seems hardly to have dreamed." Tennyson began in a mild and picturesque manner to suggest the need for social reformation, but he never wore the mantle of Shelley, and he ended as an honest obscurantist. Thackeray contented himself by sneering at the foibles of a very few rich and vulgar people. Dickens, when he became a reformer, struck his hardest blows at religious hypocrisy, and ranged himself on the side of a port-wine philanthropy, which, if it excelled the Bumbledom of his times, was nevertheless absolutely destructive of self-respect. Gladstone opposed the Factory Acts. Shaftesbury cried out that he got no help from religious people in his great work for the humanization of industry. Carlyle, with his gospel of moral earnestness, approached nearer, perhaps, than any other recognized great man of the times to the real danger of society, but he cried loudest for those very qualities and energies of the English character which were then most actively in existence and most conspicuous in stimulating an unsocial individualism. For the rest, the middle classes were committed to the gospel of energy, not to the gospel of intelligence; they were hot in the pursuit of riches, perfectly self-satisfied, and only passionate when a murmur of discontent or any rumbling of threatening storm came to them in their comfortable parlours from the disreputable under-world of poverty and sin.

They liked to read (says Stopford Brooke) about pain and trouble in the past; they hated to read about it in the present. When suffering was known to be over, and made no claim on them--to read of it gave a pleasant flavour to their luxury and to their degraded peace. Therefore they accepted with a barren gratitude Mrs. Hemans, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and others who wrote graceful, pathetic, perfumed stories, and pretty lyrics about spring and love and sorrow, and little deeds of valour, and such religion as their society could accept; religion which promised them in heaven a pleasant extension of their agreeable life on earth.

Men like Maurice and Kingsley were at work with new ideas for politics and religion; Ruskin was there, and Matthew Arnold was coming, with broader and truer notions of philosophy and art; George Eliot had a message for those who needed none; John Stuart Mill was laying the foundations of a more reasonable political economy; Cobden and Bright were fast preparing the way for a fresher and kinder outlook on the nations of the world; but the general condition of the English people was one of frank materialism and aggressive complacency, a condition in which the "obese platitudes" of respectability were accepted as the highest wisdom and the unspeakable miseries of the poor were regarded as the judgments of God or the inevitable fruits of political economy.

It is difficult for a modern mind to conceive truly of the England of that period. Humanitarianism, which has become with us, if not a passion and a religion, at least good manners, was then regarded as the misguided hobby of a few fussy and mischief-making philanthropists who turned their backs on the stables of Augeas to plant mustard and cress on the banks of the cleansing rivers. Little concern was shown by the churches or the chapels for the bodies of men. No shame was felt for such a term as "Ragged Schools." There was no system of national education, factory legislation permitted children to work for ten hours a day, there was no real inspection of these insanitary places, no idea of housing reform, no provision for poverty but the execrable Poor-House. Few agencies existed for ministering to the physical needs of the poor, the mental needs of the uneducated, the spiritual needs of the sunken masses, the most elemental natural needs of perishing children. Politics had not even glanced at domestic legislation; the phrase social conscience had not been invented; men were satisfied with, accepted as a God-ordained system of human government, a state of individualism which trod millions underfoot for the enrichment of tens. Such a phrase as "Tory Democracy" would have had no meaning for Sir Robert Peel, and little meaning, if any, for the Gladstone of that day. Nearly every suggestion for bettering the condition of the poor was regarded as blasphemous republicanism and treated with a wrathful disdain. Tory and Whig desired office for the sake of patronage, and there was no difference in the blindness of the one and the other, no difference in the deadness of their imaginations to the evils of the time. Religion, politics, art, even literature, struck no blow for justice and advance.

One spirit was at work destined to exert an influence on the world more far-reaching, and more revolutionary, than any which had preceded it; a spirit which has now overspread the whole world and still shows no sign of abating its force; a spirit which is at once responsible for infinite misery and yet carries with it almost the chief hope left to humanity--the spirit of mechanical science, the spirit of practical science applied to the physical needs of human life.

At the time when William Booth came to London railways were in their infancy, and the greatest achievement of manufacturing science was the spinning jenny. But a new door had been opened on existence. The promise of riches offered by this new field to ambitious men had thrown the whole weight of human intelligence on the side of science; nor did it need any impulse from the thesis of Darwin to urge men forward on this fresh trail to the ancient goal of material welfare. Little was now to be left to Providence, less and less as time went on; men took their own lives in their hands and pressed forward on the road of discovery, seeking everywhere for light on their path, feeling their way inch by inch, too engrossed by the quest, too eager for the prize, to heed voices so distant and so faint as the voices of faith and tradition.

It was a new world for the human race; and ancient precedents lost their authority when the frontier was crossed. Mechanical science is not so much an enemy to religion as a rival. Men not only give their lives but lose their hearts to this lavish employer of their brains. A Greek counted himself abased if he permitted his knowledge of science to be applied to trade; the English only reverence science when it serves a physical purpose. And the modern Englishman, surrounded on every side by the multitude and fast multiplying contrivances of physical science, finds it difficult to believe that it is not along this path of increasing wonder and more magic discovery that the generations of men are destined to travel on the way from the darkness of Ignorance to the light of Knowledge. From the mechanical toy to the bicycle, and from the bicycle to the dynamo driving light and power over hundreds of miles, science offers so potent and possessing a fascination to the question-asking mind of humanity, so constant and increasing an occupation for faculties that clamour to be used, so many and so great services to a physically enfeebled generation, that the haman race, weary of exertion, sceptical of tradition, dulled and exhausted by uninteresting toil, and eager for amusement, sets here its affections and gives here its loyalty and reverence.

Stronger than all the other adversaries in the path of William Booth when he arrived in London was this spirit of physical science, then beginning to diffuse itself over the nation. And as we shall presently find, it was a spirit whose value he failed to see and whose danger he rather despised than attacked. Not greatly concerned with Nature, and perhaps even less with literature and art, William Booth resolutely turned his back upon science, and, like St. Paul, determined to know nothing but Christ, and Him crucified. He came to London with the Bible, and from London he carried that Bible throughout the world.

If any man is tempted on this account to regard him only as a narrow and an intolerant Hebraist, let it be remembered that with no mean courage and after no inglorious battle did he keep his Bible in the streets of London and carry it to a world-wide victory.

He arrived in London as a seeker of work, the son of a poor and struggling mother in the provinces, with no influence, with no money, and with no friends. And at the very outset of this new adventure in his wayfaring he was met by one of those tragic disappointments of faith and affection which deject the courage of the bravest and embitter the feelings of the kindest.

In the notes made for his autobiography he set down under the title of "London" the one word "Loneliness!" This word stood for infinitely more than that sensation of solitude and depression which overwhelms a man coming for the first time under the cold skies and into the unfriendly roar of a vast city utterly indifferent to his existence. It stood, too, for something even more than what he calls "that sickening impression" produced in the mind of "a young enthusiast for Christ" by the manifest iniquities and thousandfold degradations of a godless multitude. It stood for tragedy and bitter grief.

There was only one house in London to which he could go, the house of his eldest sister, the beautiful Ann who had been an influence for good on his boyhood, and who had stood by his side in the streets of Nottingham singing the hymns of those outdoor services. With whatever feelings he went to the house of this beloved sister, he was speedily brought face to face with disenchantment and horror. He found that her husband, one of his old schoolfellows, had adopted a truculent agnosticism, was a loud-voiced and contemptuous materialist, a man who heartily despised religion, and regarded every species of piety as so much cant and make-believe. Moreover, he discovered that this disagreeable person had contracted the disease of alcoholism, and that he had not only infected his sister with his odious notions concerning religion, but also with the destroying germ of his horrible vice. Instead of welcome and encouragement, he met with ridicule and contempt. His sister was kind enough to let him argue and plead with her, but his brother-in-law had not patience enough even for this amenity. He was coldly treated, contemptuously used, and speedily dismissed. Instead of a happy and restful home, he found a household overshadowed by ruin of every kind. The rich brother-in-law, swiftly impoverishing himself, was a blacker shadow in that home than the struggling and speculating Samuel Booth had been in the darkening home of Sneinton. Signs of approaching trouble were everywhere visible, and soon both husband and wife, in spite of all the exertions of William Booth, passed from prosperity to ruin and presently from ruin to death.

This painful discovery at the first step in London threw the young venturer into a state of deep dejection. It deepened to ocean depth his sensation of solitude, and darkened his horizon with clouds blacker than night. He was now quite friendless and homeless. No agency existed to which he could go for assistance, no brotherhood or society where he could count upon kindness and welcome. He was solitary in London, solitary and poor, with nothing but his Bible for consolation. And it was necessary for him to have bread that he might live, even in dejection and poverty.

He has described his feelings at this time, not very intimately, and perhaps with the preacher uppermost, but the words afford at least some idea of the difficulties which confronted him:

 

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 passes through its different areas. The general turn-out into a few great thoroughfares, on Saturday 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 true impression of all.

The crowding pressure and activity of so many must always 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 numbers 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 lime very few of them were open more than one evening per week. There were no Young Men's or Young Women's Christian Associations, no Pleasant Sunday Afternoons, no Brotherhoods, no Central Missions, no extra effort to attract the attention of the godless crowds ....

To any one who cared to enter the places of worship, their deathly contrast with the streets was even worse. The absence of week-night services must have made any strangers despair of finding even society or diversion. A Methodist sufficiently in earnest to get inside to the "class" would find a handful of people reluctant to bear any witness to the power of God.

 

One is tempted to ask whether any young enthusiast for Christ ever stood before a door so fastened and close-barred as that which confronted William Booth at his first entrance into London. Certainly to few men has the future presented itself with a more hopeless promise, a more deadly indifference, than it did at this fateful juncture to this young enthusiast from Nottingham. If ever he prayed earnestly for light and guidance, surely must it have been at this period, when he stood friendless, all but penniless, and with a wounded heart in the streets of London.

 

CHAPTER VIII

THE CALL TO PREACH

1849

 

AMONG the disappointments which met our young venturer in London was the impossibility of getting work outside the pawnbrokery business. He had come now to dislike that business. He was as yet by no means anhungered and athirst to be free of secular labour that he might preach the Gospel of Christ; at this time he had seen nothing of London's destitution, nothing of those black depths where multitudes of human beings perish in darkness and sin; his experience of London was largely the experience of respectable and suburban London; and with this first impression in his mind--he was twenty years of age--his idea was to preach on Sunday and work for his living during the week-day, pushing his fortunes with all his might, for the sake of his mother and sisters, as well as for himself.

But there was no work for him, except his old work, and accordingly into a pawnbroker's shop in Walworth he went to earn his living. A new experience in religion awaited him here:

 

My new master very closely resembled the old one in many respects. In one particular he differed from him very materially, and that was, he made a great profession of religion. The first master was a Unitarian, knowing nothing about even the theory of godliness. I never remember him uttering a sentence that showed that he had any saving faith in God or any sympathy with godly people during the whole six years I was with him. My second master believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and in the Church of which he was a member, but seemed to be utterly ignorant of either the theory or practice of experimental godliness, and as to the spiritual interests of the dead world around him, he was as indifferent to their future well-being as were the vicious crowds themselves whom he so heartily despised. All he seemed, to me, to want, was to make money, and all he seemed to want me for was to help him in the sordid selfish task. So it was work, work, work, morning, noon, and night. I was practically a white slave, being only allowed my liberty on the Sabbath, and an hour or two one night a week, and then the rule was, home by ten o'clock, or the door will be locked against you. This law was rigidly enforced in my case, although he knew that I travelled long distances preaching the Gospel, in which he and his sanctimonious wife professed to believe. To get home in time, many a Sunday night I have had to run till out of breath, after walking long distances, and preaching twice in the day.

 

Some men might easily have been disgusted with religion in such a circumstance as this, particularly a young man whose heart was sore with disappointment and weighted with the difficulties which confronted him; but William Booth never lost by encountering hypocrisy; he gained by it; he never made the hypocrisy of others an excuse for relaxing his efforts, rather was he braced by it to show the true face of religion to mankind. In an age when there was almost a vogue of this odious religious hypocrisy, an hypocrisy so general that Dickens in his struggle to extirpate it flung himself into the fight with an impatient exaggeration which delighted the base and confirmed the feeble in their feebleness--in this age of deception and self-deception, of formalism, cant, smoothness, and detestable complacency, William Booth looked the distorted falsity in the face and saw only the beauty and glory of the reality. He deepened his own intense consciousness of religion by contact with the shallow pretence of a merely formal and professed religion. The less of truth he saw in others, the more hungrily he desired it in himself. To abandon religion, because of false religion in others, never so much as entered his mind.

But there were difficulties in his path:

 

My way was complicated, but I stuck to my faith and the preaching of it as far as I had the opportunity. It is true that here and there I made friends in my preaching excursions with whom I fraternized, as far as my little leisure afforded, enjoying occasional seasons of useful communion. But my poor heart was desolate in the extreme. It seemed as though I had got launched out on a wide and dreary ocean without a companion vessel or a friendly port in view.

 

Something of his state of mind at this period may be gathered from a worn and faded document found among his papers after death, the pathetic and honest confession of a young soul conscious of its weakness and seeking strength from a solemn and secret protestation of faith. This little paper bears the date December 6, 1849, and proceeds in this manner:

 

RESOLUTIONS

I do promise--my God Helping--

1st. That I will rise every morning sufficiently early (say 20 minutes before seven o'clock) to wash, dress, and have a few minutes, not less than 5, in private prayer.

2ndly. That I will as much as possible avoid all that babbling and idle talking in which I have lately so sinfully indulged.

3rd. That I will endeavour in my conduct and deportment before the world and my fellow servants especially to conduct myself as a humble, meek, and zealous follower of the bleeding Lamb, and by serious conversation and warning endeavour to lead them to think of their immortal souls.

4thly. That I will not read less than 4 chapters in God's word every day.

5thly. That I will strive to live closer to God, and to seek after holiness of heart, and leave providential events with God.

6thly. That I will read this over every day or at least twice a week.

God help me, enable me to cultivate a spirit of self denial and to yield myself a prisoner of love to the Redeemer of the world.

Amen & Amen

WILLIAM BOOTH.

 

I feel my own weakness and without God's help I shall not keep these resolutions a day. The Lord have mercy upon my guilty soul.

I claim the Blood

Yes, oh Yes,

Jesus died for me.

 

Faithfully he performed the duties entrusted to him, making himself not merely useful but almost invaluable to his slave-driving master, for into everything they do it is the nature of such men as this to put the whole force of their powers; but it was only when he was free from the shop and out in the streets of London on his business of preaching religion that he really lived, and really hoped. Weak and delicate as he was, hard and exhausting as was his daily work, he gave himself up on Sundays and his one spare week-night to such preaching in the London chapels he visited as startled and shocked the polite congregations with the strength and fire of its rugged energy. And when the preaching was over, and he had fraternized for a few moments with the few who shared his enthusiasm, the Nottingham lad would take to his heels and run through the lamp-lighted streets of the suburbs back to the attic-bed above the shop in Walworth.

The more he saw of London the more insistent became this desire to preach the religion of Christ. So far as one can see, it was during these first months in Walworth that the suggestion made to him in Nottingham a year before by Samuel Dunn came home to his mind as a real and definite idea. The spectacle of the London streets, thronged at night by crowds of people who often appeared before his vision as godless and vicious and perishing, worked upon his imagination and quickened the idea that he should preach Christ, whatever might be the consequences to his earthly fortunes.

It must be remembered that the great temperance movement had not struck root at this period, and that the sights of London streets, particularly in the poorer quarters, were infinitely worse than they are now. Drunkenness was not only horribly common, it was every one's opportunitv for hilarity. It provided the humorous incidents of trans-pontine melodrama in the theatres, and the only break of cheerful comedy in the sordid tragedy of the streets. Women might be breaking their hearts at home, children might be crying pitifully for food and clothing, but the sight of uproarious men rolling and lurching home from the ale-house seldom aroused anything but amusement in those who turned the head to look after them.

And, again, there was no Education Act. The worst of the narrow grimy streets of London were thronged with ragged, barefooted, unwashed, foul-mouthed, and in many cases criminally-minded children, to save whom neither the State nor religion made scarcely an effort. The parents of these children were either the idle rascals of street-corners, or the sweated and exhausted victims of a conscienceless commercialism. A man could go but a little distance in London without encountering such men and women, and such helpless little children, as seem degraded out of the likeness to humanity.

To William Booth the call to preach Christ came in these London streets, not dramatically and suddenly, but with a steady and persisting tone of resolute command. He could not doubt the reality of that call, and his faith would not let him disobey it.

He has left a record of his feelings on this matter, written before he had really looked into the Stygian depths of the London abyss, and from this record one may discern how his mind was acted upon in youth by the sights he saw in suburbs that passed in those days for respectable:

 

How can anybody with spiritual eyesight talk of having no call, when there are such multitudes around them who never hear a word about God, and never intend to; who can never hear, indeed, without the sort of preacher who will force himself upon them? Can a man keep right in his own soul, who can see all that, and yet stand waiting for a "call" to preach? Would they wait so for a "call" to help any one to escape from a burning building, or to snatch a sinking child from a watery grave?

Does not growth in grace, or even ordinary growth of intelligence, necessarily bring with it that deepened sense of eternal truths which must intensify the conviction of duty to the perishing world?

Does not an unselfish love, the love that goes out towards the unloving, demand of a truly loving soul immediate action for the salvation of the unloved?

And, are there not persons who know that they possess special gifts, such as robust health, natural eloquence or power of voice, which specially make them responsible for doing something for souls?

And yet I do not at all forget, that above and beyond all these things, there does come to some a special and direct call, which it is peculiarly fatal to disregard, and peculiarly strengthening to enjoy and act upon.

I believe that there have been many eminently holy and useful men who never had such a call; but that does not at all prevent any one from asking God for it, or blessing Him for His special kindness when He gives it.

 

The call, at any rate, had come for him. It was a call from Heaven, but from humanity as well.

 

CHAPTER IX

A CRISIS IN METHODISM

1850

 

IN the year 1848 dissatisfaction with the government of Wesleyan Methodism had gathered considerable force. Men felt that the Wesleyan Conference did not fairly represent the churches, that this Conference exercised unjustly a tyrannous despotism over local churches in the connection, and that salvation lay in a democratic extension of local government throughout the whole field of Wesleyan Methodism. "The real question at stake was: Connexionalism or Congregationalism--the supremacy of the Conference as the final court of appeal, or of the court of the individual church." Certain Fly Sheets had been freely circulated among Methodists expressing not merely dissatisfaction with Dr. Jabez Bunting, who was President of the Theological Institution, but expressing a very violent antagonism to the Conference, which was likened to a Papal despotism. These anonymous and virulent pamphlets did not halt at "libellous insinuations," and became at last so fiendishly shameful that authority was bound to interpose.

Wesleyan Methodism was travelling surely towards constitutional change, which would have been brought about in orderly fashion, had it not been for irritation caused to both sides by literary productions the spirit of which no one now defends (A New History of Methodism, vol. i. p. 431).

The Conference decided that every minister should be required to answer "brotherly questions" concerning the authorship of these virulent Fly Sheets. Three ministers, Samuel Dunn, James Everett, and William Griffith, refused to answer these questions, and were expelled. "To some people the three were martyrs to the cause of liberty; to others they were traitors to their church. There was room for endless and acrimonious disputes."

Thereupon followed "agitation and convulsion." The Reformers, as they were called, rose up to assert liberal doctrines and free the church from a "Papal autocracy." The Conservatives marshalled their legions to fight these traitors and preserve the ancient tradition of their policy.

A large number of secessions from the mother church took place, some through the breaking up of the local societies to which the seceders were attached, or in search of the quiet that could not be found in confusion and worry, others through the inconsiderate sternness with which in the emergency the regulations and the Conference were interpreted and enforced. Men who were convinced of the wisdom of important changes in administration were forced into a false position by the impossibility at the time to concede any change, and could extricate themselves only by withdrawal. On the whole, the loss of membership due directly or indirectly to this ill-conceived agitation amounted in the course of a few years to not less than a hundred thousand .... Others associated themselves with the expelled ministers, and formed the church of the Wesleyan Reformers, which afterwards by amalgamation helped to constitute the United Methodist Free Churches . . . (ibid. vol. i. pp. 438-9).

Thus a dispute concerning the government of a church, because of the unlovely spirit in which it had been conducted --"stubbornness, that was neither free from malice nor nice in its choice of weapons, awakened resentment, and, human nature, being what it is, led inevitably to retaliation," --broadened into one of those heresy-hunting expeditions upon which no church can enter without exhaustion and disaster. The simple matter of dispute, as Sir Thomas Browne has warned all disputants to expect, wandered at once from the particular to the general; and, in this case, was "soon obscured by the publication of a series of slanders in which little respect was shown for age or long service or purity of motive." In the end, exhausted by this pitiful conflict, and rent by schism, the Methodists set themselves to recover the simple faith of their origin--belief in conversion, and a methodical attention to religious duties.

The Reformers, rightly or wrongly, announced themselves as the true children of Methodism, proclaiming the wisdom of revivals and seeking as the supreme object of their existence the salvation of sinful and erring men by the divine miracle of conversion. The orthodox party, rightly or wrongly, claimed to be the faithful guardians of Methodism, and kept a watchful eye upon revivals, ordering the services of the church with a far more rigid overlordship than existed in the Anglican Communion. Men tended to one camp or the other according to their temperaments, and for many years the separation was so deep and so wide that few dreamed it could ever be bridged.

Such was the nature of this agitation, and such the condition of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, in the year 1850, when William Booth, slaving hard to earn daily bread in London, was an obscure and discouraged lay preacher in its ranks, of whom neither the pontifical Dr. Bunting nor the rebellious and expelled Samuel Dunn--who had been his own minister in Nottingham--took the least account.

 

CHAPTER X

TELLS HOW WILLIAM BOOTH BECAME A PASTOR, AND INTRODUCES THE READER TO CATHERINE MUMFORD

1850-1851

 

The storm of this disputation raged with violence. But it does not seem to have driven William Booth from his path or to have drawn him to the one side or the other. "Mr. Booth," says W. T. Stead, "kept apart from the controversy. His sympathies were then, as always, on the side of authority."

This statement, which may surprise many people, is a true statement. William Booth was antipathetic to violent change, hated rebellion, suspected "reform," and cherished discipline and obedience as cardinal virtues. His story for the next twenty years is the tragic Odyssey of a strong and original soul labouring to follow his star along the beaten track of authority, struggling to get the new wine of his unquenchable zeal into the shrunken skins of tradition, striving to move his church along with him out of the slough of a stagnant formalism. And the irony of it is, that the churches which expelled him and literally drove him into the wilderness, which during the most difficult years of his existence opposed him, censured him, maligned him, not only came to adopt his methods and follow his example, but, when it was too late, made overtures for his reception into their midst.

In his old age William Booth was received by King Edward the Seventh. "Tell me, General," asked the Sovereign, "how do you get on now with the Churches? What is their attitude towards you?"

The old man looked shrewdly at the King, his eyes twinkled, and he made answer, "Sir, they imitate me." At which the King laughed with a good understanding.

At the age of twenty-one he was conservative and on the side of authority. He knew very well what dissension existed in the Wesleyan body, but he endeavoured to stop his ears against the unprofitable sounds of discord.

What was in his mind, seething and burning there, at this momentous epoch of his life? Happily a letter exists, the oldest known of his letters, which answers that question with a fulness invaluable to this narrative. The letter is dated October 30, 1849, and is addressed to John Savage in Nottingham, one of the young men who had served as a disciple in the streets and slums of that city:

How are you going on? I know you are happy. I know you are living to God, and working for Jesus. Grasp still firmer the standard. Unfold still wider the battle-flag! Press still closer on the ranks of the enemy, and mark your pathway still more distinctly with trophies of Emmanuel's grace, and with enduring moments of Jesus' power! The trumpet has given the signal for the conflict! Your General assures of success and a glorious reward; your crown is already held out. Then why delay? Why doubt? Onward! Onward! Onward! Christ for me! Be that your motto... be that your battle-cry... be that your war-note... be that your consolation... be that your plea when asking the mercy of God--your end when offering it to man... your hope when encircled by darkness... your triumph and victory when attacked and overcome by death! Christ for me! Tell it to men who are living and dying in sin! Tell it to Jesus, that you have chosen Him to be your Saviour and your God. Tell it to devils, and bid them cease to harass, since you are determined to die for the truth!

I preached on Sabbath last--a respectable but dull and lifeless congregation. Notwithstanding I had liberty both praying and preaching, I had not the assistance of a single "Amen" or "Hallelujah" the whole of the service! It is hard work to labour for an hour and a half in the pulpit and then come down and do the work of the prayer-meeting as well! I want some Savages, and Proctors, and Frosts, and Hoveys, and Robinsons, here with me in the prayer meetings, and glory to God we would carry all before us! Praise God for living at Nottingham every hour you are in it! Oh, to live Christ on earth, and to meet you once more, never to part, in a better world.

 

In spite of a phraseology which may slightly disturb a later refinement, this letter has a ring of truth which is worth an infinite amount of prettiness and decorous restraint. It is the letter of a true man, the authentic cry of a soul desperately earnest. One can no more doubt this utterance than one can doubt the Psalms of David. Narrow and limited may have been the youth's outlook upon the world, wild and strange his language, panting and overheated his zeal, but never yet did a charlatan so utter his soul to a friend.

With such a temperament he was destined to suffer the dark reactions of ecstasy and boundless confidence. There were moments when his soul was plunged into dejection, moments when he doubted his call, moments when he was thrown into despair merely by contact with a shallow culture or a little theological pomposity.

But again and again the youth threw off the oppression of this scepticism, felt within himself strong and indubitable the call of God. The young man's tragedy was this, that he felt at his highest moments of ecstasy so boundless and so utter a gratitude to God for bliss of such incomparable rapture that he could not doubt in those moments of ravishment his power to save mankind by lifting them up with him into this same region of faith. But when ecstasy had passed, when the soul had returned to its poor troubled and shabby tenement of clay, then came the natural reaction which all idealists experience--the feeling of exhaustion, the haunting fear that never can one lift humanity to God, that one is not scholar enough to enter into controversy with the least of the devils. Was he truly called? Had God indeed got a work for him to do? Was he not perhaps dangerously inflated with conceit in this feeling that he could do something for the Kingdom of Christ?

Concerning my pulpit efforts, I am more than ever discouraged. Upon becoming acquainted with my congregations, I am surprised at the amount of intellect which I have endeayoured to address. I am waking up as it were from a dream, and discover that my hopes are vanity, and that I literally know nothing.

I preached yesterday at Norwood--a dear people. In the morning "Oh, Lord, revive thy work," was accompanied with blessings, and in the evening "Jesus weeping over Jerusalem," though not attended by pleasurable feelings by myself, yet I hope went home to some hearts. I saw nothing done!

Afterwards I had some conversation with one of our local preachers respecting the subject with regard to which my heart is still burning--I mean the full work. He advises me by all means to offer myself next March, and leave it in the hands of God and the Church. What say you? You are my friend, the chosen of my companions, the man after my own heart. What say you? I want to be a devoted, simple, and sincere follower of the Bleeding Lamb. I do not desire the pastor's crust without having most distinctly received the pastor's call. And yet my inmost spirit is panting for the delightful employment of telling from morn till eve, from eve till midnight, the glad tidings that mercy is free.

Mercy! Have you heard the word? Have you felt its power? Mercy! Can you describe its hidden, unfathomable meaning? Mercy! Let the sound be borne on every breeze! Mercy! Shout it to the world around until there is not a sin-unpardoned, a pollution-spotted, a hell-marked spirit unwashed, unsanctified! Until there is not a sign of the curse in existence, not a sorrow unsoothed! not a tear unwiped away! until the world is flooded with salvation and all men are bathing in its life-giving streams !

 

In April, 1850, he writes to this same friend in Nottingham:

 

But you ask "What is your plan?" Why, to go out to Australia as Chaplain on board a convict ship. To face the storm and the billow, and the tempest's rolling wave, and to preach to the very worst of men Christ's Salvation.

This idea of breaking away from his monotonous toil and throwing himself into some hard and heroic work lasted until November of the same year, when we find him writing to the same friend:

I am thinking of offering for the general work abroad or at home, where the Church will send me, or where the world hath need of me. What say you? You know I would prefer the home work, but the difficulties are so numerous, my ability is not equal to the task. It is evident, my Superintendent told me so, that preachers are not wanted.

An incident occurred at this juncture, however, destined to influence the whole course of his after-life. Among the people who listened to his preaching was an enthusiastic Wesleyan layman of no very lovable and agreeable type, but nevertheless a man of some character, and one who knew a great man when he saw him. This Wesleyan lay man was a Mr. E. J. Rabbits, a boot manufacturer in the Borough, who rose from small things to the position of a very large and prosperous employer of labour.

In his autobiographical notes, William Booth has left this epitome of his first patron: "Self-made man. His beginning: borrowed half-a-crown. My last interview with him: he had just invested £60,000 in good building estate, the anxieties connected with which, I should think, helped to hurry him away. 'The care of riches!'" In that epitaph one has, perhaps, all the biography one needs of good Mr. Rabbits.

This man, strangely enough, for he was altogether and utterly unlike William Booth, was the means which led the Nottingham lad to abandon a commercial career for the life of a minister. William Booth--one of the most expan sive, generous, tender-hearted, and affectionate of men-- yielded to the persuasions of this earnest if somewhat narrow-minded dissenter, and through him came not only into the ministry of the Christian religion, but into touch with that gracious and remarkable woman who blessed his life, stimulated his courage, and mothered the infancy of the Salvation Army.

Mr. Rabbits is not an imposing figure in this narrative, but one does not know how the rest of the story would have run but for his sudden and transitory appearance on its stage. To those who believe that a Divinity shapes our ends, he must certainly seem an instrument in the hand of providence; and niggardly and half-heartedly as he per formed the office assigned to him, he does at least deserve the recognition, and perhaps the gratitude, if not the love, of that vast company better for the life of William Booth.

Mr. Rabbits was among the Reformers. "He had been dissatisfied," says Commissioner Booth-Tucker, "for some time with what he considered to be the growing coldness and worldliness of the Orthodox party, and had, therefore, hailed the present [Reform] movement with satisfaction, believing that it would lead to a revival of the old life and fire. He had been present at the first sermon delivered by Mr. Booth in the Walworth Road Wesleyan Chapel. The latter had launched out in his usual unconventional, earnest manner, strikingly in contrast with the ordinary ministerial style. Some of those present responded heartily, and the ordinary monotony of the service was disturbed by quite a brisk fusillade of 'Amens.' Mr. Rabbits was delighted. He met the preacher at the foot of the stairs, congratulated him warmly on his sermon, and took him home to dinner .... "

William Booth at this time, it must be remembered, was weary of his daily work, and more and more inclined to act upon the suggestion first made to him, as we have seen, by Samuel Dunn. He had now proved to himself that he had power as a preacher; he never walked through a London street without feeling an impulse towards the pulpit; and he could conceive of no life for himself more consonant with the will of God than that of a Methodist minister.

Mr. Rabbits, in June, 1851, persuaded him to work among the Reformers, and later on proceeded to settle the business of his entrance into the ministry. The story of that negotiation, as typical perhaps of the persuader as of the persuaded, is told by William Booth in the following narration:

 

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. Nobody 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 fashion 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 shillings a week.

"Nonsense," he said, "you cannot do with less than twenty shillings a week, I am sure."

"All right," I said, "have it your own way, if you will; but where is the twenty shillings 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 then and there.

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 publishing 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 shillings 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, and fully prepared to settle quietly down to my work ....

Three things marked the day that followed the one on which I shook hands with my cold-hearted master and said Good-bye. One of which proved itself of no little importance, both to myself and the world at large in the years that followed.

1. The first day of my freedom was Good Friday.

2. It was also my birthday, the 10th April.

3. The third, and most important of all, was that on that day I fell over head and ears in love with the precious woman who afterwards became my Wife.

 

In this episode we have a characteristic example of William Booth's honesty and impetuous enthusiasm, as well as a moment's insight into the mind of a business-like dissenter. Booth was willing to maintain himself as a preacher of the Gospel for twelve shillings a week. The astute and practical Rabbits would not hear of such a sacrifice, and increased the weekly wage to twenty shillings. William Booth abandoned his daily work, threw himself into the arms of the future, and trusted blindly to God. Mr. Rabbits made himself responsible for a wage of twenty shillings a week, limited to a period of three months. For a sum of twelve pounds, then, the founder of the Salvation Army disposed of his genius and his enthusiasm, and with no other provision than this for the next three months, and no provision at all beyond that period, entered the ministry as a revivalist preacher.

There were certainly few preachers among the Methodists or any other body of Christians more perilously situated just then than William Booth. One can imagine this tall, gaunt, clean-shaven youth, with his long raven-coloured hair and his stooping shoulders, entering upon his five -shilling room "with attendance," looking upon his furni ture, and feeling "quite set up," fully prepared, as he says, to settle quietly down to his work. But there was to be no quiet for this wayfarer then or afterwards. On the very first day of his freedom he was to suffer the commotion of love, was to realise that twenty shillings a week goes but a little way in domestic housekeeping, and that an assur ance of board and lodging for three months is no cheerful primrose prospect for a young man who is "over head and ears in love." Work there was to be for him in this world, such work as no other man in his generation could perform, but no peace, no quiet. From that day onwards, even to the last hour of his life, he was to be opposed by the enemy of peace and the adversary of quiet, was to face confusion and darkness, was to stagger under buffetings of misfortune, was to be stricken to his knees by agony and tragedy, was to know the piercing anxiety, the bitter distress of a poverty that increased with his victories and intensified with his opportunities for serving mankind; these things he was to know, this burden he was to carry, this work he was to do in the world, but quiet was never to come near his heart. He was marked out for suffering, he was chosen for battle and tempest. But he was to know the love of a "precious woman."

Bitter as was to be his first experience of the Christian ministry, it was coloured by romance, though one may question whether this hopeless passion of his heart was not at the time the chief of his woes.

Among the people to whom Mr. Rabbits introduced William Booth was a family named Mumford, living in Brixton--at that time a somewhat picturesque suburb of London, more or less fashionable among rich City merchants. A daughter of this house, for whose opinion Mr. Rabbits entertained a great respect, had expressed admiration of a sermon preached by William Booth as a layman in Bin field Hall, a small chapel in the neighbouring suburb of Clapham, situated close to the Swan Tavern of Stockwell, where the famous racehorse of that name had been trained. Mr. Rabbits had reported this admiration to the young preacher, and had arranged that he should make acquaint ance with the Mumfords. From their first meeting, both William Booth and Catherine Mumford were conscious of a strong liking for each other; but it was not until he had entered upon the period of study and preparation for ministry among the Reformers, and on the first day of his freedom from a secular life, that he fell head over ears in love with this remarkable woman.

Before we tell the story of that love, it is necessary to say something of the Mumford family.

Mrs. Mumford, for whom William Booth cherished a deep affection and a reverence that reacted on his own character, was a woman whose history, if it could be told with fulness, would read like a novel written in collabora tion by Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot. She was in many ways a figure of the epoch. From an adventure in love, full of passion and tragedy, she had passed to a sedate marriage, and deepened her spiritual life to such a depth of piety as one finds in Adam Bede. Something of her love story, told in a style very appropriate to the popular romances of the period, is to be found in Commissioner Booth-Tucker's Life of Catherine Booth. He tells us how she became engaged in youth to a man in her own social position, who was approved of by her father, Mr. Milward, and who appeared to be in every respect a desirable husband.

Her mother had died some years previously. Her father was one who felt that his duty to his daughter had ended in supplying her temporal needs. The aunt, who kept house for him, was a being of harsh and unsympathetic material. No doubt these loveless surroundings helped Miss Milward to think the more of her choice, and she fancied herself upon the eve of life-long felicity. To her friends the match seemed a desirable one, and had met with unhesitating approbation. The prospects were brilliant, and the wedding-day had been fixed, when, on the very eve of her marriage, certain circumstances came to her knowledge which proved conclusively that her lover was not the high-souled, noble character that she had supposed him to be; indeed that he was unworthy of the womanly love and confidence that she had reposed in him. With the same promptness and decision which afterwards characterized her daughter, Miss Milward's mind was made up, and the engagement was immediately broken off.

It was in vain that day after day her lover called at the house, in the hope that he might persuade her to relent. She dared not trust herself even to see him, lest she should fall beneath the still keenly realized temptation, and lest her heart should get the better of her judgment. At length, seized with despair, he turned his horse's head from the door and galloped away, he knew not, cared not, whither--galloped till his horse was covered with foam--galloped till it staggered and fell, dying, beneath him, while he rose to his feet a hopeless maniac! The anxiety had been too much for his brain; and the next news that Miss Milward received was that he had been taken to an asylum, where he would probably spend the rest of his days.

The narrative proceeds with an account of Miss Mil ward's prostration after this terrible experience, the failure of doctors to revive her interests in life, the coming of a Methodist preacher into her neighbourhood, her conversion anal restoration to health, her subsequent engagement to a lay preacher named Mumford, and her marriage to this gentleman in defiance of her father's command, who turned her penniless out of his house and forbade her ever to enter his doors again.

Catherine Mumford was the only daughter of this marriage in a family of five children. She was a singularly intellectual and forceful child, responding with heart and soul to the rigorous and puritanical training of her mother, disliking novels, delighting in history, expressing vigorous judgments on such famous characters as Napoleon Bona parte--whose brutal and selfish victories she would compare with the more humane conquests of Julius Caesar--and revealing on every side of her character an unmistakable predilection for serious things. There was no element of submission in her response to Mrs. Mumford's training; nothing in her nature needed to be crushed and distorted into the semblance of puritanism; she herself was a born puritan to whom the true and genuine gospel of puritanism made unequivocal appeal.

One trait in the childhood of this precocious girl deserves a particular attention. It might be thought that a nature thus stern and sensible would be proof against those little tendernesses of affection which make childhood so exquisite and adorable. But Catherine Mumford had to a singular degree one of the most amiable of these tender susceptibilities. She was quite passionately devoted to dumb animals, and could not bear either to see or to hear about the sufferings of these little brothers and sisters of humanity. It might also seem that the ineffaceable impression made upon her mother's mind by the horse that was flogged and spurred to its death by her madman lover had been trans mitted to Catherine Mumford in the form of this singular sensitiveness to animal suffering. She was, in fact, as the following incidents narrated by Commissioner Booth-Tucker will show, in spite of the rigour of her mother's training, in spite of her own temperamental devotion to practical common sense, a child who not merely shuddered at pain, but whose heart was deeply pierced and earnestly moved by suffering of any kind.

One day, Commissioner Booth-Tucker says, she saw a prisoner being dragged to the lock-up by a constable.

A jeering mob was hooting the unfortunate culprit. His utter loneliness appealed powerfully to her. It seemed that he had not a friend in the world. Quick as lightning Catherine sprang to his side, and marched down the street with him, determined that he should feel that there was at least one heart that sympathized with him, whether it might be for his fault or his misfortune that he was suffering ....

She could not endure to see animals ill-treated without expostulating and doing her utmost to stop the cruelty. Many a time she would run out into the street heedless of every personal risk, to plead with or threaten the perpetrator of some cruel act. On one occasion, when but a little girl, the sight of the cruel goading of some sheep so filled her soul with indignation and anguish, that she rushed home and threw herself on the sofa in a speechless paroxysm of grief.

"My childish heart," she tells us, "rejoiced greatly in the speculations of Wesley and Butler with regard to the possibility of a future life for animals, in which God might make up to them for the suffering and pain inflicted on them here .... "

Like her other benevolences, Mrs. Booth's kindness to animals took a practical turn. "If I were you," she would say to the donkey-boys at the seaside resorts, where in later years she went to lecture, "I should like to feel, when I went to sleep at night, that I had done my very best for my donkey. I would like to know that I had been kind to it, and had given it the best food I could afford; in fact, that it had as jolly a day as though I had been the donkey, and the donkey me." And she would enforce the argument with a threepenny or a sixpenny bit, which helped to make it palatable.

Then, turning to her children, she would press the lesson home by saying, "That is how I should like to see my children spend their pennies, in encouraging the boys to be kind to their donkeys."

If, in her walks or drives, Mrs. Booth happened to notice any horses left out to graze that looked overworked and ill-fed, she would send round to the dealers for a bushel of corn, stowing it away in some part of the house. Then, when evening fell, she would sally forth with a child or servant carrying a supply of food to the field in which the poor creatures had been marked, watching with the utmost satisfaction while they had a "real good tuck in." It is not to be wondered at that the horses were soon able to recognize her, and would run along the hedge whenever their benefactress passed by, craning their necks and snorting their thanks, to the surprise and perplexity of those who were not in the secret.

Again and again has Mrs. Booth rushed to the window, flung up the heavy sash, and called out to some tradesman who was ill-treating his animal, not resting till she had compelled him to desist.

"Life is such a puzzle," she used to say, "but we must leave it, leave it with God. I have suffered so much over what appeared to be the needless and inexplicable sorrows and pains of the animal creation, as well as over those of the rest of the world, that if I had not come to know God by a personal revelation of Him to my own soul, and to trust Him because I knew Him, I can hardly say into what scepticism I might not have fallen."

On one occasion, when driving out with a friend, Mrs. Booth saw a boy with a donkey a little way ahead of them. She noticed him pick up something out of the cart and hit the donkey with it. In the distance it appeared like a short stick, but to her horror she perceived, as they drove past, that it was a heavy- headed hammer, and that already a dreadful wound had been made in the poor creature's back. She called to the coachman to stop; but before it was possible for him to do so, or for those in the carriage with her to guess what was the matter, she had flung herself, at the risk of her life, into the road. Her dress caught in the step as she sprang, and had it not been torn with the force of her leap, she must have been seriously injured, if not killed. As it was, she fell on her face, and was covered with the dust of the hot and sandy road. Rising to her feet, however, she rushed forward and seized the reins. The boy tried to drive on, but she clung persistently to the shaft, untiI her friends came to her assistance. After burning words of warning, followed by tender appeals of intercession, such as from even the hard heart of the donkey-driver would not easily be effaced, she at last induced him to hand over his hammer, and succeeded in obtaining his name and address. Then, overcome with excitement and exertion, she fainted away, and was with difficulty carried home.

Another story is told of how a favourite retriever of hers, named Waterford, who loved her and followed her wherever she went, hearing her cry one day, sprang to her rescue through a large glass window, thus incurring the wrath of Mr. Mumford, who had the dog shot. "For months," says Catherine Mumford, "I suffered intolerably, especially in realizing that it was in the effort to alleviate my sufferings the beautiful creature had lost its life. Days passed before I could speak to my father .... "

There was a love episode in the life of Catherine Mumford which she decided by a text from the Bible, Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. The lover was a cousin from Derbyshire, "a young man of somewhat striking appearance, and with more than ordinary capa city"; and although "she was not the most ardent of the two, she could not prevent her heart responding in some measure to his love." But he was not serious enough about religion, and Catherine Mumford presently dismissed him, a step which she says cost her "a considerable effort at the time."

She was a delicate child, and for some years had suffered from a spinal complaint, making painful acquaintance in the most fervorous period of youth with mattress and sofa. But she was devotedly nursed by her mother; she pursued her studies in history and geography; she read an immense mount of contemporary theology, and acquired an enthusiasm for missionary enterprise and a passion for spiritual religion which deepened to a very striking and saint-like devotion in her wonderful after-life.

When William Booth crossed her path she was an able, masterful, and brilliant young woman, who delighted in table controversies, who was somewhat proud of her logical adroitness, and who must have been, one thinks, as great a terror to the loose thinkers and careless talkers of her little circle as William Gladstone in a more exalted sphere. It is tolerably certain that she was improved, and very deeply improved, by her intimacy with William Booth. There was something in her mind, at this period, too like the self-assertiveness of an intellect rejoicing in its own trenchant dexterity to promise sweetness and light. She was able, brilliant, daring, and righteous to a fault; but one doubts if her heart at that time had asserted its equal partnership with her brain. Something of this brilliant young person's character, and her original genius, may be seen in a letter which she sent to a minister who had preached a sermon with which she disagreed. The modesty of the approach does not minimise the force and vigour of the attack; and certainly such views in the 'fifties were unusual, and in a girl of her age remarkable enough to draw attention.

 

DEAR Sir-- You will doubtless be surprised at the receipt of this communication, and I assure you it is with great reluctance and a feeling of profound respect that I make it. Were it not for the high estimate I entertain both for your intellect and heart, I would spare the sacrifice it costs me. But because I believe you love truth, of whatever kind, and would not willingly countenance or propagate erroneous views on any subject, I venture to address you.

Excuse me, my dear sir; I feel myself but a babe in compari son with you. But permit me to call your attention to a subject on which my heart has been deeply pained. In your discourse on Sunday morning, when descanting on the policy of Satan in first attacking the most assailable of our race, your remarks appeared to imply woman's intellectual and even moral inferiority to man. I cannot believe that you intended it to be so under stood, at least with reference to her moral nature. But I fear the tenor of your remarks would too surely leave an impression on the minds of many of your congregation, and I for one cannot but deeply regret that a man for whom I entertain such a high veneration should appear to hold such views derogatory to my sex, and which I believe to be unscriptural and dishonouring to God.

Permit me, my dear sir, to ask whether you have ever made the subject of woman's equality as a being the matter of calm investigation and thought? If not, I would, with all deference, suggest it as a subject well worth the exercise of your brain, and calculated amply to repay any research you may bestow upon it.

So far as Scriptural evidence is concerned, did I but possess ability to do justice to the subject, I dare take my stand on it against the world in defending her perfect equality. And it is because I am persuaded that no honest, unprejudiced investiga tion of the sacred volume can give perpetuity to the mere assump tions and false notions which have gained currency in society on this subject, that I so earnestly commend it to your attention. I have such confidence in the nobility of your nature that I feel certain neither prejudice nor custom can blind you to the truth, if you will once turn attention to the matter.

That woman is, in consequence of her inadequate education, generally inferior to man intellectually, I admit. But that she is naturally so, as your remarks seem to imply, I see no cause to believe. I think the disparity is as easily accounted for as the difference between woman intellectually in this country and under the degrading slavery of heathen lands. No argument, in my judgment, can be drawn from past experience on this point, because the past has been false in theory and wrong in practice. Never yet in the history of the world has woman been placed on an intellectual footing with man. Her training from baby hood, even in this highly-favoured land, has hitherto been such as to cramp and paralyse rather than to develop and strengthen her energies, and calculated to crush and wither her aspirations after mental greatness rather than to excite and stimulate them. And even where the more directly depressing influence has been withdrawn, the indirect and more powerful stimulus has been wanting.

 

A few months older than William Booth and his superior in intellectual force, Catherine Mumford was his junior in spiritual experience, and at that time his inferior in per sonality. He lacked the culture which she brought to him with a fervent admiration for his rugged rock-hewn strength; she lacked that boundless depth of self-sacrificing love, that wide and overflowing ocean of yearning, pitying, human affection which was the gift he brought to her, and the human influence which made her in after years "the Mother of the Army." One would say that while Catherine Mumford's tendency might have been towards a central anxiety concerning the condition of her own soul, William Booth's obvious path of development was towards a central anxiety for the souls of all mankind. Catherine Mumford, as a woman and an invalid, in spite of a genuine desire to spread her knowledge of conversion, would almost certainly have remained an interesting and powerful figure in a group of earnest sectarian Christians, but for the en franchisement and the impulse towards humanity brought into her sheltered life by this rough-wrought son of sorrow and distress. In a certain measure William Booth came into the life of Catherine Mumford as Robert Browning came into the life of Elizabeth Barrett. In each case there was a resurrection of the woman, and a beauty added to the man.

 

CHAPTER XI

THE BEGINNINGS OF A LOVE STORY

1852

 

WILLIAM BOOTH met Catherine Mumford for the first time when he was still a lay preacher. Mr. Rabbits gave a large party at his house one afternoon to which Mrs. and Miss Mumford were invited, and at which William Booth made a late arrival. No sooner did the young man make his appearance--a romantic appearance, one conjectures, at this respectable tea-party--than Mr. Rabbits seized upon him and insisted that he should recite a terrible American poem concerned with drunkenness. William Booth objected. He did not want to recite. He did not want to be forced into prominence. He protested that the piece was not in the key of social festivity. But the irrepressible Mr. Rabbits, who had heard him recite this same piece with great effect some few days previously, would take no denial. And so William Booth occupied the central place in that crowded drawing-room, and declaimed American poetry.

The recitation had a very awkward effect. It started a controversy. The guests of Mr. Rabbits were by no means convinced of the virtue of teetotalism. They saw considerable danger in the advocacy of so stringent a gospel; they declared themselves in favour of temperance and moderation. Suddenly into the midst of this disturbing discussion came Catherine Mumford, with a downrightness of opinion, a logic unmatched in that room, and a searching analysis troublesome, one imagines, at a tea-party, and sided entirely with William Booth.

This was their first meeting, marked by an alliance in battle. He saw her again, more than once, and was increasingly impressed by her force of character, the purity of her faith, and her instinct for worship. He respected her, and no doubt she was one of those who unwittingly discouraged his "pulpit efforts" by the extent and quality of her intellect.

On that day, the day upon which he finally relinquished his business career for the ministry, the first day of his freedom, he once more encountered Miss Mumford, and again through the intervention of Mr. Rabbits. The day was the 10th of April, 1852, Good Friday, his own birthday, and the day on which his great aspiration had come to reality.

Mr. Rabbits caught him at the moment of his starting off to pay a visit, and insisted that he should go with him to a service of the Reformers in a schoolroom situated in Cowper Street, City Road. Somewhat against his will, Booth consented, and in the schoolroom once more encountered Catherine Mumford. It was a fateful meeting. At the conclusion of the service he escorted this wonderful young creature to her home in Brixton, and on that journey both the man and the woman knew that they loved each other.

It was one of those fallings in love which are as instantaneous as they are mutual, which are neither approached nor immediately followed by any formal declaration of affection, and which manifest themselves even in the midst of conversations altogether absorbed in other matters. Suddenly William Booth knew that he loved this woman; and at the same moment the woman knew that for her there could be no other man. They compared notes afterwards, and confirmed their instinctive supposition; but at the time no word was said leading to the possibility of such a comparison of feelings.

And what follows is one of the most remarkable and charming love stories in the world--the love story of a man and a woman in whose hearts an extraordinary sense of religion had the uppermost place, to whom everything secular and human had a divine relativity, for whom God and His worship were the sovran ends of their existence. It is, in a way, a Methodist love story. Passion was there, deep and abiding, but passion restrained by duty and consecrated by devotion. An immense reverence for the woman characterized the love of the man, and a deep self-sacrificing faith in the man and his destiny characterized the love of the woman.

On the very threshold of this great love the man was brought face to face with hard necessity. His position was insecure; his worldly prospect could not well be blacker. For, to begin with, he was only an irregular minister; his miserable wage was guaranteed to him only for three months; and the more he saw of the Reformers the less he liked them. It tortured him to decide whether he might openly and frankly confess his love for this woman who was openly and frankly his friend. Dare he take that step? Yes. But ought he to take that step? Who should decide?

He prayed, and indeed agonized, over that question. The answer was uncertain, and his action was uncertain. Without positively declaring his love, he hinted to his friend this distress which haunted his thoughts. He made it clear to her that God must have his life, but asked, pitifully enough, and with much burning eloquence, whether he might rightfully look for companionship on his troubled road.

Catherine Booth has described the difficulties of that period, from the evening when William Booth accompanied her home after the meeting in the City Road:

 

That little journey will never be forgotten by either of us. It is true that nothing particular occurred, except that as W. afterwards expressed it, it seemed as if God flashed simultaneously into our hearts that affection which afterwards ripened into what has proved at least to be an exceptional union of heart and purpose and life, and which none of the changing vicissitudes with which our lives have been so crowded has been able to efface.

He impressed me.

I had been introduced to him as being in delicate health, and he took the situation in at a glance. His thought for me, although such a stranger, appeared most remarkable. The conveyance shook me, he regretted it. The talking exhausted me. He saw it and forbade it. And then we struck in at once in such wonderful harmony of view and aim and feeling on varied matters that passed rapidly before us. It seemed as though we had intimately known and loved each other for years, and suddenly, after some temporary absence, had been brought together again, and before we reached my home we both suspected, nay, we felt as though we had been made for each other, and that henceforth the current of our lives must flow together.

It was curious, too, that both of us had an idea of what we should require in the companion with whom we allied ourselves for life, if ever such an alliance should take place.

Singular to say, W. had formed very similar notions, and here we were thrown together in this unexpected fashion, matching these pre-conceived characters, even as though we had been made to order!

My mother invited W. to stay the night. He was, so far, without any home. He had purposed to stop at his cousin's. Instead of that he had got into this meeting, and from this meeting had come on with me. What a strange providence! It seemed so to me.

No doubt we drew each other out, and the conversation was lively and interesting, and my mother listened, and had her say, and before we parted she was nearly as interested in him as I was myself, but still nothing was said about the future ....

W. went away in a terrible controversy, feeling that he was wounded, and he has often told me since that he felt that for the first time he had met the woman who filled up his life's ideal of what a wife should be. He was really in love, and yet it was all contrary to the plans he had made. Had he not, only the day before, been able to get away from the business yoke that had galled him for these eight years gone by? Was there not the opportunity now for him to obtain the qualifications that he was convinced he required so grievously for the mighty work that was before him? Had he not resolved that for years to come he would neither look to the right hand nor to the left, but go straight forward until he had fitted himself to be a good minister of Jesus Christ. Moreover, what could he do with a wife? The little society with whom he had been commissioned to labour was only a mere handful of mostly working men that might not hold together for six months, and even if it did, might not want him beyond that time--even if they wanted him at all--of which he was not sure, knowing that, but for Mr. Rabbits, he would not have been there at all. So what business had he thinking about a wife or anything of the kind? His work seemed to be to go on and make himself a nest before he sought a mate.

And yet, there was the awkward fact staring him in the face, and although he said to himself as he walked away from that door that morning, "It cannot, must not, shall not be," it was not many hours before he found himself at that door again. We soon discovered what our mutual feelings were, and resolved that nothing should be done in haste: in short, until we were fully persuaded in our own minds.

A period was fixed during which time we were to seek Divine guidance. I had always entertained very strong views as to the sanctity of such engagements, views which W. considered very strict. I regard a betrothal as a most sacred act. That having once mutually decided on an engagement to be terminated with marriage, it was a very serious offence against God, and against the human heart, for any violation of such promises to take place.

I made W. understand what my views were, and refused what would be deemed even the most trifling familiarities between young people until he was perfectly satisfied and decided on the propriety of our future union.

This made the matter more serious still, and again he went forth to seek for advice from those who knew me, and to pray that God would show him whether in the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed it was His will that the union should take place. I said as to time I had no choice. If we never are married, very well. If circumstances never justified it, I am perfectly content that we should remain single for ever; but, single or married in body, we must be perfectly united in heart. Amongst the ways in which W. sought to obtain light was the old-fashioned one of opening the Bible and receiving the first passage on which the eye fell as the interpretation of God's pleasure, and this instance was rather curious, his eye falling upon, "And the two sticks became one in my hand."

However, this controversy could not go on for ever with two such hears as ours, and consequently we came to the conclusion and covenanted that come weal or woe we would sail life's stormy seas together, and on our knees we plighted our troth before the Lord.

We have heard a deal of criticisms on our principles of marriage in the Salvation Army, but here was a marriage virtually contracted on the same principles, foreshadowing all that we have embodied in our S.A. form of marriage. The purpose and end of it, I am sure, was the glory of God and the highest interests of the human race ....

 

The reality of the lovers' struggle, the stern force and rigid honesty of what they describe as their "controversy," may be seen from the letters of Catherine Mumford, which were written to William Booth in those early weeks of their intimacy. This controversy, as the reader will have seen, turned on the question whether they ought to consider themselves as engaged, or whether they should rest content with a Platonic friendship.

 

MY DEAREST WILLIAM--The evening is beautifully serene and tranquil, according sweetly with the feelings of my soul. The whirlwind is past and the succeeding calm is in proportion to its violence. Your letter--your visit have hushed its last murmurs and stilled every vibration of my throbbing heart-strings. All is well. I feel it is right, and I praise God for the satisfying conviction.

Most gladly does my soul respond to your invitation to give myself afresh to Him, and to strive to link myself closer to you, by rising more into the image of my Lord. The nearer our assimilation to Jesus, the more perfect and heavenly our union. Our hearts are now indeed one, so one that division would be more bitter than death. But I am satisfied that our union may become, if not more complete, more divine, and, consequently, capable of yielding a larger amount of pure unmingled bliss.

The thought of walking through life perfectly united, together enjoying its sunshine and battling its storms, by softest sympathy sharing every smile and every tear, and with thorough unanimity performing all its momentous duties, is to me exquisite happiness; the highest earthly bliss I desire. And who can estimate the glory to God, and the benefit to man, accruing from a life spent in such harmonious effort to do His will? Such unions, alas! are so rare that we seldom see an exemplification of the divine idea of marriage.

If, indeed, we are the disciples of Christ, "in the world we shall have tribulation"; but in Him and in each other we may have peace. If God chastises us by affliction, in either mind, body, or circumstances, it will only be a mark of our discipleship; and if borne equally by us both, the blow shall not only be softened, but sanctified, and we shall be able to rejoice that we are permitted to drain the bitter cup together. Satisfied that in our souls there flows a deep undercurrent of pure affection, we will seek grace to bear with the bubbles which may rise on the surface, or wisdom so to burst them as to increase the depth, and accelerate the onward flow of the pure stream of love, till it reaches the river which proceeds out of the Throne of God and of the Lamb, and mingles in glorious harmony with the love of Heaven.

The more you lead me up to Christ in all things, the more highly shall I esteem you; and, if it be possible to love you more than I do now, the more shall I love you. You are always present in my thoughts.

 

MY DEAR WILLIAM--I ought to be happy after enjoying your company all the evening. But now you are gone and I am alone, I feel a regret consonant with the height of my enjoyment. How wide the difference between heavenly and earthly joys! The former satiate the soul and reproduce themselves. The latter, after planting in our soul the seeds of future griefs and cares, take their flight and leave an aching void.

How wisely God has apportioned our cup. He does not give us all sweetness, lest we should rest satisfied with earth; nor all bitterness, lest we grow weary and disgusted with our lot. But He wisely mixes the two, so that if we drink the one, we must also taste the other. And, perhaps, a time is coming when we shall see that the proportions of this cup of human joy and sorrow are more equally adjusted than we now imagine--that souls capable of enjoyments above the vulgar crowd can also feel sorrow in comparison with which theirs is but like the passing April cloud in contrast with the long Egyptian night....

But I have rambled from what I was about to write. I find that the pleasure connected with pure, holy, sanctified love forms no exception to the general rule. The very fact of loving invests the being beloved with a thousand causes of care and anxiety, which, if unloved, would never exist. At least, I find it so. You have caused me more real anxiety than any other earthly object ever did. Do you ask why? I have already supplied you with an answer! . . . Don't sit up singing till twelve o'clock after a hard day's work. Such things are not required by either God or man; and remember you are not your own!

 

My dearest love, beware how you indulge that dangerous element of character--ambition. Misdirected, it will be everlasting ruin to yourself and, perhaps, to me also. Oh, my love, let nothing earthly excite it, let not self-aggrandisement fire it. Fix it on the Throne of the Eternal, and let it find the realization of its loftiest aspirations in the promotion of His glory, and it shall be consummated with the richest enjoyments and brightest glories of God's own Heaven. Those that honour Him He will honour, and to them who thus seek His glory will He give to rule over the nations, and even to judge angels, who, through a perverted ambition, the exaltation of self instead of God, have fallen from their allegiance and overcast their eternity with the blackness of darkness for ever.

I feel your danger. I could write sheets on the subject, but my full soul shall pour out its desires to that God who has promised to supply all your need. In my estimation, faithfulness is an indispensable ingredient of all true friendship. How much more of a love like mine! You say, "Reprove--advise me as you think necessary." I have no reproofs, my dearest, but I have cautions, and I know you will consider them.

 

Do assure me, my own dear William, that no lack of energy or effort on your part shall hinder the improvement of those talents God has intrusted to you, and which He holds you responsible to improve to the uttermost. Your duty to God, to His Church, to me, to yourself, demands as much. If you really see no prospect of studying, then, I think, in the highest interests of the future, you ought not to stay.

I have been revolving in my mind all day which will be your wisest plan under present circumstances, and it appears to me as you are to preach nearly every evening, and at places so wide apart, it will be better to do as the friends advise, and stop all night where you preach. Do not attempt to walk long distances after the meetings. With a little management and a good deal of determination, I think you might accomplish even more that way as to study than by going home each night. Do not be over-anxious about the future. Spalding will not be your final destination, if you make the best of your ability.

 

Catherine Mumford's Reminiscences tell the rest of the story:

Life now to me assumed altogether another aspect. I have already intimated the very high estimate I had formed of the importance of the position to which I now seemed fairly destined. The idea of the possibility of becoming a wife and a mother filled my life with new responsibilities, but the thought of becoming a Minister's wife made the whole appear increasingly serious. I assumed in imagination all these responsibilities right away, even as though they had already come, and at once set myself, with all my might, to prepare to meet them. I added to the number of my studies, enlarged the scope of my reading, wrote notes and made comments on all the sermons and lectures that appeared at all worthy of the trouble, started to learn shorthand in order that I might more readily and fully correspond with W., and in other ways stirred up the gift that was in me to fit myself the better to serve God and my generation.

I think this would have been one of the happiest periods of my life but for the gloomy view W. was apt to take of our circumstances. In looking back on this time, I often think of the saying that I have heard W. quote in these later times, that three-fourths of the troubles that cause us the greatest suffering never happen. Or, in other words, had we more perfectly learnt the divine lesson, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," the realisation of this truth might have modified many of the gloomy forebodings which marred the beginning of our acquaintance.

I was very delicate; in fact, little better than a confirmed invalid, and he was afraid that my strength would never stand the strain and hardship involved in such a life as I imagined that of a Preacher's wife ought to be. Moreover, his pathway seemed so hedged in and blocked up, and he could not see how he was going to reach any ministerial position which would enable him to obtain for me that care and help without which he could not see how it was possible for me to live in any degree of comfort; and over and over again he would say that he would never take me into any position in which I should be likely to be less comfortable and cared for than in my own home.

The discipline of the Reform Society was very unsatisfactory to us both, in denying the Minister what we considered was his proper authority. The tendency of human nature to go to extremes found ample illustration in this particular. From making the Minister everything, treating him with the profoundest respect, receiving his word as law, putting him almost in the place of God Himself--they went over to regard him as nothing, denying him every shadow of authority, and only allowing him to preside at their meetings when elected for this purpose, and speaking of him in public and in private as their "hired" preacher.

In W.'s case it was worse than this. The leader of the local movement with which he was connected, not only denied him anything like the position of a leader, but refused to give him reasonable opportunities for preaching. They simply dealt with him as a cypher, doubtless feeling that, did they give him any sort of a position, he would earn for himself the leadership which they were determined to keep to themselves.

We both saw that these relations were too strained and unnatural to last very long; accordingly, at the end of the three months, for which Mr. R. had engaged him in the first instance, and for which he remunerated him out of his own purse, the connection was dissolved.

The look-out now was gloomy enough, not that I was anyway anxious about it. I felt quite certain that God would interfere on our behalf, and that W. possessed gifts which would only have to be exercised to become known, and which being known would win for him all those opportunities for usefulness for which his soul so strongly yearned.

It was at this time, when the way to the Ministry seemed totally closed in the Methodist direction, that W.'s attention was turned to the Congregational Church. I think this was my doing; indeed, I know it was; but, until he came to this dead stop, he would never hear of it, and even now his difficulties appeared almost insurmountable. To leave Methodism seemed an impossibility. His love for it at that time amounted almost to idolatry ....

Although I could sympathize with all this, and had a fair share of love for the Church to which I also owed much and in which I had experienced a great deal of blessing, still, I had nothing like this blind attachment. For one reason, I had not been actively engaged. Mine had been more the position of a spectator; and, moreover, I argued, that once settled in a Congregational pulpit, he could impart into his services and meetings all that was good and hearty and soul-saving in Methodism; at least, I thought he could, and consequently, I pressed him very strongly to seek an open door for the exercise of his Ministry among the Independents.

He was slow to accept my counsel. He had formed a very lofty notion of the intellectual and literary status of the Body, and was fearful that he was not equal in these respects to meet what would be required of him. But I was just as confident as he was fearful. I felt sure that all that was wanted by him was a sphere, and, that once gained, I saw no difficulty in his being able to organize a church of workers, and make them into Methodists in spirit and practice, whether they were such in government or no.

Perhaps I was very simple in these notions; I had little or no experience at that time as to the difficulty of over-ruling the prejudices and changing the customs which had been handed down from generation to generation. However, I was young and sanguine, and already had come to have considerable faith in the enthusiastic energy and devotion of my beloved, and I thought if he could once get into the leadership anywhere, he could carry the people whithersoever he would.

With such reasonings as these, and seeing that there was no other way by which he could reach the sphere to which his soul believed God had called him, he gave in, and resolved to seek an open door for the preaching of Jesus Christ, and the bringing lost sinners to God amongst the Congregationalists.

I cannot very well remember how he went about seeking this open door. We had not, so far as I can remember, a single friend who had any influence either with the Independents or with any other Christian Church as far as that goes. We at first cut ourselves off from the friendships of our youth when we left the Wesleyans, and now we had turned our backs upon the little handful with whom we had taken sides amongst the Reformers; consequently, we had no one to give us any introduction, nay, not even to give us a word of counsel.

At that time the most influential man among the Nonconformists in London was a Dr. Campbell. He was the editor of a religious newspaper which was regarded as the principal organ of the Denomination, known as The British Banner, together with one or two other magazines. Dr. Campbell was mighty in controversy, and his paper had achieved no little notoriety in this line.

Beyond this, we knew nothing about him.

I pushed W. up to go and see him, and after some of that hesitancy which we feel for a task when our heart is not in it, he screwed up his courage and called at the Dr.'s residence, and asked to see the great man. The Dr. received him most kindly, made him tell the story of his life, and then told him that he liked him, and would help him to the utmost of his ability. He gave him some letters of introduction, and finally brought him before the Committee for Home Mission Work, when, after various enquiries, theological, doctrinal, and otherwise, it was decided that he should be accepted and sent to the Training College which was located somewhere out of London.

In addition to W.'s difficulty in regard to Methodist Government, there rose up a still more formidable one, that of doctrine.

We knew that the basis of the Congregational theology was Calvinism. We were both saturated, as it were, with the broadest, deepest, and highest opinions as to the extent of the love of God and the benefit flowing from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We were verily extremists on this question. The idea of anything like the selection of one individual to enjoy the blessedness of the Divine favour for ever and ever, and the reprobation of another to suffer all the pains and penalties of everlasting damnation, irrespective of any choice, conduct, or character on their part, seemed to us to be an outrage on all that was fair and righteous, to say nothing about benevolent. We not only thought this, but felt it. On this, at least, we were in perfect harmony.

Now the knowledge that this doctrine was maintained by the Congregationalists in general, although we knew that it was not very generally preached, it being only here and there that we ever heard it mentioned in the popular addresses of the Congregational preachers of that day--that fading away from the public view of that doctrine, which is almost complete in our time, had already commenced--still, this phantom haunted W. continually, and one of the first questions he asked Dr. Campbell in the interview of which I have already spoken was whether he would be expected to preach any other doctrine than the universal love of God. The Dr. assured him than he would not be expected to preach any other doctrine than that which he honestly believed, saying to him most emphatically, "Now you must go to College and study over your Bible, and what you find there you must go out and preach, and that will be all that Independents will require from you."

This assurance was repeated to him again in the intercourse into which he was brought with other leading Ministers of this Church.

Judge of his surprise, after having passed his examination, and all had been fixed up for his admission into the Institution, on being informed by Dr. George Smith as the mouthpiece of the Committee that he would be expected to conform his views on this question to the Calvinistic theory. The Dr. said, "The Committee has shown you great favour arranging for you to go into training, although not even a member of an Independent Church, and holding doctrinal views opposed to those of the Committee; but on examination at the close of the first term, the Committee will certainly expect that you will be more nearly in harmony with their opinions," at the same time recommending an immediate perusal of Booth's Reign of Grace and Payne's Divine Sovereignty.

This was a tremendous drop for W. With great searchings of heart and innumerable misgivings he had managed to get so far. His views on church government had not been based upon any particular estimate of its importance, apart from the great purpose which it was intended to serve. Even then he was not one of those who magnify the form at the expense of the substance, but was prepared to sacrifice any favoured notions he might have entertained on this subject if he could thereby have secured the one important end on which his heart was set ....

But when it came to a change of doctrine on what was to him such a vital question, he was completely staggered. To have left him perfectly free was the only reasonable and honourable course for the Committee to have adopted; in fact, the only course that was needed on behalf of the churches they represented. Of what value could a man possibly be if, for the sake of position, he could deliberately change his views on such a vital topic as the one in question?

Moreover, a more unlikely course to have attained their ends could not possibly have been taken, especially with W. If he had been left perfectly free to decide and act accordingly, as Dr. Campbell had assured him he would be, the review of the controversy by him would have been, I have no doubt, fairly and faithfully made; . . . not that I expect it would have resulted in any change of opinion, still the subject would have been considered in all its bearings. But as it was, it was like offering a bribe, the very thought of which prevented even the most superficial consideration of the subject in question, and consequently most effectually served to defeat its own purpose.

However, W. shook hands with the Dr., bought Booth's Reign of Grace on his way home, sat down to read it, managed to get through some 30 or 40 pages, threw it to the other side of the room, decided that he could never bring his mind to the views therein laid down, and so closed the door to the Training Institution, and to the Independents. He then decided to write the Secretary, thanking him for all his kindness, but intimating that he had not the slightest intention of altering his doctrinal views, or of even deliberately setting to work to prepare for doing so.

All this, any one can easily imagine, was of considerable interest to me. From the moment of our engagement we had become one, and from that hour to this I don't think there has ever been any question of importance concerning either our principles or our practice in which we have not acted in perfect harmony.

I had been made familiar with every varying phase of the question as the negotiations proceeded. The matter had been undertaken more or less as I have said at my own instigation, and I had laboured hard to strengthen W.'s hands and to pilot him through the many difficulties that barred the way, and now, all at once, my schemes were frustrated, and my hopes, in that direction at least, were at an end, and we were once again afloat.

Amongst other things, ways and means demanded that W. should do something. The little store of money with which he left business was now exhausted. The last sixpence he had in the world he had given to a poor girl dying of consumption the day before in the expectation of going to the Training College on the following morning.

Therefore it seemed desirable that some other door should open in lieu of the one that had so abruptly closed.

As far as we could see no other deliverance was in sight, and yet, dark as the outlook was, the thought of going back to some business engagement was not allowed or entertained by either one of us. "No retreat" was our motto. We must go forward. But how? That was the question. We had not long to wait. I have already described that as the Episcopal Church divides the country into parishes, so Wesleyan Methodism groups those places where it operates into circuits.

The Reform movement, so far as it was able to, followed this line of demarcation. In some circuits the disruption was comparatively small, and the dissatisfied party found it the greatest difficulty to maintain an existence.

In others, the Reforming party formed a considerable portion of the body. This was the case at Spalding, a small town in the south of Lincolnshire. Here the great majority of lay preachers and people sided with the expelled Ministers, and were, in course of time, by expulsion or from choice, separated from the original fold, whereupon they formed themselves into a Community consisting of Societies and lay Preachers.

These Societies were separated by considerable distances from each other, the circuit being something like 27 miles across. To travel about amongst these Societies, preaching to them on the week nights and to transact the various matters of business which were essential to their existence and extension, and to perform the other manifold duties of a Pastor, a preacher was required. Enquiry for such an one was made by a friend in London; W. was at once suggested by the gentleman to whom the enquiry was made. As the result the invitation was forwarded and accepted, and before many days had passed he was duly installed in a position in which, notwithstanding some considerable drawbacks, his whole soul was in harmony.

To us this seemed a wonderful intervention indeed, but not more so than numberless similar instances that followed in the succeeding years. Again and again have there been Red Seas and Jordans through which we have gone in safety.

It was on ... day of this year 1852 that W. left me for Spalding.

This parting, although a very simple matter, perhaps appearing scarcely worthy of notice, was nevertheless a very serious event to me.

I don't know that I need hesitate to say that I loved W. with all my heart. We had been thrown very much together, and though the acquaintance had only extended some 6 months, it had been a very intimate one.

Parting, to me, had always looked a very formidable sort of thing. When a little girl, I made up my mind that I could not live as the wife of a seafaring or military man, simply on the ground of separation. As a Salvationist, I have since learnt many things and amongst others to endure separations from those I love for the Kingdom's sake, and on this occasion I braced myself up. Although it meant suffering, yet, I did not wish it otherwise. The sacrifice of a present good to secure a greater in the future had always appeared to me to be one of the higher forms of duty; I cheerfully embraced it on this occasion.

 

CHAPTER XII

PURITAN LOVE-LETTERS

1852

 

UNFORTUNATELY, the love-letters of William Booth and Catherine Mumford are difficult to arrange in time sequence, since the dates are in many cases altogether omitted or mentioned only as the day and the month on which they were written; moreover, these documents suffered in the confusion which befell other papers, owing to the migratory life of the writers, and a consecutive dialogue is not to be made of those that are available. Nevertheless, these letters which follow, like beads on a string, are all connected on the single thread of the lovers' supreme difficulty. They can be read without any bother as to dates, and one is so interested in the narrative, so amused by the quaint style of the two writers, so charmed, and in some instances so exalted, by the beauty of the romance, that one steps over each hiatus scarcely conscious that a break has occurred.

The letters are so spontaneous, so unconscious of publication, so intimate and yet so public, that they may be given in their fulness and with scarcely the interposition of a single comment. The reader will remember that Catherine Mumford's education was superior to William Booth's, and will, perhaps, perceive a somewhat exaggerated evidence of this superiority in the letters; he may also detect a stronger and a more able personality in her love-letters, a greater rigour of mind, a much keener perception, and certainly a profounder spirituality. It is important, however, to bear in mind that from the very first Catherine Mumford recognized in William Booth a man of destiny, a man of extraordinary power, and of almost matchless enthusiasm. She looked up to him as to a superior force; she realized that he was one whose character would grow with life, whose power would increase with exercise; if she is superior to him in her letters, if she advises him, reproves him, instructs him, and even drives him, still it is always as one who merely sees further into futurity, and knows as a mother knows the strength into which her child will grow. Catherine Mumford lived to be called "the Mother of the Salvation Army"; she was also the mother of the man who married her.

Bergsonism has here a most admirable example of its thesis that the intellect is merely a weapon forged by life for its use, that life itself is superior to mental accomplishment. One must also consider that while Catherine Mumford had leisure on her hands, and rather laid herself out at this time as a letter-writer, William Booth, even in 1852, was a man incessantly and exhaustively engaged in work which seemed to him infinitely more urgent than the writing of love-letters. His love-story is only a part of his life-story, and his life-story is as much a psychological study of development along one single line of human activity as an epic of religious enthusiasm.

Here follow letters which cover the greater part of 1852, prior to William Booth's departure for Spalding, and which are chiefly concerned with the struggle of these two souls to know the will of God in their desperate situation:

 

William Booth to Catherine Mumford.

MY DEAR FRIEND--I promised you a line. I write. I know no more than I knew yesterday. I offered as you know full well then and there to make the engagement. You declined on what without doubt are good grounds, but still I cannot do more. You know the inmost feelings of my heart, and I can say no more than I have not, as I could have wished, seen anything striking to intimate the will of God. If my circumstances had not been so benighted I might not have desired this, but I feel the importance of the affair, if I feel nothing else.

Now understand me. As I said yesterday, I offer now a step in the dark. I will promise you anything you wish for your own dear sake, but mind, my feelings are still the same. But the tie shall be as sacred as though made under the influence of sunnier feelings and in prospect of brighter days. You can write me your mind. I do not wish to trouble you for a long letter. Put down in a line what you think. If you decline as yesterday, I ask the favour of being allowed to keep as secret as my Bible and as full to me of inspiration, and as sacred as my soul's inmost feelings, the notes I already have in your writing. As you wish you can keep or burn mine. I could almost trust you with the keeping of the Title Deeds of my soul's salvation, so highly do I esteem your character. Perhaps I write wildly. Excuse me. I began calm.

After this is ended, this awful controversy, I shall call on you again. If you accept what I have stated, I will come Saturday. If not, I shall call as a friend in the course of a few days and show you how I bear the matter. If it be of man, if it be wrong, it will pass forgotten away. If it be of God He will still bring it to pass.

All I fear is your suffering and your mother's condemnation. But I cannot help it. Believe every word I have here said. If you accept, we are henceforth and for ever one. If you decline, the matter must be forgotten. I leave you in the hands of my God.--I am, Yours, etc., WILLIAM BOOTH Miss C. Mumford.

 

William Booth to Catherine Mumford.

WALWORTH.

(Undated.)

MY DEAR FRIEND--You may perhaps deem me to be taking another step in the wrong direction, but I must, after the very abrupt manner in which we parted last evening, say a word. I believe that you think me sincere, and I have only one fear, that is, that you will make yourself ill. If you do, and I hear of it, it will drive me into delirium. My mind is made up. My hopes are set on things below of the same nature as things above. My heart prays that His will may be done on earth as it is done in Heaven ....

 

[This is the "controversy" referred to in the previous chapter, as to whether the lovers should make a regular engagement or turn their affection into a Platonic friendship.]

 

How clear and distinct in answer to prayer did God make the path of Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher. With them it was not the impulse of passion, but the clear unmistakable teaching of Providence. I would that it should be so in our experience. Be assured that your reasoning on the subject is not forgotten. I remember your every word. But hear me again and I will be silent.

1. Such a matter never could be arranged without in some way transpiring, which would, I conceive, injure my usefulness.

2. It never could be without inducing me to occupy time, every moment of which ought to be taken up with study.

3. I have no present probability of making my circumstances such that I can ask you to share my home.

4. I should feel such a powerful earthly bond taking up my feelings and drawing off my heart from entire and complete devotion to God.

5. God has of late been satisfying me with Himself, and I should fear setting up or creating another god, especially seeing that He has placed me in a position that my heart has so long desired and given me every comfort I wish.

6. Moreover, when I ponder over the salvation He has been working out for me, saving me from peculiar temptations to which I have been prone--and the darkness that hangs around me, etc., I feel an involuntary shudder creep over me at the thought of an engagement ....

I need not say the high place your character and disposition have in my esteem. I need not say how I regret, for your sake, that I ever set foot in your home. I need not say that the high estimation your mother has for you led her, I conceive, to take a prejudicial view of my conduct and to make remarks which were unmerited and unjust, and calculated to wrong my soul.

But it is over now. I am resigned to the will of God. I shall endeavour to pursue the path of duty ....

In the meantime, let us give ourselves to God, fix our affections all on Christ, and seek to do His will. Your kindness to me I need not refer to. I have indeed been grateful for it, and felt indeed how undeserved it was.

May God bless and prosper you temporally and spiritually, and may He make His will known and evident so that you may see it and understand it. Whatever you do, try to save men, to bless the world, and to preach Christ. With many prayers,--I remain, your sincere and affectionate friend,

WILLIAM BOOTH.

Miss Mumford.

 

William Booth to Catherine Mumford.

WALFORD.

MY DEAR FRIEND--Yours has just come to hand. My mother's note preceded it, imploring me to do nothing rashly, fearing my accustomed impetuosity, my feeling gaining the mastery over the calm teaching of reason; as a matter of course, she is aware that she cannot further than this advise me, not knowing you personally; she assures me that she has laid the matter before God as requested, and that the only impression on her mind in answer to such a prayer is, that ere such an important step be taken I should consider long, reminding me in conclusion that once a long time back she spoke wisely to me on the same subject, but at the same time declaring that she will acquiesce in any decision at which I may arrive; this is all I could possibly expect, all I desire at her hands ....

I need not recapitulate my doubts, only that every day seems to blacken them and make them more worthy of consideration; I need not say here how highly I judge of you and how high in my estimation your virtuous soul I rank; I need not say that I have deemed and still do deem every, even the minutest, of your actions and words spotless and without blemish, that is, in my eyes; I need not tell you that I mean Christ and a union in Heaven, and that my resolutions are unbroken to live and live only for the salvation of souls and the glory of God; I need not urge you to a more earnest searching out for the beauties and loveliness of the character of Jesus; I need not exhort you to entire consecration to His service and His constant hallowed communion; I would to God that my intercourse with Him was as perfect and my resemblance to His image was as divine as your own. I will to-day more earnestly than ever pray that you may find your all in all in Him. I say nothing decisive because I know nothing; I have neither advanced nor retrograded from the position I occupied when last we met.

 

I intend, all well, visiting near Binfield this afternoon. Mr. Nye preaches there, I understand, to-night. I shall not be there, or else I might, I suppose, have had the pleasure of shaking hands with you. But we have a committee at Walworth. I trust you will have a good night's rest; I am grieved to hear that you are poorly. My health is good, tolerably so. I bore the fatigue of Sunday quite as well as I could have expected.

With my love to your dear mother--that is, if you communicate this letter; I do not see why you should not,--I remain, affectionately yours in the Love of the risen, interceding, atoning, sacrificial, ever-prevailing Lamb of God,

WILLIAM BOOTH.

Miss Catherine Mumford.

 

Catherine Mumford to William Booth.

BRIXTON,

Tuesday night, May 11, '52.

MY DEAR FRIEND~I have been spreading your letter before the Lord and earnestly pleading for a manifestation of His will to your mind in some way or other, and now I would say a few words of comfort and encouragement. My heart feels for you far beyond what I can express. Oh that I knew how to comfort you in an indirect way.

You do grieve me by saying, "you fear you have blocked up every way of being a blessing to me." I tell you it is not so; your kindness and character will ever give weight to your advice and teaching, and create a sympathy with your prayers which cannot fail to benefit me. If you wish to avoid giving me pain don't condemn yourself. I feel sure God does not condemn you, and if you could look into my heart you would see how far I am from such a feeling. Don't pore over the past. Let it all go. Your desire is to do the will of God, and He will guide you. Never mind who frowns, if God smiles. Though you are surrounded by a host of foes He is able to deliver and He will deliver, only trust in Him and don't be afraid; the darkness and gloom that hangs about your path shall all flee away. When you are tried you shall come forth as gold! The words gloom, melancholy, and despair lacerate my heart. Don't give way to such feelings for a moment. God loves you. He will sustain you. The thought that I should increase your perplexity and cause you any suffering is almost intolerable. Oh that we had never seen each other. Do try to forget me, so far as the remembrance would injure your usefulness or spoil your peace. If I have no alternative but to oppose the will of God or trample on the desolations of my own heart, my choice is made. "Thy will be done" is my constant cry. I care not for myself, but oh if I cause you to err I shall never be happy again. Don't, I beseech you, take any step without some evidence satisfactory to your own mind of the will of God; think nothing about me; I will resist to the uttermost. "I can do all things through Christ strengthening me." I do continually pray for you; surely God must answer our prayers when He sees it is our one desire to do His will. Let us expect an answer; perhaps our faith is deficient...--Yours affectionately, CATHERINE.

 

Catherine Mumford to William Booth.

BRIXTON,

May 13. '52.

MY DEAR FRIEND--I have read and re-read your note, and I fear you did not fully understand my difficulty. It was not circumstances; I thought I had fully satisfied you on that point. I thought you felt sure that a bright prospect could not allure me nor a dark one aftright me, if we are only one in heart. My difficulty, my only reason for wishing to defer the engagement was, that you might feel satisfied in your own mind that the step is right. To cause you to err would cost me far more suffering than anything else. I have deeply pondered over all your words at our last interview, especially the objections which you so honourably confessed had influenced your mind, and I dare not enter into so solemn an engagement till you can assure me that you feel I am in every way suited to make you happy and that you are satisfied the step is not opposed to the will of God.

You say if your circumstances were not so blighted you could not desire so striking an indication of God's will. I answer if you are satisfied of His will irrespective of circumstances, let circumstances go, and let us be one, come what will: but if there is anything in me which you fear, anything you think would mar your completest happiness, banish the thought of an union for ever, and let us regard each other as true and tried friends; but if you feel satisfied on these two points--first, that the step is not opposed to the will of God, and, secondly, that I am calculated to make you happy, come on Saturday evening, and on our knees before God let us give ourselves afresh to Him and to each other for His sake, consecrate our whole selves to His service for Him to live and die. When this is done what have we to do with the future?--we and all our concerns are in His hands, under His all-wise and gracious providence.

I wish you could see into my heart for a moment; I cannot transfer to paper my absorbing desire that the will of God may be done in this matter. I dare no more say I decline, or I accept (except on the beforementioned grounds) than I dare take my destiny into my own hands, the cry of my inmost soul is, Thy will be done. If you come on Saturday I shall presume that you are satisfied on these two points, and that henceforth we are one; in the meantime I shall not cease to pray that God may guide you aright. May He bless you, and if He sees that I am not such an one as you need to be an helpmate for you, may He enable you to forget me ....

 

William Booth to Catherine Mumford.

WALWORTH, June 24.

(Probably 1852.)

MY OWN DEAR CATHERINE---... I feel uncommonly tired and weary this morning. My head aches, and I feel altogether out of order. I walked home from Greenwich last night. I ought to have ridden. I preached there with much liberty and trust some profit to the people, though the congregation was not so good as the week before, some of the leading friends having gone to some fête in the neighbourhood ....

Let us love Him better for the love we bear each other, and seek in all things perfect and unimpaired conformity to all His will and work. I hope when you can that you will resume your reading, and I trust in better spirits and with a firmer trust in the Hand that feeds the ravens ....

 

 

William Booth to Catherine Mumford.

Monday morning.

MY OWN LOVING KATE--It has just occurred to my mind that I did not leave you a correct address of that poor girl, and lest you should be prevented from your benevolent undertaking I post this to inform you. If you leave the omnibus at the Obelisk, at the end of the London and at the foot of the Waterloo and Blackfriars Roads, you will be but a few yards from your destination, which is No. 3 or 4 Duke Street, next door to a Plumber and Glazier's shop; it is up two flights of stairs; take with you a smelling-bottle; a widow woman, who lives in the room as you enter from the street, if you ask her for the poor girl of the name of "Leach," will show you her room, I doubt not. Speak pointedly to all you see of the family; mention my name ....

My love to you, all my heart. I may or may not see you this evening. I write this on purpose that you may have the direction to that poor dying girl. Pray for me, oh to be willing to take any path which may promise most the diffusion of righteousness and the glory of God. Oh let us give ourselves afresh and entirely to Him; never was such a sacrifice as this needed as now; I would make my choice under the influence of deep piety and devotion, and I shall not err.

My love to your dear mother. I love not only you, but her better than ever before.

I pray for your entire consecration, and believe me,--Yours in the closest alliance of united soul, spirit, and body, for time and for eternity, for earth and for Heaven, for sorrow and for joy, for ever and for ever. Amen. WILLIAM.

 

CHAPTER XIII

WILLIAM BOOTH AS A SUCCESSFUL EVANGELIST.

CATHERINE MUMFORD AS GUARDIAN ANGEL

I852-1853

 

IT was not until he got into Lincolnshire that William Booth felt sure of his vocation. The experiment in London had been a failure, as we have seen, and one that rather tended to diminish the young man's confidence in his calling. He has left a fragment behind him which expresses his disgust for the satisfied and sanctimonious people among whom he had attempted to labour, and alludes briefly to the now pressing crisis in his financial affairs:

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.

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 Ietter inviting me to the charge of a Methodist Circuit in Lincolnshire, and from that time my difficulties of that kind became much less serious.

 

He was encouraged, as we know, by the enthusiasm of Catherine Mumford during this distressing period, but it must have been hard indeed for a young man with his foot on the threshold of a career to find the door of destiny thus shut in his face.

His reception in Spalding was the very reverse of his experience in London. He gives in his unpublished reminiscences a hurried account of this first great experience as a Methodist preacher, which we will quote in this place; but it is really in the letters to Catherine Mumford, which shall follow, that one gets a close, striking, and intimate knowledge of his mind at that period:

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 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.

Although I was only twenty-three years of age and Lincolnshire was one of the counties that had been most privileged with able Methodist preaching for half a century, and I had to immediately follow in Spalding a somewhat renowned minister, God helped me very wonderfully to make myself at home, and become a power amongst the people.

I felt some nervousness when on my first November Sunday I was confronted by such a large congregation as greeted me. In the morning I had very little liberty; but good was done, as I afterwards learned. In the afternoon we had a Prayer- or After-meeting, at which one young woman wept bitterly. I urged her to come to the communion-rails at night. She did so, and the Lord saved her. She afterwards sent me a letter thanking me for urging her to come. In the evening I had great liberty in preaching, and fourteen men and women came to the communion-rail; many, if not all, finding the Saviour.

On the Monday I preached there again. Four came forward, three of whom professed to find Salvation. I exerted myself very much, felt very deeply, and prayed very earnestly over an old man who had been a backslider for seven years. He wept bitterly, and prayed to the Lord to save him, "if He could wash a heart as black as Hell." By exerting myself so much I made myself ill, and was confined to the house during the rest of the week. My host and hostess were very kind to me.

The next Sunday I started frown home rather unwell. I had to go to Donnington, some miles away, in the morning and evening, and to Swineshead Bridge in the afternoon.

But at night God helped me to preach in such a way that many came out, and fourteen names were taken of those who really seemed satisfactory. It was indeed a melting, moving time.

I was kneeling, talking to a penitent, when some one touched me on the shoulder and said, "Here is a lady who has come to seek the Saviour, and now she has come to hear you, and she wants Salvation too." The Lord had mercy upon her, and she went away rejoicing.

At Swineshead Bridge--the name gives some idea of the utterly rural character of the population--I was to preach on three successive evenings, in the hope of promoting a Revival there. Many things seemed to be against the project, but the Lord was for us. Two people came out on the Monday evening, and God saved them both. This raised our faith and cheered our spirits, especially as we knew that several more souls were in distress.

On the Tuesday the congregation was better. The news had spread that the Lord was saving, and that seldom fails to bring a crowd wherever it may be. That evening the word was with power, and six souls cried for mercy. At the earnest solicitation of the people I decided to stay the remainder of the week, and urged them to pray earnestly, with the result that many sought and found Salvation, and the little Society was nearly doubled.

On the Saturday, just as I started home on the omnibus, a plain, unsophisticated Christian man came and said, "0 sir, let me have hold of your hand." When he had seized it between both his, with tears streaming down his face, he said, "Glory be to God that ever you came here. My wife before her conversion was a cruel persecutor, and a sharp thorn in my side. She would go home from the prayer-Meeting before me, and as full of the Devil as possible; she would oppose and revile me; but now, sir, she is just the contrary, and my house, instead of being a little Hell, has become a little Paradise." This was only one of a number of cases in which husbands rejoiced over wives, and wives over husbands, for whom they had long prayed.

I shall always remember with pleasure the week I spent at Swineshead Bridge, because I prayed more and preached with more of the spirit of expectation and faith, and then saw more success than in any previous week of my life. I dwell upon it as, perhaps, the week which most effectually settled my conviction for ever, that it was God's purpose by my using the simplest means to bring souls into liberty, and to break into the cold and formal state of things to which so many of His people only too readily settle down.

 

The letters which now follow are of considerable importance in the study of William Booth's development. They reveal his excitement in his work, his pleasure in his own power, the self-satisfaction of a young enthusiast conscious of growing popularity; and they also reveal his determination to adopt revival methods, his misgiving as to Catherine Mumford's feelings in this matter, his own tolerance of those who follow other ways. One may say at this juncture that while William Booth never lost faith in the rousing methods of revivalism, he never once claimed for such methods a universal adoption by the Church. He recognised from the first, and held to the last, that there are two distinct fields of religious activity--the field of aggressive evangelism and the pastoral field.

It will be seen from these letters that Catherine Mumford's influence was exerted at the very beginning of their engagement on the side of a deeper and truer spirituality than William Booth had then visualised; one of her letters, indeed, deserves to live, and probably will live, as one of the beautiful documents in the literature of mysticism; at the same time one must keep in mind that William Booth eventually carried the day with her, and won her over completely to the side of a demonstrative and aggressive propaganda, which she purified and exalted as the years went on.

 

William Booth to Catherine Mumford.

RED LION STREET, SPALDING,

Thursday, Nov. 17.

MY DEAREST EARTHLY TREASURE--Bless you a thousand times for your very kind letter just received; it has done my heart good. I have thought about you much and very affectionately the last few days.... I should have written you yesterday, but was so unwell that I could not .... I do not doubt our future oneness with regard to revivalism and about all things. I have such faith in our powers of utterance that we shall be able to make plain to each other what we mean, and our love to each other, that when we can be brought to see truth held by the other we shall rejoice to adopt it. And although now I do not doubt I could bear with extravagancies in a preacher or a prayer-meeting which you would condemn .... I do not blame you, so wait until the time comes, and we shall yet, I do not doubt, see with the same eyes .... The great difference between a man known as a faithful preacher nowadays and one of the John Smith, Wm. Bramwell, James Caughey, David Stoner, Ralph Walter, and Richard Poole school is, I think, in this--the one deals out the plain truth as do Mr. Thomas, Mr. Gamble, Mr. Brown, Luke Tyerman, and others in nice suitable language with considerable thought, prayer, and earnestness--and faithfulness too--but there it ends so far as you can see; but the other school preach similar pointed truth, urging more especially salvation by faith, just now, and then direct calling on sinners to lay down the weapons of rebellion, and give up their hearts to God now, following all up with a prayer-meeting and penitent-forms, benches, or pews .... I do not condemn any--I leave every man to follow out the bent of his own inclination and to act up to the teaching of God's Spirit--but I know which God owns the most.

I believe that with Mr. Thomas's talent, if he would follow such measures he might soon have his chapel crowded and hundreds converted to God. I do not speak censoriously. I have not the tact and the talent that thousands have, and yet under their ministry how little do we see done; what I have of head or heart or lip shall be consecrated and sacred to this service ....

The great plan of Salvation is, ceasing from making efforts to make unto yourself a righteous character, and sinking helpless into the arms of Christ and accepting Full Salvation, a pure heart, and all the blessings of the New Covenant by faith. I see that I have erred here. I have promised and promised, and bowed and bowed, and always failed; whereas now I go to Him and say, I am nothing, Thou art my all in all. Try this. Will you, darling?--Don't begin at the outside and aim at patching up this rent and that rent in your life, but go to Jesus and take the blessings of a pure heart at His hand, and say,

'Tis done, Thou dost this moment save,

With full salvation bless,

Redemption through Thy Blood I have.

And spotless love and peace.

 

Read one or two of John Wesley's sermons now and then. You shall have some more books when we meet again all well. May the Lord bless you. Read over again the Life of Mrs. Fletcher. Farewell. I want to see you very much. I have thought about you very tenderly since I have been ill. Oh how I wanted your hand on my aching head ....

I had to have brandy twice, was really ill, thought much of you. Got better and went and preached, and came home and made a hearty dinner of goose, etc., etc. Mr. Molesworth lives in a very nice house, built by himself, wooden, and beautifully furnished. He is a large farmer and a man of some property, has a large family remarkably well behaved, and for whom he keeps a Governess in the house. From his house I walked on to Holbeach, where I found that I was announced to preach, and notwithstanding my weakness I had to do so; the congregation was large and respectable. I had great liberty in preaching from Christ having overcome the world. In the morning I had again to take brandy twice, and then I preached with some pleasure from Paul not being ashamed of the Gospel; afterwards was hurled away by a gentleman, by name Mr. George Brown, to Holbeach Marsh, some eight miles away; he took me in his gig. I found his home quite a nice house, a large family of very nice and apparently well-educated children, a resident Governess (a young lady who is leaving in a deep decline), and everything first rate. I made an excellent dinner, and away we went to preach; service held in a large kitchen, which was quite full, about 69 or 70 present. I suppose the Conference get about 6 or 7, so that there is little fear of our getting the chapel. I had a little liberty. Here I met Mr. Jonathan Longhatton, reported to me as the most shrewd and talented preacher and speaker in the Circuit. He gave me a hearty welcome, and assured me how glad he should be to see me at his house, and told me that, as a man of experience, I must take port wine, that he could tell by my voice and appearance that it would do me good. My health is of first importance. What do you say, dearest? After shaking hands, away we went in the gig again, and after a cold, bleak ride I reached Holbeach, took tea with Mr. Peet, and preached on "This is indeed the Christ" to a large and attentive congregation with great pleasure to myself. Supper with Mr. Peet, who is a man of property, perhaps as rich as any man in the Circuit; afterwards returned to what is my present home, Mr. Ryecroft, a local preacher of whom I have spoken to you before as being so beloved and popular.

So that by the time I reach Spalding on Friday, after being absent seven days, I shall have preached, "all well," 10 instead of 6 sermons.

But I mean on another plan to keep them to their word, at least after this week. And now, my dearest, will you contrive to get my things off this week? There are very few clothes worth sending .... I think, when I get some money, to write to Yorkshire and get my old friend Mr. Scholes to make and send me a piece of cloth. But if you will, get them sent off and directed to me at

 

Mr. Green's,

Baker,

Red Lion Street,

Spalding, Lincolnshire,

where your next letter must also be directed. I have left orders that should they get there before me they are to be paid for and taken in ....

Be assured of my continued affections and purest intentions, and that if your health and my circumstances would warrant it, our wedding, instead of January, '54, should be January, '53.

With my love to your dearest mother, father, and Mr. M.--I remain, my darling,--yours as ever and for ever, WILLIAM.

 

TO MY DEAREST LOVE--My position here is likely to be just to my own mind.

 

The letters of Catherine Mumford, which now follow, show how she watched the popular young preacher from afar, and how in the midst of her satisfaction at his opening success she was profoundly troubled about his ultimate destiny. These letters can be read as a single document, and fortunately they not only give one a most intimate impression of the writer, but show very clearly the manner of man to whom they were written. Some of these letters seem to me as beautiful love-letters as any in the world, reaching at times heights of religious inspiration hardly to be matched in the literature of the saints, and sounding so unmistakable a note of truth and purity of aim that they do not suffer in the least from an occasional use of the now outworn vocabulary of Methodist fervour.

 

LONDON,

December 17, '52

MY BELOVED WILLIAM--I think your depreciatory remarks on the character of your epistles were very much out of place at the commencement of the very kind and beautiful letter I received this morning. If any one who did not know me had seen me walk about the parlour dissolved in tears, after its perusal, they would have thought I had received some very distressing intelligence, but they were tears of gladness and gratitude for the goodness of God. Oh how my soul praises Him for the favourable aspect of your affairs!

I think the issue of the committee-meeting most satisfactory. I did not expect more than £65, and your position being defined so exactly according to your own views, and their not desiring so many sermons as you supposed, is over and above anything I had ever hoped; let us praise the Lord and be encouraged.

Of the kindness of the people, I cannot speak; I can only feel its value and pray for an hundredfold return of it to their own bosoms. I think the status you have taken amongst them is superior to my anticipations; mind, my Love, that you sustain it, as a man and gentleman of manners, and kindness will not fail to do it. "As superiority of mind, or something not to be defined, first rivets the attention, so manners, decent and polite, the same we practised at first sight, must save it from declension." As a preacher, study will not only enable you to maintain your present status, but attain a higher. You promise me to do what you can; if you do that, I have no fear. You desire me to do all I can for myself. I will, my Love, for your dear sake, if I had no other motive my love for you would be quite sufficient to stimulate me to exertion ....

I am sorry to hear that Mr. Hanks did not call to see you or invite you there; I am surprised at it; it is very much unlike him; but I fear he has perhaps fallen in some way which has injured his character, and so feels ashamed for fear you should hear it; but, my Love, don't on that account shun him; try to restore him. I feel deeply for him; he is a good-hearted man, and when engaged in the service of God a zealous, consistent Christian; but he has been overtaken in a fault, and perhaps little cared for. If you act judiciously I think you may be made a blessing to him. I will not forget to pray that you may. Perhaps he fears to encounter you, anticipating some close conversation on soul matters; I am sure it is not because he is near or wanting in esteem for us; at least I think so.

You ask me, my Love, to tell you whether I forgive you for thinking, or rather for telling me your thoughts, about that one deficiency which spoiled your earthly paradise the other night? Will you forgive me if I answer that it would have required a far greater exercise of my pardoning mercy if you had asked me to forgive you for not thinking about it? I think you have acted very wisely, as well as most honourably, in letting your desires as to marryng be known; I have been thinking, if the Lord should indeed favour us with opportunity as soon as next year, I should like it to take place on my birthday, January 17, 1854. You will smile, and no wonder, but you know me, therefore I am not afraid of being misunderstood. What you say about insuring your life I highly approve, and shall estimate such act as another proof of your practical affection for myself. .--Yours in tenderest and most enduring affection, C.

December 27, '52.

 

MY DEAREST WILLIAM--As I did not feel in writing-tune either yesterday or on Xmas day, I will this evening give you a sketch of our Christmas enjoyments. Father dined at home, and though our number was so small we enjoyed ourselves very well. Your representation on the wall seemed to look down on our sensual gratification with awful gravity, manifesting an indifference to the good things of this life not at all characteristic of the original.

I thought about you very much during the day. I could not but contrast my feelings with those of last year. Then my anxieties and affections were centred in objects whose love and care I had experienced through many changing years. Then I knew no love but that of a child, a sister, a friend, and I thought that love deep, sincere, fervent; perhaps it was, nay, I know it was; but since then a stranger, unknown, unseen till within the last short year, has strangely drawn around him the finest tendrils of my heart, and awakened a new absorbing affection which seems, as it were, to eclipse what I before deemed the intensity of love. Then my anxieties were almost confined to home; now this same stranger, like a magnet, draws them after him in all his wanderings, so that they are seldom at home. What a change in one short year; can you solve the mystery? Can you find the reason?

But I am forgetting to detail the day's pleasures, etc. After dinner we all went a walk, talked about you, my dear brother; the changes which have taken place in a few years; the changes which will probably take place in a few more, etc. My dear father seemed kinder and more comfortable than usual; he is still a teetotaler and is abstaining altogether from the pipe; there is a change for the better in many respects; don't forget him, my Love, at the Throne of Grace. Help me and my dear mother to pray for him. Oh, surely the Lord will save him, surely He will not visit our unfaithfulness upon us in this way.

[Mr. Mumford, who was a carriage-builder, had lately lost his enthusiasm for religious work, and was inclined to abandon Methodism altogether.]

My soul's cry is, "Lord, if thou must chastise, any way but this, it would be bitter anguish to mourn as they who have no hope, and yet how little I have thought about it lately. Oh for a Christ-like sympathy for souls such as I used to feel, when I have sat up half the night to pray for them. My dearest Love, this is the secret of success, the weapon before which the very strongholds of hell must give way. Oh let us try to get it again, let us make up our minds to win souls whatever else we leave undone.

But to return again. We spent a very pleasant evening together. I lay on the sofa working a little watch-pocket for the use of that stranger I have been speaking of, which I hope he will use for my sake even though he may be provided with one already. I hope he will [? not think I] murdered time; it did not take me long. My dear mother and myself enjoyed a good season in prayer and then retired to rest ....

Wednesday night.--My dearest Love, I received your very kind and welcome letter yesterday morning, and should have written immediately only that I knew you would not be at Spalding before Friday. I have felt very anxious about your health since hearing you were so poorly. I could not sleep last night for thinking about you. I do hope you are better. I fear, my Love, you are not sufficiently careful as to diet; do exercise self-denial when such things are before you as you have any reason to fear will disagree with you. The enclosed prescription I got Mr. Davis to copy for you; it is an excellent one, given me by Mr. Franks .... If you are not quite recovered I hope you will get it. I have lost faith in brandy; where persons are not accustomed to it, it may act beneficially for the time, but it produces a reaction by irritation of the membrane of the stomach, whereas the mixture never fails in my case, and I have been much troubled.

You ask my opinion about your taking port wine. I need not say how willing, nay, anxious I am that you should have anything and everything which would tend to promote your health and happiness, but so thoroughly am I convinced that port wine would do neither, that I should hear of your taking it with unfeigned grief. You must not listen, my dear, to the advice of every one claiming to be experienced; persons really experienced and judicious in many things not infrequently entertain notions the most fallacious on this subject. I have had it recommended to me scores of times by such individuals, but such recommendations have always gone for nothing, because I have felt that, however much my superiors such persons might be in other respects, on that subject I was the best informed. I have even argued the point with Mr. Stevens, and I am sure set him completely fast for arguments to defend alcohol even as a medicine. I am fully and for ever settled on the physical side of the question; I believe you are on the moral and religious, but I have never thought you were on the physical.

Now, my dearest, it is absolutely necessary, in order to save you from being influenced by other people's false notions, that you should have a settled, intelligent conviction on the subject, and in order that you may get this I have been at the trouble almost to unpack your box, which was beautifully packed, to get out Bachus, in which you will find several green marks and likewise some pencillings in three or four sections, which I hope you will read. To read all the book would take too much time, or else it would do you good, but the chapters I have marked will give you a pretty concise view of that part of the subject you most need. I do hope you will read it if you sit up an hour later every night till you have done so--that is, when you retire at ten --and I would not advise this for anything less important. I believe the perusal will fully satisfy you; but if it should not, send me word and I will get, if it is to be got in London, a work by Dr. Lees, admitted to be the best work ever written on the question.

It is a subject on which I am most anxious that you should be thorough. I abominate that hackneyed but monstrously inconsistent tale--a teetotaler in principle, but obliged to take a little for my stomach's sake. Such teetotalers aid the progress of intemperance more than all the drunkards in the land, and there are abundance of them amongst Methodist preachers. They seem a class of men the right performance of whose duties seems to require pretty liberal assistance from the bottle; the fact is notorious, and doubtless the fault is chiefly with the people, who foolishly consider it a kindness to put the bottle to their neighbour's mouth as frequently as he will receive it; but I believe my dear William will steadfastly resist such foolish advisers as Mr. L., and firmly adhere to his principles till he has some better reason to abandon them. I dare take the responsibility (and I have more reason to feel its weight than any other being) of advising you to abandon the idea of taking wine altogether. I have far more hope for your health because you abstain from stimulating drinks than I should have if you took them; to one of your temperament they would especially prove hurtful and destructive. Be careful to abstain from all things which you know to injure your health, and I have no doubt you will get strong. I have often heard you say this would be the case if you acted judiciously. Oh my Love, take every care of yourself, get everything needful, but flee the detestable drink as you would a serpent; be a teetotaler in principle and practice; and in this respect by example, by precept, train up your sons, if you have any, in the way in which they should go.

I am glad you feel the importance of the training of children, there is no subject on which I have felt and still feel more acutely. I have often looked on a little child and felt my whole frame affected by the consideration that it were possible for me some time to become a mother: the awful weight of responsibility wrapped up in that beautiful word has often caused my spirit to sink within me. Oh if I did not fully intend, and ardently hope, to train my own (if ever blessed with any) differently to the way in which most are trained, I would pray every day, most earnestly, that I might never have any. Oh the miserable homes that might be happy; the lacerated hearts which might bound with joy; the blighted flowers which might have bloomed on earth and expanded in heaven, but for the wretched, foolish, wicked indifference of parents. My dear, I hope you do not consider the arduous but glorious work of training the intellectual and moral nature of the child solely the duty of the mother. Remember the father is, and must be, in every well-regulated family, the head of his household. Think for a few moments what is implied in being their head, their ruler, their shepherd, their tender parent. Oh my Love, you have need to prepare, head and heart, for the fight performance of the duties before you and the proper sustaining of the momentous relationships you desire to realize. As soon as you can afford it, buy Abbot's Mother at Home, price 1s., and lend it to some of the mothers you come in contact with; never mind the silent reproof conveyed by the loan, it will do good. And, oh, if the book were made the instrument of rescuing one poor little darling from the miserable consequences of domestic misrule, it would amply repay the unpleasantness of any little pique taken at its presentation; and besides, it is as much your duty to reprove as to exhort.

Good-night, I must conclude to-morrow, when I hope to receive another letter with good news respecting your health.

 

Sunday night, January 16, '53.

MY DEAREST WILLIAM--I am now closing the last day of my 23rd year. I have been reflecting on the circumstances and experience of my past life, on its sins, sorrows, joys, and mercies, and my soul is deeply moved by the retrospect; for though my short course has been marked by no very extraordinary outward events, I cannot but think that the discipline of soul through which I have passed has been peculiar and calculated to fit me for usefulness in the cause of God. I feel truly ashamed (now that clearer light seems to shine on the path in which the Lord has led me) of my continual murmurings and discontent because of the circumstances in which He has permitted me to be cast; I have spent hours in bitter grief and useless regret because of the disadvantages under which I have laboured. I have often charged God foolishly and wished I had been born with a mind content to feed on the empty husks in which I have seen others take so much delight, rather than be conscious of the possession of powers which must lay dormant and talents uncultivated, and desires and hopes which could never be realized. I have been ready to demand of the Lord why He made me thus, and deprived me of the means of that culture and improvement which He had so lavishly bestowed upon others who neither valued nor used them. Thus has my foohsh and wicked heart often been ready to enter into judgment with the Almighty, not considering the superiority of the gifts He has bestowed to those which I coveted.

Truly I have laboured under many disadvantages and have often thought my lot on that account very hard, but I now see and acknowledge the goodness of God in having made up for them by the bestowment of that, without which all the advantages in the world would have availed me nothing, and above all by the impartation of the light and influence of His Holy Spirit which has attended me from earliest infancy, and often excited in my childish heart thoughts, struggles, hopes, and fears of no ordinary nature; though such struggles were hid in the penetralia of my own spirit and unknown to any mortal. Showers of tears, and scores of prayers were poured out by me, when a very little girl, at the feet of Jesus, and when not more than twelve I passed through such an ordeal of fiery temptation for about the space of three months as but to reflect on makes my soul recoil within me; at that early age I frequently watered my couch with my tears, and the billows of the Almighty seemed to go over me. Many a time my whole frame has trembled under the foul attacks of the adversary, and his attacks were so subtle and of such a nature, that I could not then, on pain of death, have revealed them to any one; so I endured alone and unaided by any earthly friend these fearful conflicts of soul; the effects of which soon became manifest in pale cheeks and failure of health and spirits, though the true cause was unknown. But the storm passed, and my mind regained in a great measure its former vivacity, my soul found some repose in Christ, which alas! soon became disturbed and was ultimately lost, the fitfulness of childish feeling, the changes and enjoyments of youth and the absence of those helps I so much needed, induced seasons of indifference, and I frequently grieved the Holy Spirit by relapsing into sin; but the wondrous goodness of my God endured with much longsuffering my waywardness and indecision, till at length I was roused to deep and lasting concern to become in all things conformed to His will (for I regarded conformity to the will of God as true religion even from childhood). Alas! how the admission condemns me, but so it was, and I earnestly sought till I found a sense of His favour and this conformity to His blessed will; and after that happy change I have often told you how much I enjoyed of His presence, and how I went on for some time from strength to strength, being more than conqueror over sin and Satan who continued to wage with me a distressing warfare. Oh if I had followed on in the same glorious path how different would have been my feelings to-night, but alas! I left my first love and wandered from the side of my Saviour; and you know the consequences. My soul is now like the temple deserted; bereft of the abiding manifestation of God's presence; receiving only now and then a transitory ray, a short and flickering illumination; but I am tired of living thus, my soul pants, yea even fainteth again to behold the brightness of His giory, to abide in the sunshine of His smile. In Him I have found solid peace, in Him I am resolved to find it again, and oh, glorious possibility, I may regain what I have lost, yea with abundant increase ....

The desires of a whole life to be consecrated to the service of God seem revived in my soul. I feel sometimes as though I could do or suffer anything to glorify Him who has been so wondrously merciful to me. I have besought Him most earnestly to cut short His work and hide me in the grave if He sees that my future life would not glorify Him more than the past has done. I was formed for His glory and created for "His praise," and if the end of my existence be not secured of what value is life?--I would rather forego its momentary joys than live any longer to dishonour my God, even if I believed death were annihilation; but I will hope in the mercy I have slighted, I will trust to the grace I have abused, for strength to love the Lord my God with all my heart and to walk in all His ordinances and statutes blameless. I have enjoyed a precious season in prayer to-night, such liberty to ask, such a melting of soul I have not for a long time experienced; I did not forget you, my dearest; no, I pleaded hard and earnestly for your complete consecration to God; nothing but this, my dear William, will do for either you or me.

Others may trim and oscillate between the broad and narrow path, but for us there is but one straight, narrow, shining path of perfect devotedness, and if we walk not in it, we are undone. I hope, my Love, you are determined to be altogether a man of God, nothing less will secure your safety or usefulness. God is not glorified so much by preaching, or teaching, or anything else, as by holy living. You acknowledge the possibility of going round the circuit and satisfying the people, without winning souls to God, to peace, and heaven. Yes, my Love, it is awfully possible, and especially in your case; but to live a holy life without winning souls is just as impossible. Oh be determined to know nothing amongst men but Christ, seek nothing amongst them but His exaltation, His mediatorial renown; God has graciously given you the desire of your heart in opening your way to the ministry of His gospel, and that in a sphere exactly suited to your predilection and views of truth. He has given you a wide and promising vineyard to keep and water for Him, but remember, my Love, His eye is ever on you, He is trying your heart. He is proving you not now in the furnace of affliction and adversity, but in the sunshine of prosperity, in a path paved with kindness and dangerously slippery. Oh watch!--watch the motions of your heart, scrutinize your motives, analyse your desires and aims, and keep your eye single, get your heart filled afresh with the love of God and of souls, and aim only at the glory of God, and then He will honour you with abundant success; you shall not labour in vain, nor spend your strength for nought. But, my dearest, if you fail to give Him all the glory, if self be mixed up with your efforts; if an unsanctified ambition fire your heart, He will, because He loves you, try you and prove you with another discipline, more painful, but less dangerous.

Monday, February 7, '53

MY DEAREST LOVE--I am glad you wrote me on Saturday, for I had not received a letter since Wednesday till this morning, and should have felt very uneasy if it had not arrived. I dreamed the other night that you had hurt your foot in getting out of a gig, and were laid up through it, so be careful what you are about.

I want to find in you my earthly all; I expect to do so; I feel too deeply to be able to write on this subject; whenever I try my tears blind me; you think I "under-estimate your love"; why, my dearest, do you think so? Tell me why. Perhaps I write too fully all my fears and thoughts and hopes about the future, but oh, I feel the importance of the relationship we are to sustain to each other, and I do want us both to be prepared to fill it with as much happiness to each other, and glory to God, and good to others, as it is possible. Be assured, my Love, I have confidence in you, I believe what you say, but you know, William, I shall give up my all to you, my happiness, my life, my pride, and perhaps to some extent my eternal destiny, and is it unnatural for me sometimes to express a little anxiety! But believe me, my own dear Love, I have confidence in your professions, and I never for one moment doubted the honourableness of your intentions. As to the time of our union, I am surprised you think it will be practicable so soon, and I cannot think it is in any way necessary in order to prevent your being unfaithful, notwithstanding all the temptations to which you are exposed. You have often told me that your love was founded on the deepest esteem of your soul, that I have the preference of your judgment and soul, and that your love for me was conceived in the entire absence of passion; this being the case, and feeling some confidence in my own ability to sustain this esteem, I am not so anxious as I otherwise should be about the temptations you meet with, though I am thankful to hear they are no temptation to you, "praise the Lord, oh my soul." You know my heart, my dear William, and have formed your own estimate of my character, your choice was not made hastily nor without much rational calculation and earnest prayer, and I am persuaded your good sense and Christian principle will shield you in all circumstances; you have a right to expect grace where grace is needful to preserve you, because you have not run into temptation by concealing your engagement; you have acted honourably, and God will bless you.

Always speak when there is a necessity, and you will save yourself from the snare of the fowler. You need not fear your own heart because of Mr. C., your character and his are quite opposite. I believe Miss Smith has been sincere and truthful in her statement of all the facts. But, notwithstanding my confidence in you, I am willing to come and help you as soon as all things are equal; in this I am sure, as in other things, I am ready to consider your happiness, but you must have a home before then. Whenever I come, I doubt not I shall love the people, and feel an interest in the circuit second only to yourself, and I hope to be very useful in it. I must get more religion, and then all will be well. I must get self destroyed, and then the Lord may trust me to do good without endangering my own soul. I am glad to hear you say you love me best when you love Jesus most; it is a good sign; such love cannot be displeasing to Him; I hope we shall be able to love Him in each other, and each other in Him, and that the nearer our assimilation to Him, the nearer will be our assimilation to each other. Glorious possibility, it may be so; let us both resolve that it shall.

I intended to write only one sheet, but somehow I cannot get into the way of writing short letters, so much crowds up to say, that I cannot help it. Write me two as long as you can this week. Read over my last again, and think what there is which it would give me pleasure to hear you respond to .... Believe me, my dearest Love, yours in "unclouded love."

 

(In February 16, '53.)

MY DEAREST LOVE--I have read your letter again since writing the enclosed and have opened the envelope to send you another line.

You tell me that after three months' absence your heart turns to me with more constancy than at first, and that you look forward to a union as the consummation of earthly bliss, etc., etc., and then add, "but you must believe this and rest satisfied on it." My dear, be assured I do always believe whatever you say; you seem to think me of a jealous, suspicious nature; William, I am not so. You say, "What will become of us in the future if you cannot trust and thoroughly rest on confidence in me?" My dearest, I can do so, if you do not give me any reason to distrust. I would never call myself by your name, if I did not feel this confidence; I tell you that I repose in you with all my heart; and it is only my distress when anything you write forces into my mind a doubt; not of your honourable intentions, I never did feel one doubt on that subject; not of your esteem, I never doubted that; not of your truthfulness, candour, and sincerity, I never doubted either; but of what cuts deepest of all, of your deepest and tenderest love. I never was tempted to doubt anything but this, and that only when I thought you deficient in manifesting it. Now tell me whether you acquit me of groundless, mean suspicion; and if I have unconsciously given you pain, even though it has been to relieve my own, do you forgive me? and in imagination clasp me to your bosom and tell me all is well? Tell me on Monday whether it is so, don't forget.

 

Catherine Mumford to William Booth.

Friday afternoon (February 1853).

MY BELOVED WILLIAM--Your very kind note rejoiced my heart exceedingly this morning. I was dressing when it was brought me, and I had just been thinking how ill I looked, but after reading it I could see a sensible improvement in my countenance; it struck me as I looked in the glass to complete my toilet, how true that a "glad heart maketh the face to shine." I have been reading the Proverbs of Solomon in bed in the morning, and I never before was so struck with their practical wisdom; they will never wear out, they are applicable to all times, with very few exceptions. I wish you would read a chapter a day carefully and thoughtfully till you are through them; do, it will please me and do you good. Bless you, my dearest, your scrap cheered my soul and made all within me rejoice; such struggles and such conquests convince me of the reality and depth of your affection more deeply than anything else could possibly do. Oh, yes, this is an evidence of love, which I highly appreciate; self-sacrifice is the touchstone of affection, it proveth the reality of love. Yes, I believe now that you love me, and besides, your affection is purer and more elevated for such triumphs. Oh, bless the Lord, I do rejoice. Do not think this mere expression. Oh, I feel it, I do indeed rejoice in it .... I was thinking this morning about a few words you said when here, about marrying; I have often thought of them, I think they were spoken thoughtlessly; I think you would not thoughtfully utter them. Suppose, dearest, we never expected to realize any further union than we do already, would you not marry for companionship, social and domestic joys, communion of heart and mind, and the bliss of being loved and of loving? Tell me next time. I feel that these are the highest and strongest and paramount objects with me; I would marry for these alone, and so I believe you would, though you said differently, but you did not stop to think. I feel better satisfied with your letters than ever I did before, they seem warmer and transparent, and I think we shall both be gainers by writing oftener, especially if we try to enrich every letter by at least one sentiment or thought worth writing. I mean independent of news, etc., etc.

I am about the same in health as when I wrote last, the relaxation came on before I had finished that last note; but I would not say so, because I knew it would trouble you, but it is better again to-day. I saw Mr. H. yesterday; he scolded me for going because it was foggy, but thought me better. I am to go on Tuesday. Let us hope in God; pray for me. I will remember two o'clock, don't you forget it. This is your quarterly meeting; I have been thinking much about you, and praying for direction. I do not wish you to wait four years now; since you were here I have felt convinced that your well-being forbids it; otherwise I would be willing to purchase future certainty and comfort at such a price; but if you could not have less than £60, and Mr. R.'s £10 would be £70, on which I fear not to venture for the first three or four years, and then you might get more than £60. I fear to advise you, I want you to do right, not that I think it would be wrong to join them,--oh, no; their Constitution, etc., etc., and your own position, would be more in unison with your views of the truth.

 

Sunday evening, March 20, '53.

 

MY OWN DEAR WILLIAM--

I had no intention to write this when I began, but it is out of the abundance of my heart. Oh, my Love, I have felt acutely about you, I mean your soul. I rejoice exceedingly to hear how the Lord is blessing your labours, but as I stand at a distance and contemplate the scene of action and all the circumstances attending it, I tremble with apprehension for the object most beloved and nearest (except, I trust, the glory of God and the honour of my Redeemer) my heart. I know how possible it is to preach and pray and sing, and even shout, while the heart is not right with God. I know how popularity and prosperity have a tendency to elate and exalt self, if the heart is not humble before God. I know how Satan takes advantage of these things to work out the destruction (if possible) of one whom the Lord uses to pull down the strongholds of his kingdom, and all these considerations make me tremble, and weep, and pray for you, my dearest Love, that you may be able to overcome all his devices, and having done all, to stand, not in your own strength but in humble dependence on Him who worketh "all in all." Allow me, dearest, to caution you against indulging ambition to be either a revivalist or anything else; try to get into that happy frame of mind to be satisfied if Christ be exalted, even if it be only by compelling you to lie at the foot of the Cross and look upon Him. If your happiness of soul comes to depend on the excitement of active service, what! if God should lay His hand upon you and give you the cup of suffering instead of labour! Nothing but a heart in unison with His, and a will perfectly subdued, can then give peace.

Watch against mere animal excitement in your revival services. I don't use the term in the sense in which anti-revivalists would use it, but only in the sense which Finney himself would use it; remember Caughey's silent, soft, heavenly carriage; he did not shout, there was no necessity; he had a more potent weapon at command than noise. I never did like noise and confusion, only so far as I believed it to be the natural expression of deep anxiety wrought by the Holy Ghost; such as the cries of the jailer, etc., etc.; of such noise, produced by such agency, the more the better. But, my Love, I do think noise made by the preacher and the Christians in the church is productive of evil only. As to that Isaac Marsden, he might be sincere, but exceedingly injudicious and violent; I would not attend one of his prayer meetings on any account. I don't believe the Gospel needs such roaring and foaming to make it effective, and to some minds it would make it appear ridiculous, and bar them against its reception for ever. There was nothing of this kind in that most powerful sermon ever preached by Peter on the day of Pentecost; the noise was made by the people pricked to the heart, and was the effect of that plain, powerful, but calm and reasonable appeal to their consciences, and not of Peter's own creating. This is in my opinion the natural order of a revival. I should not have troubled you with my views on the subject (indeed I think you know them pretty fully; if not, you will find them exactly in Finney's Lectures on Revivals, which I consider the most beautiful and common-sense work on the subject I ever read), only that you have been wondering how I shall enter into it with you.

My dear, I trust, as far as I have ability and grace, I shall be ready to strengthen your hands in the glorious work, by taking under my care to enlighten and guard and feed the lambs brought in under your ministry. I believe in instantaneous conversion as firmly as you do; at the same time I believe that half of what is called conversion is nothing of the kind, and there is no calculating the evil results of deception in a matter so momentous. Great caution is necessary in dealing with inquirers, especially the young. My own brother was much injured through injudicious treatment in this respect. He went one Sunday evening to hear Mr. Richardson at Vauxhall. He was quite unconcerned when he went, but was much wrought upon under the sermon and induced to go to the communion-rail, where he professed to find peace. There certainly was a change in him for a short time, but, alas! there was no foundation, and in a week or two the fair blossoms faded, and though he continued to meet in class, his conduct was far worse than it had ever been before, he was more impatient of restraint and reproof, in fact his heart was closed against conviction by the vain idea that he was converted. I only tell you this to illustrate what I mean, and not in any way to speak ill of my dear brother. Poor boy, he was young and ignorant in spiritual things, and therefore easily deceived; I hope and pray that the Spirit of God will become his instructor, and reveal to him the true state of his heart, and the broad and deep requirements of His law. I have told you his case as one instance out of scores of a similar kind, to caution you against pressing a confession of faith in Christ before the mind is thoroughly enlightened and the soul fully broken down. Read Finney's directions for the treatment of penitents; they are excellent, the best part of the work; if you are not well acquainted with them be sure to read them. They are in his Lectures on Revivals, and don't forget to recommend James's Anxious Enquirer to young penitents; it is worth its weight (nay, far more than that) in gold.

I know you will rightly estimate what I have written; don't think that I consider your danger greater than my own would be if placed in your circumstances: alas, I of all beings should be most in danger of being vainglorious and self-sufficient, and perhaps it is because I feel this that I am so anxious about you. However, tell me, my Love, in your next all about your soul's secret experience; tell me whether you attend faithfully to private prayer, and how you feel when alone with God. This is the surest test by which to judge of your state, and you never needed it more frequently than now; the harass and turmoil of business might be less congenial, but depend on it, my dear, it was not more dangerous to your soul's true interest. It was not more necessary to watch and pray then than it is now. If you get yours quite right with God and keep it so, nothing can hinder you from being a useful man, and I believe God will signally own you as His servant: but if you keep back anything from God, if you suffer self to share the glory, He will frustrate your designs and spoil your happiness. Do, my Love, get all condemnation cleared away, and be able to look straight to the Throne for your encouragement and reward, and then all you can desire while your heart is partially carnal will then be given you, though not valued for its own sake; like Solomon, who, when he desired simply and singly wisdom, heavenly wisdom, gained both riches and honour and glory as an overplus. God is so good. If we could only see Him as He is, we should desire nothing beside Him either in earth or heaven. Oh, let us pray and watch to get our eyes fully opened to behold His beauty, and singly fixed on His glory. Oh, it is a glorious state to be in:

The bliss of those who fully dwell,

Fully in Him believe,

Is more than angel tongues can tell,

Or angel minds conceive.

 

I know it is, and I hope yet again to experience it, "then will I teach transgressors His ways" (His ways of marvellous mercy, truth, love, and faithfulness towards sinful man)," I will declare His faithfulness, and sinners shall be converted to Him."

BRIXTON, March 30, '53.

MY DEAREST WILLIAM--Your letter came to hand about an hour since, and I can attend to nothing till I have written you a line in reply. I never was more surprised in my life than on reading it to find the aspect my last seemed to wear in your eyes. I am sure, denrest, the state of your own mind makes all the difference to your interpretation of my letters. You should not read mine as you would a stranger's, you should bear in mind what I am, and what a sentiment means when dictated by Love and a deep and absorbing desire that you should appear in the eyes of others as a man of God "thoroughly furnished to every good work," and in the sight of God as one pure and upright in heart seeking only His glory. I was not when I wrote "dreadfully put about and harassed in my mind," but the Spirit of God had been operating powerfully upon my heart, and I felt afresh awakened to the superiority and importance of spiritual things, and of course as I felt it for myself I felt it for you; but I think I spoke tenderly and carefully; as to scolding, I never felt less like it than when I wrote that letter, for my whole soul was melted into tenderness and self-abasement. Do read it again the first opportunity and then read yours which I have enclosed, not, my Love, in a spirit of retaliation, but only that you may read it now your mind is calmer. You could not possibly construe what I said as against revivals, or even in depreciation of them, when I so carefully guarded my words, and I don't know why you cannot understand it, I think it was plain enough. But I see you are dreadfully harassed, and most deeply do I sympathize with you; indeed, for me to be happy while I think you are not so is impossible; though I was not unhappy last week. I rejoiced with you in your prosperity; but at the same time I know even that was dangerous, and expressed the anxiety I felt, thinking you would rightly understand me, but I perceive you cannot bear it; well, dearest, scold me if you like, blame me or what else you will, but faithful as well as loving I must ever be; my conscience compels me, and the more I love you the more I feel it a duty.

As to my estimate of you, surely you don't feel a fear that it is too low, while I am willing to give my happiness to so great an extent into your keeping; then don't call it scolding or seem hurt when I give you a gentle caution and try to excite you to more heart consecration to your Father and mine, while at the same time I confess to you my own unfaithfulness and deplore my want of love to the Saviour, and with all sincerity declare the consciousness I have of my own unfitness thus to stimulate you. When you seem to think me officious or bitter, or unnecessarily anxious, it makes it doubly painful and cuts to my very soul. As to our being separated in the sphere of our action in the Church, I can only say I never dreamed of such a thing. I hope for perfect unity and fellowship in all plans, and least of all should I think of separation in the Church of God.

 

Monday evening, June 13, '53.

MY OWN DEAR WILLIAM--I sincerely thank you for your kind note of Saturday, it did me good this morning. I like it better than either of last week's, there is more soul in it, and only one fault, viz. being too short. But I know your time is precious, and therefore will not complain. Bless you, I am glad you so fully reciprocate the sentiments in my last, it rejoices my soul and fills me with hope to hear you say so, but I am sorry you do not write a little more in answer to my letters. I do not mean, dearest, that you should notice everything; that would be a task my love would not impose; but some things I often wish you would take up and write a few words in the way of answer; you can easily guess what they are. You promised me to write a line sometimes in pencil after retiring for the night, or when walking by the wayside. Do sometimes, there's a dear. A stray thought, especially when tender and heavenly, will be to me a gem of great value. Do not interpret this as finding fault; it is not; it is only a gentle remembrance. I know how your time is occupied and your mind also, and do most fully appreciate your kindness in writing so often. The unexpected knock of the postman always excites feelings of the tenderest affection towards you, and causes me to bless you with increased fervency of soul, so true is Tupper's proverb, "A letter timely writ is as a rivet to the chain of affection, and a letter untimely delayed is as rust to the solder."

I was very glad to hear you got on so well at the School feast; you ask me for some ideas for speeches on such occasions. I am sure I can send you nothing worth having, and besides I do not know the style of speaking acceptable; I suppose the design, importance, and results of Sabbath School teaching form the principal topics, and I am sure you know far more on these subjects than I do. My soul feels deeply enough the vast importance of good moral culture for the youthful mind, but from the specimens I have seen of Sunday Schools, I fear they are to a great extent ineffective; but I hope I have not seen fair specimens; I don't think I have. However, it seems to me that the Church generally wants pressing home upon its conscience the responsibility resting upon it with regard to the rising generation; it should be made to feel this one fact, that of all spheres of labour this is the most important, of all interests at home or abroad this is the most momentous; of all its efforts for the extension of Christianity and the glory of God, this promises the largest amount of success, because the present generation is passing away and will inevitably pass away without being thoroughly impregnated with Divine truth, and whether the next will come upon the stage of action either so impregnated or not, it rests with the Church to determine. Fifty years hence where will be the men and women who are now the adult population of our world? Almost without exception swept off one by one; like the flowers in Autumn, they will have ceased to live and move and think, their influence will have died with them, and but a few eminent names will survive the wreck; but the children who now hang upon the breast and prattle on the knee will then be the living, reasoning, influential men and women of the world, and the parents of future generations; destined perhaps in the providence of God to wield a mightier influence for good or evil than any which have preceded them since the ocean of human life rolled over our earth; how transcendently important then is it to train up these young beings (the fountains of so much future influence and power) in the right way, how important to impart early (before the storms of iniquity beat on their defenceless souls and render them impervious to holy impressions) right principles of action, light for the conscience, food for the soul, and knowledge for the mind. I feel this too deeply to express half what feel, if I could do so I could make a speech myself, but my views on this subject are too large to be conveyed in words--I never look at a little child but I feel unutterable things: What is he? What will he become, and what might he be? What eternal destiny awaits the immortal jewel lodged in that beautiful little casket? What influences will gather round it in this life's pilgrimage? What friends will aid it? What foes try to ruin it? are questions my soul shrinks from answering even to itself.

 

Wednesday evening, June, '53.

MY BELOVED WILLiAM-- . . . I am glad you, my Love, are from under their dominion. Depend upon it that is an iron rule which stifles conscience and binds the soul; poor, nay, noble Kilham had courage to resist it, but in doing so he proved its strength and endured its inflictions. Many men have not such courage, and doubtless many amongst them, even their best men, are bowed down in spirit and sorely oppressed, not daring to open their mouths. While such powerful, organized bodies exist with so many of the elements of pure despotism in their constitution, it may be expedient and even necessary for other large and more liberally constituted bodies to exist in order to compete with them and prevent their complete ascendancy if this be God's method; the amalgamation of the splits of Methodism must be desirable, but it wants deep consideration. Be cautious, my Love, let no personal benefit weigh an atom with you. First be fully persuaded in your own mind that such a step would be for the good of man and the glory of God, and then work for it with all the skill and caution necessary, but if not fully persuaded and yet not satisfied to remain in your present position amongst the Reformers, then consider whether you had better seek for yourself alone (leaving the movement out of the question) admission amongst them, think over their rules and learn as much as possible about the way in which they are carried out, and lay the matter continually and earnestly before God, for it is an important matter to submit yourself to a conference of any kind; doubtless it would be to our temporal comfort; I feel this, but that is secondary. Be fully satisfied it is your way, and then we can reioice in our prosperity without any misgivings as to the path of duty.

Bless you a thousand times, I only want to see you happy and useful, and I care not where or how, provided it be according to God's will. You will excuse all this advice, etc. I did not think of writing thus, but the subject agitates my heart and so I could not but give it utterance. Those thoughtfully expressed words about preferring to go back to business to staying with the Reformers have made me feel anxious, not because I wish you to remain in your present position, nor because it may defer our union, no, only because I fear you should get wrong, though I very much question whether the movement is exactly your sphere. You must consider the law of your own mind. Do pray very earnestly about it, seek specially and solemnly God's guidance; search your heart before Him in secret, be determined, bring your soul to it in spite of all obstacles, and I am sure He will direct you. I have begun to pray about it regularly. As to business, I believe you may just as faithfully serve God in it as in the Ministry; whichever is your right place there you can best serve Him, and He knows which is; and more, He can in defiance of circumstances put you in it. Oh that He may thus graciously fix the bounds of your habitation and choose our inheritance for us; do not take any steps in order to marry which you would not take if you did not know me. I hope Mr. L. does not think that I am in a hurry to be married, and have unsettled your mind because you say, he thinks we want to get married. Much as I feel this separation and absence I am willing, nay, desirous to endure it as long as the Lord wills, and that I feel it so much is the fault of my heart (if it is a fault) and not of my judgment.

I shall swell this to the usual length; I often think of the Frenchman's apology for a long letter, viz. "excuse the length of this, I have not time to make it shorter." I feel it is most appropriate to me, for to prune and digest mine would take far longer than to write them as I do.

 

Thursday afternoon.--My dearest Love, in reading over the preceding, it struck me that you might gather from it some objection on my part to your entering the New Connexion, therefore I refer to the subject again to assure you that I have not; I only wish you to act as your judgment and conscience dictate without reference to marrying; do not think of that otherwise than as God would approve; I mean, do not let your desire towards it cause you to take any step your conscience does not fully approve. Of course if you see a lhing to be right, then there is no harm in considering its temporal advantages, but I need not attempt to instruct you, neither need I fear the integrity of your motives. I should like to see your letter to The Times if it is inserted. How is it signed? Send me word.

I hope you are studying; you do not mention it. Be determined to make the most of every moment; do not let trifles interrupt your study hours and attention. Do, my Love, work hard for yourself so that you may make many rich. Remember time flies, a moment at a time. Oh let us use the moments. I am doing so, and consequently am progressing, at least a little, according to my ability. I am much encouraged about the music.

 

Wednesday evening, June, '53.

MY OWN DEAR LOVE--Oh how I should like to see you tonight and hear you speak to me in tones of sweet affection and encouragement. You will be sorry to hear that I have felt very low to-day and yesterday; the principal cause of this depression is a deep and painful sense of my own unfitness to enter upon the duties and responsibilities of life; I feel my weakness and deficiencies most bitterly, and have shed some bitter tears because of it. I have confidence in you as to battling with the trials of life, or I think I should sink into despair, for I feel I am not fit for the world; but you will be my defence and shield, my prop and succour, will you not, deerest? You will bear with my weaknesses and faults, hush my fears, strengthen my hopes and efforts, and try to enter into the indefinable emotions of my sensitive heart. I shall at least have one being in the world able to sympathize with my soul's feelings and to understand the peculiarities of my mind and heart. Oh how sweet! and that being holding the most endearing of relationships, bound to me by the tenderest ties; bless you, I think I need not fear the depth of your sympathy, the strength or durability of your affection; if I did fear either I should be most unhappy, but I do not; I believe you capable of more than I once did; I think we shall be one in heart and soul, and oh this is everything; in body we shall have continually and painfully to part, but in spirit we may always be united.

I think a great deal about your being out so much, I do hope your present unsettled and whirlabout life will not beget a distaste for pure domestic home bliss, and oh I do trust, that before we have a home Providence will make it possible for you to be more in it. Bless you, I feel indescribable things to-night, my soul is so full I cannot write at all collectedly. Oh, if I could but pour it into your ear; it does seem hard just now to be parted. I feel as though I could fly to you, my whole soul is drawn towards you, if I could explain what I feel, and how I feel, and why I feel, and all I feel, I am sure you would sympathize with me and clasp me more tenderly to your heart than ever you did before. I say this because I know, that although perhaps I feel too deeply, and too keenly, yet the class of feelings and their causes and objects are pleasing to God, they are not selfish but purest benevolence, but oh, they are painful in the extreme.

Pray for me. I will not write thus, perhaps it grieves you, though I hope not. Do not call it sentimentalism, dearest, it is the only reality of life; what are all the so-called reaiities of this world when compared with one pure affection, one refined emotion of one human soul? Their reality fades like the bubble on the wave; soul, and spiritual things are the only realities we have to do with, and all relating to them are to us of paramount importance. Let us estimate everything according to its influence on each other's mind and heart; to inflict bodily suffering were a kindness compared with distress of mind and those who can feel deepest themselves will be most chary of the feelings of those they love. May the Lord give us grace to study each other, and love as He has enjoined. I often wonder whether others feel on these subjects as I do; if they did, surely there would be more happy unions. I scarce ever realize the happiness, for thinking of the duties and responsibilities of married life; I am so anxious to be a good wife and mother, and cannot think of the joy of being either. Never mind, dearest, my heart will not be the less sensible of the joy when it comes, and perhaps better prepared for it. Oh for grace to do my duty to you in all respects, and to those whom God may give us, and to the Church, and to the world, and to myself, and thus doing it in all the relations of life to serve my God in serving His chosen ones, the service He Himself has required.

 

Monday night, June, '53.

MY OWN DEAR WILLIAM--How I should like to see you tonight and tell you lots of feelings, thoughts, hopes, and fears which would take too much time and patience to write; patience is a thing I am very deficient in. Oh for more of it. I have felt exceedingly irritable to-day, the music has tried me almost beyond endurance. I could freely abandon it and never touch it more. I fear the result will never repay the time and labour. Once to-day I raised my eyes from the music and through some bitter tears looked at your likeness, and said to myself, "William, I do this for thee." Yes, all the other motives would fail to urge me forward; for no other being could I endure the drudgery, but you like it, it will make home a happier place to you, it will help to raise our souls to heaven, so I will persevere in my arduous undertaking; it is an arduous one, everybody considers it so. Miss . . . never knew any one begin to learn after they were grown up, but I will for your dear sake go on. Measure my love for you by this standard; think of three and four hours a day, self-denying toil, especially trying to one whose nerves have been shattered and whose powers of application and endurance weakened by long and wearing pain, and then say whether the love that prompts it is a trifle; but I know you estimate my affection. I am quite happy on that subject now. Bless you.

I do hope we shall be dear to each other as the apple of an eye. If I thought that you soberly think what you say about my having no faults and infirmities to bear with, I should indeed be unhappy, and begin to think I had unintentionally given you a false view of my character. Believe me, dearest (and I know myself better than any one else knows me), I have as many as will require a great deal of grace, deep affection and much patience to endure, so set about cultivating these virtues as quickly and effectually as possible.

 

Tuesday afternoon.--Thank you, darling, for the kind words contained in yours this morning; I had been thinking that I had written too passionately last night and that I ought to restrain the tide of feeling more than I do in writing to you; but no, now you write so affectionately I will let it root on and push out, just as it will, without seeking to cool or restrain it, so that you may know of what I am made. Bless you, you have no reason to fear about true conjugal bliss if your love is only deep and fervent; I think I have a soul capable of enjoying and yielding as much as most; but remember I have its almost invariable failings, capable of deepest feeling on one subject as well as another, therefore liable to anger as well as love. But I told you enough of this last night, and though I have no new thoughts to send you I am going to post this to-day, because I think perhaps you would feel disappointed on Wednesday morning if there was no letter, and perhaps anxious about the fate of your Saturday's note.

July 18, '53.

 

You ask me about Miss M. She is a simple-hearted, pretty, pleasant girl; I suppose well-educated; can play very nicely. I like her very much as far as she goes; I appreciate true simplicity and sincerity of character wherever I find it, and I think she possesses it. She is not in the least intellectual, quite ordinary in capacity and not very ladylike in manners, though she has been at school four years; but character is everything. I like her character far, far better than Mr. Hale's sisters who were more polished. You will not misunderstand me when I say that I never yet met with a female friend able to understand or appreciate my views and feelings on the great subjects which appear to me the only realities of life; all whom I know seem to live in a different world; they look not at the future, they seem to be shut up in the present little paltry things of everyday life; I am grieved that it is so; the mothers of humanity want different training; surely the day is dawning; I believe it is; may it rapidly progress. I often have wished I had one able to sympathize with my views and reciprocate them, but now I have you I do not mind so much.

I am delighted; it makes me happy to hear you speak as you do about home. Yes, if you will seek home, love home, be happy at home, I will spend my energies in trying to make it a more than ordinary one; it shall, if my ability can do it, be a spot sunny and bright, pure and calm, refined and tender, a fit school in which to train immortal spirits for a holy and glorious heaven; a fit resting-place for a spirit pressed and anxious about public duties; but Oh, I know it is easy to talk, I feel how liable I am to fall short; but it is well to purpose right, to aim high, to hope much; yes, we will make home to each other the brightest spot on earth, we will be tender, thoughtful, loving, and forbearing, will we not? yes, we will.

 

Tuesday night, August 2, '53

MY OWN DEAR LOVE--I wept tears of gratitude and joy this morning over your kind note. Oh how my soul praised God for His preserving mercy; bless you, how I should like to nurse you, and press your poor bruised face to mine. These accidents make me feel very anxious; surely, surely, they are not going to be frequent occurrences. You were not to blame this time, as you had no warning beforehand, but my Love, never venture behind that horse again; it is wonderful if you have escaped serious injury, but I hardly feel satisfied on that subject; I do hope you have been to a doctor. After such a violent shaking you ought to have some suitable medicine. Now if you have not been to one, be sure and do so. I hope you will rest till you are well, it tries me sadly to think of you taking your appointments in that state; I think the local preachers must be rather inhuman if they are not willing to supply for you in such a case, and you really are imprudent if you do not let them. if they are willing; but I trust you are better quite, by this time. I should have written to-day if I had not posted one yesterday. I mistook Thursday for Tuesday in Saturday's letter, and thought you would be home on Tuesday. I hope the letter came before you left home this morning. I have felt very tenderly about you all day. Oh what a mercy you were not killed or some of your limbs broken; if you had been killed as scores have been in a similar way, how would it have been with your soul? I have thought much about the temptation you mentioned in the scrap on Saturday, about the reality of spiritual things, you said it was something more than temptation, No! it is not, neither is it peculiar to you; it is common to all. I have had it presented, as almost every other which Satan has in his hellish treasury, but I think he has plied that with as little effect as any.

I always find it best to appeal at once to my consciousness; I know the religion of Jesus is a reality just as I know I live, and breathe, and think, because my consciousness testifies it, and that is a more powerful thing than Satan's intellect or logic; it disarms him at once; on other subjects reasoning with him has been my bane, but on this I never reason, I refer him to times and things gone by and my conscience says that was real; if not let me have over again the blissful delusion; but I know it was real, for it bore me up on the threshold of eternity, and made death my friend, there is nothing like the light of eternity to show us what is real and what is not. Now, my dear, how did you feel when that accident seemed to poise you between life and death, time and eternity. Where did Satan hide himself just then? Did he come with his foul suggestions about the delusion or mystery of godliness? I think not, he would take care to keep out of that track when your consciousness was fully awake. Oh, my Love, watch! Satan is a subtle foe, he knows just the temptations most suited to hinder your usefulness, and he knows that just in proportion to your own personal faith in, and experience of, the glorious gospel, will be your success in preaching it to others; he knows (none better) that it is the preacher who can say "I testify that which I do know and have seen and handled of the word of life," which is mighty through God to the pulling down of his strongholds. It is such men he fears and hates, and pursues; but it is such whom his Vanquisher loves, trusts, and upholds.

Oh, dearest, be you one of them, be the champion of real godliness, cost what it may, know in your own soul the mighty power of the grace of God, and then you will preach it with awful influence, and abundant success; it is real, more real than all beside, the mightiest power in this wonderful universe; true, the mystery of godliness is great, but it is given to the real followers of Jesus "to know the mysteries of the Kingdom" as far as is needful for them; but Satan makes so much ado about the mysteries of grace, as though mystery were peculiar to it, when all nature is enveloped in mystery; and what can be more mysterious than "thought,"--what is thought memory, emotion? How does thought arise? How does memory store up, and hide, and years after pour forth its awful or pleasing treasures? Who can explain these common operations of the mind, and what in the Bible is more mysterious?--and yet I am as conscious that I think and remember as that I live and breathe. All is mystery around me, above me, below me, within me, before me, but yet I believe, act, plan, live, according to what I can understand, and must be content to wait the solution of these mysteries at some future enlargement and enlightenment of my faculties.

All men do this, as to the natural world; they acknowledge their ignorance, but yet believe in it and act upon it, as though they perfectly understood every law and operation and tendency; then if mystery is so common in this material world, how absurd of Satan to urge it as an objection to the reality of a system which professes for its object the perfecting of what is confessedly in itself the most mysterious of all mysteries, viz. the human soul? If the gospel were less mysterious, it would lack one of the characters of the Divine signature; if it were less simple and comprehensible it would lack adaptation to its great object. Oh then, let us hug it to our bosoms, and exult in its glorious simplicity in dealing with us; and reverence and bow down before its profundity in all that relates to its infinite Author; let us, my Love, experience what it holds forth, and though Satan may gnash upon us with his teeth he cannot hurt us. Let us get a firmer footing upon this rock, and we shall have a real foundation to stand upon when all that is unreal is passing away.

But I forget to whom I write; you know all this better than I do; you are not ignorant of Satan's devices, nor of the armour best adapted to meet him in; nevertheless, what I say may help you by way of "stirring up your mind." May the Lord own it to this end, if it be not beneath His notice. I should not have said that. Nothing is too insignificant for His attention and blessing if prompted by a pure motive, bless His holy name! He loves to use weak instruments to baffle the designs of His proud foe, and perhaps He may deign to use this; whether or not, I had no idea of writing thus when I began; I have been quite led off, and all I intended to say is left unsaid.

 

Friday noon, August 5, '53.

MY OWN DEAR WILLiAM--You will be surprised to receive a great budget like this, after receiving two letters this week long enough for a fortnight's epistles; well, I cannot refrain from sending you the enclosed pamphlet though I know you could get one in your book parcel for less than the postage will cost, but I cannot bear to let you remain a day without it. Allow me to introduce the subject of it, whom I have heard and seen, and for raising up of whom my soul magnifies the Lord. First then, read the little handbill enclosed containing a letter from Mr. Gough's pastor, read it every word, and believe me it fails far short of the reality; when you have read it, turn to the last three pages, or rather the 44th page of the pamphlet, and read the pen-and-ink sketch of him, and depend upon it, it is below the reality--as a description. When you have read it begin the sketch of his life and I know you cannot help reading it all, be sure to read it at once--and then lend it, and when you have your book parcel order some to sell. I never read anything with such intense interest in my life, it is true; its subject is a living man and a Christian, and I have heard him for myself.

I was at the Hall last night, and although it was the third oration the body of the Hall was very full, and the platform above half full, at 2s. 6d. a ticket. I did not intend going again, but I really cannot stay away, so I am going, all well, to-night to the Whittington Club; talk of eloquence and oratory! I never heard any before in comparison with this. I thought I must have come out, it almost overpowered me. I have witnessed much enthusiasm in that Hall, but nothing to equal it last night, kept up through the whole address.

Oh in some parts it was awful; my father sat next to me, he kept turning so pale and his hands and the muscles of his face were in most sensible emotion; his description of the gradual process of intemperance could only have been given by one who had experienced it; it was truly awful, but oh splendid in the extreme and true, as God is true. His eloquence is irresistible; the people seemed spellbound while his graphic passages lasted, and then one, loud, prolonged shout and cheer gave him breathing time. He spoke most powerfully on the mighty influence of woman, and told some telling anecdotes on the subject, he appealed to the young ladies present with earnestness which I trust sank into many hearts, and what he said to young men is beyond eulogium, nay, I will give over; I am mortified that I cannot give you any idea of it, and oh it is all accompanied by such genuine self-abasement and Christian feeling that no one could help being electrified; but it is useless me writing, I am so excited. I have been to three or four places this morning to get persons to go to-night who I know are going down to destruction through drink. Praise the Lord, all have received me kindly and three are going. One of them is the poor man I told you about, he has just been here for a ticket I bought him last night, and is going! Praise the Lord with me; he tells me that he has not tasted a drop since I first spoke to him, and that he begins to feel better, and indeed his parched lips and palsied limbs begin to assume a more healthful appearance, but oh the struggle is fearful. Mr. Gough described it last night, as next to hell itself, but the Lord is able to keep him from failing, and I have confidence in Him, and I intend to work more in this good cause.

Oh how I praised God last night for raising up this man; I believe his visit will be a blessed epoch in the history of the cause in this country. The Secretary said the committee were determined to keep him longer than his intention; if so, he will most likely visit the principal towns, if he stays much longer I do hope you will hear him. Oh i praised God for giving me to see the importance of abstaining from the accursed stuff, and I praised Him too for enabling me to keep my early resolution to give my affections to no man who was not of the same mind; bless the Lord that we both see alike here, and I shall be able to train up our children perfect Samsons. Oh do all you can in this cause, speak to moderate drinking professors; those clogs on the wheel of the temperance chariot destined to triumph in its march round our world in spite of their indifference and opposition. Get some copies of this pamphlet and distribute them either with or without being paid; if the people will not buy them, lend them or give them away, make them read it.

And now, how are you? Do not think that in this excitement I have felt no concern about you. I have very much. Even last night in the Hall, I felt anxious about your poor bruised body and I do hope you are quite restored. Oh I did wish you were with me last night, you would have been enraptured; if he stays in London you must come.

P.S.--Read every word of the pamphlet.

 

Monday afternoon, 15.8. '53.

MY LOVE--Your very kind note did not come to hand till after one o'clock. You make me smile about your dreams; and did you really feel so bad at the thoughts of losing me? Well, I do not think you have any reason to fear losing me in any way which would imply dishonour or breach of faith on my part, and I suppose it must have been some such phantom to be worse than death. Dreams are strange things; I often have some very exhausting and unpleasant ones, and especially since I have been so unwell. But I am not superstitious about dreams; they are generally the effect of physical derangement, I think. However, supposing Satan had power to terrify the imagination during sleep, he cannot harm us by dreams, and I defy him to separate thee and me by any such means; while you are pure and true, according to my standard of truth and purity, nothing, nor any being can come between us. Oh, it does me good to hear how you used Saturday. Well, go on and you will reap a rich reward. The knowledge of such effort will make me happier than thousands of gold and silver. I want you to be a man and a Christian, and then I am satisfied, but short of that I never could be. I might hide my discontent, but it would eat out the vitals of my affection and leave me either to make you miserable or die in the attempt to act a false part. I have such views of what you should be, and I have always had such views of what the man must be to whom I gave myself, that it would be bitterer than gall to find myself bound to one in mind and head manifestly unworthy. Oh, I always prayed against it, and I believe the Lord will guide me. Bless you, I have confidence in you, I will have confidence, and I will be thoroughly happy about you, and then my health will improve, I trust.

 

We now have as significant a letter as any in the series, a letter of Catherine Mumford's, breathing the deepest spirituality and revealing the mystical element in her nature--that element which beautified and sanctified her revivalism, and rendered her one of the great figures in religious history. If throughout all her other letters one can see the mother in her heart bending with solicitude over the life of her lover, in this letter one can hear the very beating of the wings of his guardian angel.

 

Thursday afternoon, December 1, '53.

MY OWN DEAR WILLIAM--I experienced great pleasure in the perusal of your Saturday's letter, especially as you referred to my remarks about my thoughts respecting our future oneness of sympathy and feeling; you cannot appreciate the pleasure it gives me after writing a sheet or two out of the fulness of my heart, to receive a response to the particular subject on which I write. I never knew that you loved me because of my capacity for deep feeling; on the contrary, I have often felt discouraged from writing all I felt by the idea that you would count it extravagant enthusiasm, or wild sentimentalism ....

Your Tuesday's notes arrived safe, and I was rejoiced by both to hear of the continued prosperity of the work, though sorry you were so worn out; I fear the effect of all this excitement and exertion upon your health, and though I would not hinder your usefulness, I would caution you against an injudicious prodigality of your strength.

Remember a long life of steady, consistent, holy labour will produce twice as much fruit as one shortened and destroyed by spasmodic and extravagant exertions; be careful and sparing of your strength when and where exertion is unnecessary.

I have thought much about the New Connexion, and I am sorry you propose being decided by what the quarterly meeting may do, because I do not see what that has to do with the future ....

I think, dearest, if you would sit down deliberately and take both sides of the question into consideration, and in the fear of God decide according to your best judgment, you would save yourself much unnecessary anxiety and vacillation. Decide independent of the quarterly meeting; it is for the future you are to think and act, not for the present; then decide for the future, uninfluenced by the present, trusting in God to clear the way and fit you for the position, if the step be agreeable to His will. If our prospects fail here, our path being blocked up, and the interests of our family demand it, I will brave all the trials of the voyage and the climate and cheerfully accompany you across the Atlantic, because then I should feel "Well, we tried the only path conscientiously open to us in our native land and it failed; therefore if evil befall us we shall be sustained by the belief that it is in the path of duty and in the order of Providence"; whereas if we fail to try this door and our prospects darken, I shall always think we missed our way.

I was truly sorry to hear of the ground which Satan has chosen from which to attack you; I appreciate your confidence in opening your heart to me as I know you would not to another in the world, and as a "faithful friend is the medicine of life, and he who fears the Lord shall find one," I must try to help you to search your heart and encourage you to look for the victory over self which your Saviour has promised you.

You ask if such feelings as you refer to are not evidences of a bad heart. I answer, they are evidences of a partially unsanctified one; and, my Love, just in proportion to your satisfaction in the simple fact of God being glorified and souls being saved, by any instrument whatsoever, just so far is your eye single and your motive pure in your own individual efforts. Try yourself, dearest, by this standard rather than by your feelings in the excitement of a prayer meeting when you are the principal agent. I speak with all tenderness, and as the beloved of my soul I tell you, that I see ambition to be your chief mental besetment, not a besetment if rightly directed and sanctified, but which unsanctified and "warped to an idol object" will make your life a martyrdom, a lingering self-crucifixion. Ambition even to save souls may not be sanctified; but ambition simply to glorify God, the soul sunk down, rather risen up, to the one sublime idea of glorifying God, must be sanctified. A mind fastened on this one object will take pleasure in infirmities even (such as want of talent, etc., etc.), that the power of Christ may rest upon it, "being willing to be thought a fool" if by such means the wisdom of Christ may be manifested and glorified. This, dearest, is, in my opinion, full consecration to God, this is being like Christ, and religion in all its stages, I see more than ever to be, assimilation to Him, more or less perfect.

Look at the life of Christ, analyse His conversations with the Jews, and what object does He ever seem to keep uppermost, what was His chief aim, but to "glorify His Father," and so I conceive the bliss of Heaven consists in the realization of that one object, the glory of God .... Try, dearest, to get the ambition of your soul fixed on the glory of your God, and it will bear you up to one of Heaven's high thrones, and enrich your brow with one of its unfading crowns; get low at the foot of the cross, and lie there till God's glory becomes all and in all to your soul; tell the Lord you want to feel willing to crawl as it were, behind every other Christian, so far as the estimation of man goes, if by this means you can best promote His glory; tell Him that you don't want talent and popularity if you can glorify Him better without them. Tell Him your will and desire is to be holy, leaving Him to choose your employment and position, and ask Him for the inward baptism of the Holy Ghost, that what you already desire may become the actual delight of your life ....

Oh my dear William, depend upon it, it is not talent or learning (however estimable as instruments), nor might nor power, but "My Spirit, saith the Lord." It is a soul spending itself simply for this one end which God will honour and which He always has honoured since He first spoke to man; and just in proportion as other motives operate will He cause disappointment and vexation of spirit. The present state of the Church proves this; the Church has got machinery enough, talent of the first order, numbers, organizations, money, etc., etc., etc., and God seems to be standing aloof looking on and saying "You are trying to do My work in your own strength and in your own way, trying to build up systems and teach men's intellects, and please your own fancies, instead of ever remembering My word 'without Me ye can do nothing,' and taking hold of the strength and grace I hold out to you and going forth for My glory only to save mankind." This appears to me to be exactly the present position of the Church, God's glory is lost sight of, and man is set up in His place and worshipped; surely, then, God is just and true in withholding His Spirit till His Church learns her own weakness.

I believe it is with ministers a revival must begin, their self sufficiency must be destroyed before God can use them, their motives must be pure before He will honour them. An unholy ministry is the greatest curse of the Church; I don't mean an immoral or outwardly unrighteous ministry, but one unholy in soul, polluted in motive. Talk of a stiff formal people, a cold do-nothing people, a worldly, proud people; where there is a devoted faithful, holy minister, I don't believe it; there never was such an anomaly lasted long. On the other hand, call up a faithful, devoted, holy man who seeks only God's glory, and be he talented or not, there you find a prosperous, active, living Church. When I heard Baptist Noel I was much disappointed as to talent, but not for a moment at a loss for the secret of his universal popularity and extensive usefulness; the Spirit of Jesus beamed through every feature of his countenance, and vibrated in every tone of his voice. Anybody who had read the life of Christ, converted or not, could not but feel that the man who spake was a "follower, for his speech betrayed him"; there stood an embodiment of the religion of Jesus Christ, and as it always has been and always will be, everybody felt its power. There was no oratory, no eloquence, and but little originality; so that considering my disappointment, having heard so much about him and not knowing the secret I should have wondered why I felt so much, such a sense of solemnity and tenderness, as though God were nearer than usual, if I had not understood something of the meaning of that word "if a man love Me, I will love him, and My Father and I will come to him, and we will make our abode with him."

Oh, my Love, this is it; get these Heavenly Guests, and they will do their own work, their very presence will constitute your strength and ability to every good and holy work. God can use such men as these without giving His glory to another, people can see as it were through the man's own self, right to the embodied Jesus in his heart; and hence God gets the glory of His own work, and His strength is made manifest in weakness. Oh, I feel that if God should ask me--What shall I do for thee? I would answer without a moment°s delay, "Give me grace to cry in all life's conflicts and changes and temptations and in death's final struggle as my Saviour did, "Father, glorify Thyself," though He knew that to do so would expose Him to contempt, and shame, and suffering, such as had never been conceived, except by His own omniscient mind. Oh, I shall never forget one season in my life when the Divine glory eclipsed my spiritual vision and seemed to enrapture my soul with its lustre. Oh how truly dignified did any employments appear which could glorify God. I saw how rapidly the highest Archangel would dart from his starry throne down to this mean earth to remove a stone out of the pathway of a little child if such an act would glorify God, and oh I felt it the highest privilege of my being to be able to do it. I wish I could make you feel just as I then felt; but Jesus can, and He will if you ask Him. It was in secret communion with Him I realized the glorious vision, and if you wait for it, and cry as Moses did "show me Thy glory" He will come, and oh the comfort and the light which such a vision leaves, truly it lasts many days; even in the darkest moments of my subsequent experience I have traced its glimmer, and I believe Hell itself could not obliterate the views then given me on this subject. But oh how it tortures me to think it was given in vain, or nearly so. In vain! No, perhaps not, I still live, and bless God it may yet prove "not in vain."

Pray for me, pray for me, and let us give ourselves to the promotion of God's glory, and let us ever remember that God is glorified in the full consecration of what we have, be it small or great; He desires not the increase of five talents for the loan of one, but a full, perfect consecration of that one to His own honour, and whoever renders this, He pronounced as hearty a Well done upon, as upon him who has received ten. I have often erred here, I will try to remember in future that all I have is all He wants; you remember it too, dearest, and be not anxious because you have not as much talent as this or that man, but only to have what you have fully sanctified, and you will realize the end of your existence as fully and glorify God as much in your sphere as Gabriel does in his; begin and pray for grace to "glory in tribulation and in weakness," that "the power and the excellency may be seen to be of God." Be willing to endure the thorn of felt insufficiency, and even inferiority to others, if His grace be only sufficient to make you useful in His vineyard. I believe it matters little whether we are employed in gathering the sheaves, or gleaning the straggling ears after the reaper: it is the state of the soul which fixes the value of the employment, not the employment itself; to glorify God is enough, in small or great things, according as the measure of ability and opportunity is ours. Let us try to fix our eye on this and aim at it alone.

But I have dwelt too long on this subject. I hope what I have said will be made a blessing to you, if so tell me for I have written it in great weakness, at intervals during the last two or three days, sitting in my easy chair with a dreadful cough tearing me almost to pieces, but I find to write takes off the restlessness and weariness always attendant on recovery from severe illness. Read it sometimes during the week, and may God own even this weak instrumentality dedicated to His glory.

There are one or two more points in your last week's letters but I must leave them, except what you say about Mr. and Mrs. Shadford's kindness making it most difficult to leave. Certainly it must make it more painful to leave them as friends, but it must not operate as a servile feeling of obligation to interfere with your obedience to the dictates of judgment and reason; such an effect would make you unworthy of such friendship; for I cannot for a moment think that such an effect was sought; if so, that altogether alters the character of the act, the motive being double; but no, I believe it was an expression of pure friendship, and as such you must regard it and not allow a sense of obligation to shackle you. But I need not mention such a thing, I trust it is as far beneath you as me.

 

It is impossible to read this letter without admiration and without a feeling of deep reverence for the young and delicate woman who wrote it; but the chief impression it makes is concerned rather with the man to whom it was written. One perceives that an influence of the sweetest, purest, and most mystical character is at work, with all the quiet confidence of spiritual strength, on a nature primitive, headstrong, unruly, self-satisfied, and yet self-tortured by doubts--a nature capable of greatness but susceptible also of ruin and failure. One sees that the mothering of William Booth has begun; that the embrace of a milder and a purer spirit is beginning to enfold itself about his life; that he is conscious of an inferiority which she supplies, and she in him of a superiority which she studies to enhance.

Something of the storm through which he himself was passing at this period of his life may be seen in the letters which compose the next chapter.

 

CHAPTER XIV

WILLIAM BOOTH TO CATHERINE MUMFORD

1853-1854

 

THE reader has already been warned to expect in the letters of William Booth a marked inferiority to the letters of Catherine Mumford. It is probably the greatest tribute to his character, particularly at the time with which we are dealing, that he was loved so earnestly and so beautifully by Catherine Mumford, that she deemed him worthy of the letters which she addressed to him. One must be careful to remember that he was a great man in the making, and that even a great man may be an indifferent letterwriter. Moreover, as Sainte-Beuve has warned us, things said in conversation become congealed in the process of writing, for paper cannot smile, paper is brutish; and his letters are largely an effort to express himself conversationally. One realises, too, that in Catherine Mumford's hands these letters of the young preacher were warm with the man's life-blood, were instinct with his attractive character, were living with the magic of his presence; the paper was not brutish, for his hand had pressed it; the paper did actually smile, for his eyes had rested upon it. To her these troubled and often untidied letters were the utterance of a very real soul--the greatest soul she had encountered--and their feebleness was but the awkward gesture of a giant who has put down his club to make a love-bow of a withy.

She wrote to him on one occasion:

Do I remember? Yes, I remember all that has bound us together .... Your words, your looks, your actions, even the most trivial and incidental, come up before me as fresh as life.

The main interest of these letters is the revelation they afford, however crudely, of a man's struggle with his own soul. William Booth was not born a saint, any more than St. Augustine or St. Francis. He had faults; he had weakness; he had the roots of sin. One discovers in these letters, even when the writer flies off to the religious phraseology of the day for a release from pitiless self-analysis, that he was fighting a very great, a very terrible battle for his soul's existence. They do not give one so easily and so movingly the same sense of conflict which one finds in the letters and very honest autobiography of Father Tyrrell; they are entirely devoid of literary charm; they do not deal with the niceties of scholasticism, nor mount into the empyrean of philosophy; nevertheless to one who reads with sympathy, remembering the distance which separated the one from the other, there is something of the same spiritual struggle, the same spiritual agony, in these rough letters of William Booth as flames like a living fire in the writings of Tyrrell.

It will probably come as a revelation to those accustomed to think of William Booth as the white-haired, gentle, and patriarchal head of the Salvation Army, that he had to fight for his faith, that he was often cast down into an abyss of despondency, that his heart cried out from the depths of an exceeding bitterness for the sympathies and consolations and domestic kindness of humanity. And yet reflection should surely convince us that so deep and boundless a love for mankind as that which characterized his life's work could only have emerged from tempest and peril of shipwreck, could only have come from agony of the heart and through blindness of tears.

That which must chiefly interest the student of this man's extraordinary career is the immense influence exerted on his spiritual development by the woman he loved; so great and high indeed is this influence, that one may even doubt if his name had ever risen above the level of ordinary preachers but for the constant pressure, and the never-lifted consecration of Catherine Mumford's beautiful spirit. For the reader of these letters will perceive that not only was William Booth lacking in many graces of the soul, but that he was positively swayed at this time towards dangerous paths.

There was that in his surroundings, if not actually in himself, which tended to make him the mere popular preacher, the practised orator of unctuous phraseology, the seeker of notoriety. He was young, he was romantic-looking, he was poor. To be married to the woman he loved--so that she might talk over his sermons with him, among other things--was a great temptation. Further, his health was extremely bad, physical effort was sometimes a torture to him, the discomfort of lodgings weighed him down and depressed him in body and soul. He longed for a regular income, however small, for a settled home, however modest. He thought that the unrest of his soul would cease, and that religious quiet would possess his heart, if he could be decently settled in life. But again and again, all through these most difficult, most crucial, and most formative years of his life, he felt the call of the Spirit, and knew that there was something ahead of him, something beyond a home and domestic comfort, something beyond the affection of friends and the popularity of the Methodist Church, to which he must struggle on, for which he must be prepared to make a sacrifice of every human wish.

His conflict was not of the intellect, but of the very life. He was not troubled about the schools, but about God and his soul. He did not have to wrestle in spirit for a ground on which he might stand firmly and utter a more or less compromising Credo; his conflict was to destroy in himself everything that warred against the will of God. To him there was nothing clearer than the injunction to sell all and forsake all for Christ's sake; but really to sell all, really to forsake all, this was the cross which pressed him to the ground. And sometimes when he cried to the heavens for light on his path, the darkness deepened. His hands knocked and beat upon the door, but it was not opened. He asked and asked again, crying out from the depths of his soul, but no answer was vouchsafed. Through all that time the way was not clear before his feet, and the ground on which he stood was as shifting sand.

Catherine Mumford also experienced these seasons of darkness and silence; but she was living a solitary life, and could patiently wait for the light to shine and the voice from heaven to speak in her heart. William Booth, on the other hand, was preaching to increasing congregations of people, he was declaring the good news, he was offering salvation, he was proclaiming the Kingdom. To him these periods of darkness and silence were infinitely more hard to bear than they could possibly be to Catherine Mumford; and for him the temptation must have been a very terrible one, not to strive any longer, not to expect the extraordinary thing to happen, but to become the popular preacher of a countryside, content with a traditional phraseology, and satisfied with the compliments of the saved. Catherine Mumford's influence was the supreme human power that moulded his life; but it is evident, I think, from these poor, simple, crude, and sometimes irritating letters that there was a huge strength, rock-like and original, in the soul of William Booth which could never have fitted into any niche of convenience nor have been shaped into any semblance of smug complacency.

I need not burden the reader's mind with dreary details of the sectarian conflict to which reference is constantly made throughout the correspondence. It suffices to explain that William Booth at this time was a Minister of the Methodist Reformers in Lincolnshire; that the people to whom he ministered were anxious to keep him, and were ready to provide him with a house, a horse and gig, and a salary sufficient for marriage; that Catherine Mumford disapproved of this step, and pressed her young lover to join the New Connexion of Methodists--a body much better organized and far more widely distributed than the Reformers; and, finally, that while William Booth was drawn very powerfully towards the New Connexion, which promised him a much wider sphere of useful service and a settled career as an ordained minister, his affection for the people in Lincolnshire and his desire for union with Catherine Mumford tempted him sorely to remain among the Reformers.

 

William Booth to Catherine Mumford.

1853. (Undated.) 1 o'clock.

 

MY DEAR DARL1NG KATE--What would I not give to see you this afternoon, to sit by your side, and tell you my heart's feelings! Bless you! We shall yet together, I trust in Providence, be spared many precious and happy hours.

Home. This word sounds sweetly to me now. I think I shall rightly prize one when I get it; at home with you; to have a home! and it is your presence and your presence only that can make it home to me. Well, then, to some extent you reciprocate these feelings. You cannot entertain them to the same extent that I do. You have a sweet home now, and its quietude and solitude you enjoy and speak lovingly of. I have no home. Mine is a lodging, a study, that is all.. I come into it tired and weary, and except there be some letters or news about my yet having a home, it seems a dreary and melancholy place. Well, we will yet make home brighter to each other and I will try and kiss every tear away, and enhance the enjoyment of every srhile and make you as happy as I can.

I have more confidence in the people among whom I am labouring. I believe they will do all they possibly can to make us happy, and I hope to spend a year or two longer here. I have given up hope of our people generally throughout the country amalgamating, and our Circuit seems determined to hang to the whole body, and so I don't take so desirable an event into my calculations. We must leave our future in the Hands of God. Do not you? Only let us both do the best we can for ourselves and for God and His Church ....

 

RED LiON STREET, SPALDING.

MY OWN DEAR KATE--With feelings of very great pleasure I snatch up my pen to write you a line--bless you, I would that I could see you and that I could rest me for a season by your side and tell you all my heart. I think much about you; your eye is ever looking down upon me and beaming into my inmost soul. You are mine and you have my heart, and surely all this ought to constitute rich enjoyment for us both; but I have ever missed the present happiness in seeking and grasping the future.

I want you, your company, your comforting and consoling converse. I want you to hear me, to criticize me, to urge me on. I feel such a desperate sense of loneliness, so oppressive to my spirit. I speak and preach and act, and it is passed over; there is no one with whom I can talk over my perormance; to others I cannot mention it for fear of being thought egotistic or seeking for praise, and for some reasons others say little or nothing of it to me; I hear only of it by hints and innuendoes. I want you, too, to help you, to make you happy, to bring you flowers, to show you my friends, for you to enjoy the sunshine with me and the landscape, and the Sabbath and sweet days; bless you, I was never made to enjoy anything alone. Oh that we could meet only for a time--but we must wait. I shall not write again until after Quarter Day, which is on Monday. Thursday is Spalding Union School-Feast. A great day here. I would that you were going to be here. The children of all the dissenting schools meet in the Baptist Chapel, where an address is delivered; they then walk to fields, where large tents, etc., are erected; they have their plum-pudding and beef, and afterwards play, etc.; then comes the tea and public meeting; the shops close and the whole town and country for miles round turns out, and thus give a public verdict in favour of Sabbath schools.

I spoke at St. Catherine's School-Feast, although the morning was wet and cloudy. The meeting was a triumphant one, Mr. Shadford in the chair. 150 took tea, besides the children, the people came through rain for miles. After tea, the speaking. Mr. Ryecroft spoke well; he has a delightful way of speaking. I followed him, and succeeded to my satisfaction. Here is the outline of my speech. Introduced by the anecdote of Galileo, who when tortured by the Inquisition for declaring that the world goes round, denied it when on the rack, but when set at liberty, stamped with his foot and said, It does go round, it does move. Well, 1st, that the world moves, progress the sign of the times, 1st on its physical surface--Agriculture, produce, flowers, animals, all improving Arts and Sciences. Stagecoaches gone--now the age of engines, telegraphs, etc. It moves, --morally, socially, and politically. Benevolent Institutions are rapidly rising, although the Pope is still in Rome and Napoleon 3rd in Paris and the slave-driver still cracks his infernal whip, yet liberty is abroad, men are thinking. Hungarian mother is instilling into her babe's mind hatred to Austria, etc., etc. Uncle Tom has been written and is being read everywhere, and though they, the tyrants of the earth, are shutting off the steam and fastening down the escape-valve and sitting on it to keep it down, yet the boiler may, nay will, burst and they will be caught up to meet one another in the air! You remember the last idea is stolen from Uncle Tom. The world moves. Spiritually, men are marching, etc. The Italians are calling for Bibles. A revolution fraught with the most glorious prospects to Christianity is proceeding in China, etc., etc.

2nd proposition. That all progress past, present, and future--the result of education. Men have educated, cultivated the land, the wheat, the flower, the animals--men have educated brass, iron, steel, etc., until they have made engines to grind, to carry, to draw, etc., etc. Mind has been educated, or we should have been Druids at this day, etc., etc.

Spiritually likewise--Martyrs, etc. Are we to stay here? No, a thousand angel forms are beckoning us onwards. Our work, the regeneration of our world, and therefore the world must be educated. And to be educated the world must have a teacher; who is it to be?

3rd proposition. Is England, the Anglo-Saxon mind, the schoolmaster for the world, for this adapted? I embrace all who are English, America of course to some extent. She has lessons of freedom to teach the slave-driver; of the Kingship of Christ and the supremacy of the Bible to teach Popes, priests, and Cardinals; of political liberty to teach the spoilers of Hungary and Poland and Italy; lessons of the cross of salvation by faith in Christ alone to teach Universal Man.

For this work England adapted by her power, her fame, and her commercial relations, and to thoroughly qualify her she must be thoroughly educated. Not merely mentally, not merely morally, but religiously educated; and she cannot be religiously educated but by the instrumentality of Sunday Schools, etc. But I am filling up my letter with what will interest you little however, it went well. That is, as I thought.

I do hope you understood me to say in my last, bless you, that should I find in you any irritability more than I have discovered as yet, that I will bear with it and love you none the less; bless you; do not say any more on such subjects. I am more than ever satisfied with you--mentally, morally, and spiritually. Oh it is that I am irritable and will want bearing with, but, bless you, I will be all, all, all, all you wish. Bless you, I love you dearly. My soul loves you. Cling to the music. Music, oh it will move me to almost anything. It can either calm or arouse me. You shall have all my temporal endowments can procure to make you happy.

 

CAULDON PLACE, HANLEY, STAFFORDSHIRE.

MY DEAREST AND MOST PRECIOUS SWEET--With very great pleasure I sit down to write to you. I am expecting to hear from you to-morrow, and I trust I shall hear very good news as it respects your health and happiness. I think I am better in health than I was when I came down here--I have commenced washing my chest well with cold water every morning and then rubbing well, and I fancy I have benefited much by this course. I hope to persevere with it. The friends manifest much anxiety about my health, not too much, I do not think. I have taken two raw eggs in my tea of a morning and two in my tea at evening, and I think this, with milk and oatmeal in an evening, has likewise been beneficial. As a set-off against this I have worked very hard; we had the chapel very full last night, the largest congregation by far I have ever preached to. We did not leave until 20 minutes to 12, took down 50 names, making upwards of 200 during the 9 days. I stayed in Longton; I am now at Hanley resting for two days. I commence on Sunday in this chapel, famous for its size and its New Connexion reminiscences ....

You will be surprised when I tell you that my stay down here is very likely to be prolonged until March, perhaps until Conference. It is proposed to send a preacher in my place to London--and a correspondence is being carried on with Messrs. Bates, Gillon, Rabbits, and Cooke to that effect--I do not know how it will terminate--I trust in all these things we shall be guided by the Lord. Certainly the work at Longton was very great and the influence very mighty, and if I could have stayed we cannot tell where it would have stayed. I do hope you are well, my dearest. My expenses to Longton were about £1: 5: 0; they gave me £5: 0: 0. I have had to purchase some things in consequence of my longer stay, etc. I wish you were here; I have just spoken to Mr. Mills relative to our marriage after next Conference and I do not anticipate any difficulty; in fact, I shall very impatiently hear of any, if I hear at all--but there will be none. I hope you are doing what you can at the music, and likewise at your books. Bless you, I often think about you and the future and our home and our family, if God should spare us and trust us with any. I hope we shall have hope to get two thorough good nights' rest and to be strong and well by Sunday. Remember me kindly to mother and father. Write me a long loving letter; you have plenty of time. Pray for me and I will pray that you may have in your soul and around your path every blessing. And that in my arms you may find your earthly heaven. I am anxious that it should be so--nay, it shall be so.--With my heart's fondest and truest love ....

P.S.--I want to make a sermon on "The Flood"; if anything strikes you on the subject, note it down ....

 

RED LION STREET, SPALDING,

Saturday, 9 o'clock.

MY OWN DEAR KATE--Yours has just come to hand. Thank you for all your kind sweet counsellings, but I cannot for a moment only, much more for 4 years, think of consenting to such an arrangement. No, my present expectations are these. I stay with this Circuit, and should it intend to amalgamate, I marry. Then it, viz. the Circuit, will recommend me to the Conference as a travelling preacher and stipulate as one of the conditions of the union, which amalgamation will be highly advantageous to them, that I be received into full Connexion at once. That will be the plan, I have no doubt, should this Circuit agree to unite. If not, we must wait and then decide on a course of action. I tell you honestly that I do not intend anything of the kind as going 4 years' probationist with them; I have been probationing long enough. If they had a Training Institution it would be a different thing. I differ in opinion with you respecting probation. I believe it to be an excellent rule. That is in the abstract. But you see it applies and is intended to apply to young men of 18, 19, 20, and 21. I am, to my shame I tell it, 24. However, I have told you enough, I hope, to quiet every fear, every feeling of pain or anxiety in your bosom. Be at peace with yourself and with God's providential hand.

Of course, as a young man, if I go I must go as a young man, and submit to the rules of young men. But even now if I were married it does not follow as a necessary result that I should be refused. So that we have everything to hope and nothing to fear ....

I am very poorly. My face is swelled and hard. Some ladies were joking me last night, sending me home for my wife to make me some gruel, etc. If you were here to tell me it was bad and would soon be better, etc., etc., it would not be half so painful; it makes me peevish. Kate, I am very impatient. I hear you say, "Ah, William, I know that very well!" I love you. I want to see you, etc., etc.

My love to your Mother. I hope she is better. Keep your spirits up; mine are good for the future. Praise God for opening this door. Remember, although I have declined this invitation of Mr. Cooke's, I have not shut the door. Four years, only think. I hope Heaven has much happiness, sweet, united, shared happiness in store for us before four years have fled away. Not but that if there were some College or great advantages I would think of it; but there are not ....

 

RED LION STREET, SPALDING,

Thursday.

MY OWN SWEET CATHERINE--I have felt very sweetly towards you, my dearest, ever since I received your last kind letter. That letter did me real good, and yet I know not that it was more kind than usual; at all events it was more cheerful and cheering, and it breathed a spirit of confidence that did me good and, depend upon it, I have felt brighter and more tenderly towards you ever since it came to hand. I am very anxious to hear from and about you.

We have had several very bad cases of cholera down here near Holbeach, and I hear from the papers that it is worse again in London, and I do hope that you are taking all the care of yourself you can. I am pretty well in health. I am careful with fruit, indeed I am not tempted to eat any but pears, and although a lady sent me a basket the other night I never eat above 3 or 4 at a time, and I should not think they would hurt me. I hope you continue improving in your health; send me exact word. I am doing a little at study, but not so much as I should like to do. I should almost like to get away by myself for a time so as to be able to devote all my time to close reading and thinking. I know not what to do about leaving. I cannot tell whether or not it would be wise. We shall see. Give my very kind love to your dear Mother and also remember me to Miss Smith, if she has returned. I hope she will recover both her health and her spirits. I hope indeed that she will be able to forget that fellow who deceived her so painfully; may the Lord forgive him, it is hard work for me to do so ....

I have received yours this morning; the above I wrote last night. I am pleased with your letter. But as undecided as ever with regard to leaving here. If I do leave at Christmas I should very much like to have the intervening six months to myself and go to Cotton End or into the house with some minister. I am gaining a little more love for study and feeling daily my own deficiency. But I know not what to do. If I thought the New Connexion was prosperous it would alter the matter; but I am afraid not. I know all that Mr. R. says, and I have weighed it well, but I should think they have not one sphere of usefulness anything like the one I occupy in its adaptability to suit me. I tell you I know I am very superficial; you know I am--at least I know it; no one can make me think otherwise, because it is the truth, and here I have opportunities of getting matter that I should not among them, coming not so often before one congregation, but that is not all. However, I cannot argue the matter any further; we must leave it awhile. I am one hour all but decided to go, and then when I think again I am decided the opposite. I am very pleased you went to see Mr. R., I hope you will go again. The next seven months make no difference to my ministerial status, so that it does not matter whether I go or not till June. I am sorry you took cold; I do hope you take care of yourself. It gives me great pain to hear of your continued delicate state of health.

HOLBEACH,

Monday morning.

MY OWN DEAR CATHERINE--I have expected a line from you, but have not received one. I expected it because I think you promised it in your last, not because I wish you to send me more than one letter a week, but I do want to hear you say you are thoroughly happy, that you are satisfied with the pianoforte, and that you are well ....

I am thinking that the next ten years, if we are spared, ought to be the brightest, best, freest from care and most useful of our lives. Oh, shall they not be so? I am trying. I know I am doing more than before, but I am not doing what I ought to do. Oh that I had acquired habits years back that would then have been easily formed and that now are difficult to acquire.

I had a pretty good day yesterday--preached from "Be not deceived" at night. It seemed to go pretty well, I thought --I have heard no opinion. I was much pleased with it. Although I worked hard yesterday and retired at 11.0, much tired, I rose this morning at 6.0 and have been studying and intend continuing through the day ....

Praise God, the sun shines. My heart feels freer. My conscience and my will are living in sweeter harmony. My prospects are brighter. My confidence in you, in your good heart, and in your large soul and in your thoughtfulness, is very strong. My faith in my own affection for you is firmer and more unswerving. Why should we not both sing and rejoice and praise the Lord? . . .

I can see plainly, my dearest, that our influence over each other will be immense. I tremble when I think how much apparently during my last visit, I exercised over you. Oh, my heart must be thoroughly Christ's ....

I have a speech to make for a Stone-laying and I must do it. Mr. Jonathan Rowbotham lays the Stone, and I am expecting to follow with a speech. I am sure I don't know what it is yet to be. It will be one source of my great pleasure and profit when we can talk over our feelings about truths and subjects, and doubtless it will be to you also. Remember, you promised to try and write something for the Magazine. I will be contented when you have tried, whether you succeed or not. I do not fear your succeeding.

 

HOLBEACH,

Monday morning.

MY OWN DEAR KATE~Somewhat tired I sit me down to write you my Monday's epistle. I preached at Holbeach yesterday twice, and at Holbeach Hurn in the afternoon. Good congregations all the day. In the afternoon I went with a local preacher planned to be at the Hum. He was unwell, so I took compassion on him and preached for him. His brother lent us his gig, and I drove him and his brother's daughter there for the night.

At night I preached from "The harvest is past and the summer is ended," etc. A hard time, for though I had some little liberty in talking there was a hard feeling. In the prayer-meeting, no visible good was done. I have heard that Mr. Molesworth's governess, for whom I told you I felt concerned, has got salvation. I hope it is true ....

I am still whirling about the country. To-night I go back to Spalding. Tuesday to Pinchbeck. Wednesday to Suttleton. Thursday a special sermon at Boston. May the Lord save and bless the people! Oh, my dear Kate, let us live to God. I wish all this writing was at an end, and that you were here, mine, in my arms. And yet I cannot help having fears and doubts about the future. How I wish the Reformers would amalgamate with the New Connexion or with the Association and that all this agitation were ended.

But I know what I want. I know what I must have. But I don't know how--at least it seems as though I don't know how--to get it. I want more inward power and life in my own soul. I fully believe if I had this I should prosper in my work. I might do so much more by the fireside (of the people) if I were living closer to God, but my best efforts and desires --I fear my motives--are not so pure as they ought to be. Oh, that God may save and bless me ....

But I am always running before to find doubts and fears; mine has always been a restless and dissatisfied life, and I am fearful that it will continue so until I get safe into heaven.

Believe me, Your dearest friend, and that nearest my heart you dwell.

 

RED LION STREET, SPALDING.

MY DEAREST KATE--I did not write yesterday because full of anxiety and care, and I am not much better to-day. I hope you are well and happy in the love of Jesus, God's well-beloved Son. Although cast down and low-spirited I must say that God has been blessing me of late and watering my soul from on high. I am determined to get more religion, to cleave to Christ, and to conquer through Him all temptation. I had a glorious triumph on Friday and it has been better with me ever since.

Mr. Poole, the revivalist, is with us, and I like him much. He is rather dark and heavy, I should think, in his preaching; but he arouses the people; he has aroused me, and that is just what we want. In this respect I care not what people say about "alarming preachers." God has blessed my intercourse with him, hearing him tell about salvation has been a blessing to my soul. I am living near to the Throne of Grace. Help me to watch and pray. And let us seek His present, full, and free salvation.

Mr. Poole is dissatisfied with things as they are and meditates going to America and joining the Methodist Episcopal Church, and I should almost like to go with him; he gives a deplorable account of the deadhess, stiffness, and formality of the New Connexion, although not exactly indisposed to join it if he could be taken into full Connexion, having a wife and five children. He is a very valuable man, just fitted to stir up a slumbering church. However, I think of offering myself to the New Connexion. Ought I to do it now or wait a few months? If they are low and yet right, we ought to go and try to raise them. I hope Poole will go. He is a blessed man, and yet it is more his peculiar ability and fire than his sanctified soul; here is a great difference between him and Caughey. But he prayed magnificently and with mighty power last night at the School Meeting.

Bless you, be happy. We must live to God. He will guide us. I am afraid of doing wrong, and acting hastily. It puts me past study and everything else.

I love you very much and I am sure very tenderly. Take care of yourself; if I leave at Christmas I shall come up and see you. They tell me here I am going from a rising prosperous church to a sinking one; it is not out yet; I know what the people will say when they hear; but I care not for that. I must do right.

Oh that God would in mercy gain your father.

 

SPALDING,

September, 1853.

My DARLING CATHERiNE--Your very affectionate letter with all its counselling and interrogatories has just come to hand and I have read it over with very great care. I assure you my heart dictates this with much affection for you and the tenderest concern for your interests.

I am very sorry you do not like Mr. Rabbits' style of sermon. I am afraid that you will often have to mourn in the future for your dear Mr. Thomas.

I should like very much to see you. I do not know what you would think of Mr. Poole. He is very extravagant, but very powerful. His great theme is salvation by faith, present, free, and full. I yearn to see good done. I rather imagine that our ideas may not be alike upon revival matters. Many precious souls have professed to find the Lord this week under Mr. Poole's preaching ....

I am seeking purity of heart. Seek it with me. You believe in it, that Jesus' Blood can cleanse and keep clean, and it is by faith. Oh, God is striving with my soul. I do want to give myself up to Him. Lord help me.

Mr. Smith is going to Cotton End. I am sorry. Lord save him from deadness and formality. I wish you would get Finney's Lectures, the Lives of Bramwell, Stoner, and John Smith. I do not now wonder whether I ought to have gone to Cotton End. I have very little sympathy with the spirit of Congregationalism ....

The great doubt I have and which has staggered me for some time with regard to joining the New Connexion, is my being so superficial, but I must work harder. Be happy; I love you dearly. Praise God with me that He is saving me. You have often prayed for it, now believe for yourself also and God will purify your heart by faith ....

My health continues good. My spirits are better, and if I have a good week next week in my ministrations, I shall be on the mountain top; but whether up there in the region of rejoicing or not, a settled peace is my birthright. He bought it for me. He has proposed it to me, offers it only on one simple condition--believing faith. Lord, I do believe.

 

'Tis done. Thou dost this moment save,

Redemption through Thy Blood I have,

And spotless love and peace.

 

Whetber we eat or drink, we will do it to the glory of God.

 

MY DEAREST KATE--I am exceedingly full of business this morning, just snatch a moment to add another word or two to the scrap I wrote yesterday. I intend using some of the leading ideas you gave me in your last at a school-feast to-night, that is if I can get the outline filled up. Bless you, I do hope your health is better. You must get well. I do hope and trust that Dr. Franks knows what he is doing. I am resting pretty quietly about the future. Not that I have any more confidence in the future. No. But I have more confidence in this Circuit and the hold I have got on its affections. And I am hoping that it will amalgamate and take me, take us, along with it. The weather is beautiful and the country charming. I am comforting myself with the idea that it is the last summer we shall spend apart. I do trust that God in His good pleasure will bring or allow this to be brought about.

Several sudden deaths have occurred lately; they make me feel solemn. You must this time excuse me scrawling so and I will learn better. I love you, my dearest; my heart is and has been of late very full of tender affection for you. Oh for perfect unitedness; I think if we are allowed by Heaven to be united outwardly, we shall be united inwardly. Oh I am sure I shall count it my highest enjoyment to see you happy ....

 

RED LION STREET, SPALDING.

(Undated.)

MY DEAREST LOVE--Yours is just to hand. I am thankful you received the money safely. I am sorry, very sorry, to hear of your continued ill health. Of course it is very painful, while I feel tolerably well myself, while every one around me makes merry and looks well, that you continue prostrate. And yet for some reason I do not feel your symptoms are anything like serious, that is, I have no fear of your recovery. I will pray that it may be speedy. Oh, that I may be enabled to say from my heart, God's will be done.

Now to answer your letter. In the first place, I must tell you that the sermon on Sunday morning did execution. No sermon of mine has attracted such notice here. But unfortunately the weather was most stormy, so that I had but half a congregation. At night I preached from the "Water of Life," John iv. 14. A precious time I had and felt the greatest liberty.

Last night, fair night. I preached from "Unto you which believe He is precious." Many said I should have no people, it being Fair time, but I had the place full and a sweet time. It was precious to my own soul.

Yesterday I should have written but was so occupied. I really had not the time.

Mr. Shadford disapproved of my having laid out so much money on that piano. He says he wants to see me do well and does not want to see me in poverty all the way through life, and he thinks a comfortable position is only to be gained as he has gained his, by strict economy. I have my own views. Your happiness, your well-being, and the getting all the comfort you can out of money, those are my mottoes at present. How can I make the money go the furthest to promote your blessedness and thereby my own--ours, ours? Give my love to your dear mother and thank her for me for her kindness to you.

 

MY OWN DARLING KATE--Oh how I wished yesterday evening that I had wings to fly to you to hide my head in your bosom and listen to your sweet comforting voice. I am sure I scarce have ever yearned for your presence more than last night. But I am always wanting by night and by day. And the time, I suppose, will come all well when I shall have my desire and have you always with me.

The District Meeting yesterday was a poor affair. Got myself a little insulted; a large Meeting yesterday, it is true, at night. Spoke with some considerable liberty and was well received. Came home more than ever out of love with the Movement generally, and more in love than ever with my own Circuit, and half resolved to write off directly and offer myself to the New Connexion. But I must learn to wait. Mr. Stafford, Mr. Hardy, Mr. Brown, and others from our Circuit strongly pressed a motion in favour of amalgamation with the New Connexion, but it was lost. I supported it of course very warmly. I am thankful our people are so unanimous on the matter. It is a good sign for the future and augurs success for my plans and schemes. There were men there, and there are many Gazes and Hazledines and Burts and others whom the New Connexion would do better without than with. But, however, no more on that score. You will post your letter to me on Thursday. You will not forget a few ideas for a school-speech. I have one on Friday at Holbeach, a public meeting at Suttleton on Monday. Hanks and his wife were at Boston last night. I believe he is a new man; he has given over smoking. He is very anxious about the cause. They intend building a chapel directly. I wish them well.

And now, my better angel, I hope you are well and happy. Bless you, I looked over a heap of music at the booksellers' this morning to try and find something to send you but could not find anything I liked. I reciprocate all the sweet feelings you gave expression to in your last, and I do most earnestly hope to be able to enter into your feelings and to help in every sense of the word to make you happy. Give my love to your dear mother. Whatever you do, take care of your health ....

 

The alternation of high spirits and dejection in these letters is characteristic of the writer's temperament, but it may in great measure be explained by the alternation of health and sickness. William Booth suffered throughout his life from an extreme form of dyspepsia, so extreme, indeed, that he was obliged at last to study every morsel of food that entered his bodv. The seeds of this exhausting and irritating complaint were sown in youth, when he starved himself, worked like a slave, and devoted every hour of his leisure to the excitements of street-preaching; during the early years of his ministry as a Methodist preacher the complaint manifested itself so unmistakably that only zeal and courage of an unusual order could have supported him in his work.

The following fragment of a letter is interesting and surprising. In boyhood William Booth had loved fishing; after conversion he had regarded that sport as a form of wickedness; but here he is, as a Methodist preacher, indulging in the more muscular and, as some people would say, the much more cruel sport of shooting. Not only this, but the Old Adam is so strong in him that he takes pride in recounting his prowess to the woman he loves. Unhappily no reply to this letter from Catherine Mumford is to be found. One thinks that she smiled on reading it, and then sat down to write a very solemn sermon to her youthful lover.

 

HOLBEACH.

I received your kind note this morning. I have seen The Times; there is nothing in it respecting either the amalgamation or the letter. I am going on to St. Catherine's this afternoon. My face is a little better. Go to the Concert by all means; I should be angry if you did not. The day is very fine but exceedingly hot. My head aches a little and I still continue, as the effects of my last week's cold, stiff and weary.

I did last Monday (yesterday week) what I never did before--ventured to fire off a gun! The first three or four shots were failures; afterwards I was declared to be quite a marksman. Yesterday again I went out for an hour or two's shooting. And they pronounced me a dead shot! Now do not go and scold me about it, and thus frighten my conscience until I cannot enjoy it. I am pleased you liked my letter. I hope it will do good. You shall hear from me again. P.S.--Heaven bless you.

 

The letters which follow were written at the beginning of 1854, and show that William Booth has at last made up his mind to leave Lincolnshire and return to London.

 

RED LION STREET,

New Year's Eve.

MY DEAREST PRECIOUS CATHERINE--Your very sweet letter--almost the most cheering and blessed you have ever sent me--came safe to hand this morning: after a long walk, right welcome it was, and be assured that it shall for once be answered, though not to-night--it is 8 o'clock and I have to be at Chapel by 10. But while writing other letters I must just drop a line to you, and yours shall be responded to on Monday all well ....

Be assured I am pleased much, very much, with your revived and soul-cheering experience. May your path in this matter be as that of the just, shining more and more unto the perfect day. My heart reciprocates all you say about our future. Nay, I am thankful, if you will allow me to say so, that we are not to be married yet, as I wish to make myself more worthy and more adapted to you--and better fitted to make you happy before the consummation takes place. I cannot quite so confidently as you rejoice in my proposed new step; there is a dark cloud . . . but I have good hopes of its dispersion. It is so many and so very kind friends I am leaving--forsaking of my own choice, and a sphere which is so adapted for me, in which God has so owned and blessed me, and for one so different, so cold, so cramped, of which I am assured on every hand, on authority which I cannot dispute, that makes me sad and thoughtful, if not fearful, lest the step should be wrong. You see, my dearest love, you sit thoroughly on the outside, you are not acquainted with the practised working of the thing--you study the theory--I have long since been satisfied with the theoretical part of the new Connexion, but the practical working of it is another matter; and when a number of grey-headed men who tell me that they are fearful for my own sake, that they say so because they love me, that they fear I am stepping out of the order of Providence, I cannot but listen ....

But I did not intend to touch this subject--I must go and risk everything--I just wanted to send you a waft of love and pure and ardent affection, and to kiss this sheet and envelope and to send them to meet your lips on Monday morning ....1854.

 

RED LION STREET, HOLBEACH.

MY DEAREST AND MOST PRECIOUS KATE--I write you a line in great haste. I am at a distance from the post office and have many doubts as to whether I shall be able to post this in time before I go away this evening. I hope you received mine this morning posted on Saturday evening. I accidentally spied the ribbon at Mr. Handy's and thought it would make you a nice pair of strings to your black velvet bonnet; it just suited my taste and I thought you should see for once what my taste was.

I received a note on Saturday from Mr. Rabbits, stating that it was agreed that I should go and live with Mr. Cooke, according to my request. I know you will be pleased with this arrangement; of course I shall, for bringing me within reach of you, and we must have fixed rules, etc., etc.--I do hope the Lord will bless my coming up to town.

We had a very good day at Holbeach on Sunday, 9 or 10 souls found the Lord at night--some very interesting cases. Last night at Holbeach Hurn we had two come to seek the Lord and had a very good meeting--and I hope we shall have more to-night. To God be all the praise. I will bring that extract from the Public Good with me when I come; I think it meets my views--I still have to contend with much argument and many regrets; all the people look upon me as one madly leaving the path of Providence with my eyes wide open. Truly, if my way is not plain and my ministry successful when I reach my new sphere, there is bitter misery and very painful regrets for me.

But we will hope for the best. I hope much. Be happy; I talk about you and think about you. The friends consider you have a hand in the matter; I am very vexed and sorry that they do; it is my work, and I had rather they thought me capable of doing it myself. Do not trouble yourself about the money for the piano, I shall manage until I come up for money and they will pay then--sell the table, if you can. However, I would not trouble about that--never mind it, on second thoughts. It is probable I shall be in London about the third day of February, and being as I am coming so near you, and as we shall have abundant opportunities for communication and counsel, I had better name that time to Mr. Cooke, had I not? Send me word. I hope you are happy and that your health is rapidly improving. You must get better every day now and that as quickly as possible. I do hope the step is right and it will be owned of the Lord. Oh for a nearer assumption to Christian character--I must thoroughly commence life anew.

Give my love to your dear mother. I sighed out your name in Spalding pulpit just as the clock struck the hour of midnight--and prayed for your happiness and prosperity during the coming year. Write me a line directed home to reach there on Friday. Bless you, I have strong faith that we shall yet be very happy. Oh I know I love you, highly esteem and love you, and I know you love me. Oh we will try and make each other happy ....

 

RED LION STREET, SPALDING,

Jan. 6, '54.

MY DEAREST AND MOST PRECIOUS KATE--It does indeed seem a long time since I had the pleasure of hearing from you. I do not desire you to write oftener than once a week; at the same time your letters are always very welcome. I am sure I long very much for your company, for your society, and your help.

I have felt very much the unpleasantness of being compelled to wait so long before we could be united since we parted. But however the step is taken and it must be endured with as good a grace as possible. You will be pleased to hear that I have written to Mr. Cooke asking to come up to London and to live and study with him until Conference, and that I have received a letter this morning stating that he will see Mr. Rabbits and the other friends and endeavour to make arrangements for my doing so. It will be very pleasant and we must make it profitable our being so near one another once more. If it can be brought about! I am very anxious to get away from here now as quickly as possible--some whom I deemed my fastest friends are very displeased and vexed with me, and my position becomes daily to my feelings more painful. I hope it is for the best. I think it is. My mind is much more composed about it than it was, and I hope, if I come to London, to spend a very profitable six months.

 

NEW NORTH ROAD, LONDON.

(Undated- Probably one of the first letters after joining the New Connexion.)

 

MY DEAREST CATHERiNE--(After references to meetings) --And now I want to tell you:

1. That you must write to me oftener than once a week. You have nothing to do and I am overwhelmed with business and care, and I cannot exist now on one letter per week.

2. I am well in health and have no fear or feeling about cholera. When I say I am well, I mean I am very much better. My appetite is good and my digestion is improved.

3. Why did you not send me Mr. Macland's address? I have found him an apartment. They are keeping it and cannot find him.

It was foolish of your mother to send the letter and address to Burnham ....

I should like much to see you. I have wanted you this last day or two much. I am for Bristol on Saturday and the following week. You will get down about the same time. In my Monday's note I said that the "Bridal Waltz" was 4s. Shall I buy it? I have no notion of giving so much for the Devil's music, but your will shall be done.

I had a good night on Sunday, and am expecting great things at Bristol. The friends are very kind and Mr. Bates is in excellent spirits about things and quite in favour now of my views. In fact, we have some very encouraging facts before us.

Believe me, my dearest, to be--Your affectionate, constant, and tender WILLIAM.

 

CHAPTER XV

THE EVANGELIST TROUBLED ABOUT MANY TttlNGS

1854-1855

 

A STRANGE step had been taken. William Booth, the fiery preacher of revivalism in Lincolnshire, became all at once a humble student in Regent's Park, surrendering himself to the domination of a Rev. Dr. William Cooke, theologian. From excited prayer meetings, from furious preachings, and from the popularity and hero-worship of tea-parties, this lion of Lincolnshire suddenly abased himself to the schoolroom, and opened Greek and Latin grammars with a valorous effort to acquire the habitual meekness of a divinity scholar.

But till the last moment he hesitated, and almost at the last moment he threw himself off in a clean contrary direction. In January, 1854, he wrote to Catherine Mumford from Holbeach:

The plot thickens, and I hesitate not to tell you that I fear, and fear much, that I am going wrong. (He speaks of a fresh offer made to him by the Reformers, and then proceeds.) My present intention is to tear myself away from all and everything, and persevere in the path I have chosen. They reckon it down here the maddest, wildest, most premature and hasty step that ever they knew a saved man to take.

 

To this and another similar letter Catherine Mumford replied in wise and quieting fashion:

I am very sorry to find that you are still perplexed and harassed about the change. I did think that there were conditions weighty enough to satisfy your own mind as to the propriety of the step, and if not I begged you not to act. Even now it is not too late. Stay at Spalding, and risk all. Pray be satisfied in your own mind. Rather lose anything than make yourself miserable. You reasoned and suffered just so about leaving the Conference, and yet you see it was right now. I never suffered an hour about it, after I once decided, except in the breaking of some tender associations. Nor do I ever expect to suffer. I reasoned the thing out and came to a conclusion, and all the Conference battering I met never caused me a ten minutes' qualm.

You mistake me if you think I do not estimate the trial it must be to you, and the influences, and the circumstances and persons around you. But remember, dearest, they do not alter realities, and the Reform movement is no home or sphere for you; whereas the principles of the Connexion you love in your very soul. I believe you will be satisfied, when once from under the influence of your Spalding friends.

Anyway, don't let the controversy hurt your soul. Live near to God by prayer.

 

That she herself was in no fixed and unshadowed state of peace at this time may be seen from the following letter, which she wrote to him, so far as one can judge, a week or two before his return to London:

Bless you, my precious one, how I long to see you to-night. I have not been at all well since Friday evening, and the weather being very wet and foggy to-day I have not been out. However I have not spent an unprofitable or useless day. I lay in bed till nearly 12 o'clock reading the blessed Bible, and some portions of the Magazine, and praying for thee, with special reference to the subject of thy last letter. No doubt, the exercises you mention were the result of temptation. I only wonder Satan does not harass you more in this way, seeing what you are doing with his Kingdom. When I used to try and serve God most faithfully and do most I used to suffer untold misery through what I believe now was pure temptation. Oh the agonies I sometimes endured--since I have been more indifferent Satan has let me alone (comparatively), but I intend to provoke him again to open warfare if God spares me, yea, I have begun. I trust the Lord has delivered thee, and that this has been a day of peace and success. Only mind that the people understand what religion is, and thou need not fear their being excited--there is the most glorious precedent for such results. I believe in revivalism with all my soul. I believe that it is God's idea of the success of the gospel. Of course you know what I mean by revivalism, the genuine work of the Spirit, and I believe these are such; go on, do all thy duty and leave results with God.

I do wish I could see you to-night; I feel tired and prostrate and my spirit very, very tender; thy sympathizing voice would be sweet indeed, and though tired I could welcome thee home with a smile, and lay my hand on thy head and sympathize with thee in thy weariness. Well, it will soon be if God permits, and we shall indeed be one, one in love. Oh blessed lot and hallowed even as the joy of angels where godliness and love unite two hearts in one. Good-night, dearest, I sleep with thy loving letter in my bosom and sometimes dream about thee. God bless thee. I often think about that night thou wast so late home from the meeting at Mr. Rabbits'; thy tenderness of manner to me when thou first came in has never passed away, and my mind seems to go back to it as to a green spot in our intercourse.

 

The meeting of the long-separated lovers in February, 1854, is not described, but from an autobiographical fragment, written many years afterwards by Catherine Mumford, one gathers that happiness co-existed with fresh difficulties in this reunion which was not destined to be of long duration:

 

The return of W. to London was to me of course a cause of extreme gratification. We were once more within reach of each other. Personal communion is so much more satisfactory for the interchange of thought and counsel than correspondence. We met at regular intervals.

One of the first things I insisted upon, after our engagement, was that stated times should be fixed for our meetings. It was always a point of conscience with me, not in any way to allow any service rendered me to hinder either W. or any one else in the discharge of any higher duty.

We could now compare notes also as to our mutual studies and tasks--the varied plans that we formed for future usefulness. It was no little gratification to me also to know that W. was once more devoting his time to mental improvement. I had always estimated the College failure as a calamity. Perhaps I over-estimated those literary and intellectual opportunities which college supplied--I think I did, in view of what I have learnt since then. Still those were my notions at that time, and I regarded this present arrangement by which W. was once more set down to a regular course of study as a sort of modified compensation. Taking all things into consideration, therefore, I was wonderfully well satisfied with the present position of affairs, and was very grateful to God for having so far as I could see led us into the path which had every likelihood of terminating in a sphere of as great usefulness and happiness as I could have ever deemed possible.

Still W. was not satisfied. To tell the truth, he was really unhappy, almost as unsettled as ever. The first part of his Spalding life was in some senses the happiest portion of his early career. He was contented, and having known nothing higher, his present position, with its immediate prospects, would have been as Paradise to him compared even with that, but he had tasted of something which in his estimation presented a superior opportunity of usefulness than either this or that. To be fully understood, I must go back a little.

Towards the latter part of his stay in Spalding, he had fallen into a condition of great mental and spiritual depression. The Devil buffered him sorely. He was a prey to constant temptations, temptations that made his life more or less a misery.

Then the direct results in the shape of conversions that followed his ministry were very small in comparison with what he felt was his privilege to see. He had come in the past to be more or less content with this state of things, but varied circumstances and influences woke him up out of this slumber, and he upbraided himself continually that his work was not more productive.

About this time a very useful preacher [Poole] visited the Circuit. W. had heard many stories of the results that followed this man's ministrations. He was by repute a plain, simple preacher, but his word was attended by a power that was very remarkable, sinners by scores being brought to God in connection with it.

The visit of this preacher was looked forward to by W. with considerable interest, he reckoning that he might be able to learn something from him, and resolved to watch him accordingly.

The service arranged for came, and the Preacher, and W. was there to learn what he could from the example. And he did learn; and I have often heard him say that he derived a lesson that made a mark upon his own after life. In this man of God three things were made strikingly apparent in this one service, and they were--

1st. Directness of aim. Every word and movement indicating that he was determined to bring that audience, young and old, into harmony with God, and this was to be done that very night before he parted with them if it was possible.

2nd. Simplicity of method, the simplest words, the plainest illustrations, the most homely and striking facts being used throughout the discourse.

3rd. The most direct dependence upon God for the result. W. went home that night a wiser man and in his chamber gave himself up afresh, promising God never to be satisfied in any sermon he preached to sinners without seeing some souls at least yield themselves up to the service of God.

 

That William Booth did not make a good theological student goes without saying. Into the speculations of philosophy he never entered, and for the laborious study of theology it is quite certain that he could never have had a fruitful inclination. "He might often have been found," says Commissioner Booth-Tucker, "on his face in an agony of prayer when he ought to have been mastering Greek verbs." Yet he was conscious in himself of a need for knowledge, and agonized more often than was good for his health over intellectual deficiencies.

Monday--Visited the British Museum. Walked up and down there praying that God would enable me to acquire knowledge to increase my power of usefulness.

The call to active work interrupted his studies: the thought that men and women were perishing of iniquity while he turned the pages of text-books was like a madness in his brain; he spent more hours than was wise for a student in preaching religion to the people of London. On the very day of his arrival he preached in Brunswick Street Chapel, "when fifteen souls sought salvation." A month afterwards he was conducting services in Wapping, probably his first acquaintance with East London. He felt, he says in his diary, "much sympathy for the poor neglected inhabitants of Wapping, and its neighbourhood, as I walked down the filthy streets and beheld the wickedness and idleness of its people." One conjectures that those poor, neglected inhabitants of Wapping made a more poignant appeal to his soul than the dignity of a theological degree.

In spite of these continued preachings, however, the studies of William Booth progressed satisfactorily. He made a very marked impression on his tutor, whose daughter was converted at a public service conducted by the young student. Whether it was his advance in theological science, or his striking power as a preacher that impressed the tutor, certain it is that Dr. Cooke decided to propose him at the very next Conference as Superintendent of a circuit in London. This amazing proposition staggered William Booth, and he uttered a heartfelt and most earnest nolo episcopari! He felt himself unfitted for the work of superintending other ministers; he considered himself, and one thinks rightly, far too young for such delicate work; further, his inclinations led him towards more direct and more active fields.

A compromise was accepted. By William Booth's desire another and an older man was to be proposed as Superintendent, and he himself was to act as that other man's assistant. This appointment was ratified by the Conference, which also granted the young minister an unusual privilege in permitting him to marry at the end of twelve months. Ministers of the New Connexion, it must be explained, worked "on probation" for four years, and as a rule no probationer was allowed to marry till the expiration of this testing period. In the case of William Booth, so sure was the Conference of his ability, that this unusual privilege was granted in a welcome that was described as "hearty and unanimous."

In making this announcement to Catherine Mumford, William Booth wrote that "for some unaccountable reason" he felt no gratitude, adding that the news did not elate him. Catherine Mumford, on the other hand, was full of enthusiasm:

Your letter this morning filled my heart with gratitude and my mouth with praise. I am thankful beyond measure for the favourable reception and kind consideration you have met with from the Conference, and I can only account for your ingratitude on the ground you once gave me, namely, that blessings in possession seem to lose half their value. This is an unfortunate circumstance, but I think in this matter you ought to be grateful, when you look at the past and contemplate the future. However, I am. This comes to me as the answer of too many prayers, the result of too much self-sacrifice, the end of too much anxiety, and the crowning of too many hopes, not to be appreciated; and my soul does praise God. You may think me enthusiastic. But your position is now fixed as a minister of Christ, and your only concern will be to labour for God and souls.

I saw that in all probability you might have to toil the best part of your life and then, after all, have to turn to business for your support. But now, for life you are to be a teacher of Christ's glorious gospel, and I am sure the uppermost desire of your soul is that you may be a holy and successful one. May God afresh baptize you with His love, and make you indeed a minister of the Spirit!

 

Happiness came to William Booth in the almost immediate call to fresh efforts at reviving religious life. He worked industriously in London as assistant pastor with the Rev. P. T. Gilton, but it was only when he was free to lead special services that the whole force of his personality was behind the work. He described Mr. Gilton as "stiff, hard, and cold; making up, in part, for the want of heart and thought in his public performances by what sounded like a sanctimonious wail." To William Booth want of heart was the great infidelity, but he held nothing in more abhorrence than a hollow sanctimoniousness. To such a man, therefore, it must have been purgatory to work with Mr. Gilton, and like a holiday to escape from him into the crusading battles of a fighting religion.

One of the calls came from Lincolnshire, and away he raced to that familiar county with all the enthusiasm of his nature to fan the flames of this hopeful fire, and grateful to be unyoked from the measured paces of the cold Superintendent. He wrote to Catherine Mumford with fresh ardour and new conviction of his manifold successes:

My reception has been exceedingly pleasing. Even the children laugh and dance and sing at my coming, and eyes sparkle and tongues falter in uttering my welcome. Yesterday I had heavy work. Chapel crowded. Enthusiasm ran very high. Feeling overpowering, and yet not the crash we expected. My prospects for usefulness seem unbounded. But God knows best, and where He wants me, there He can send me. The people love me to distraction, and are ready to tear me to pieces to have me at their homes. A large party was invited to meet me.

And again:

Yesterday I preached to crowded congregations, and we had a crushing prayer meeting. Some splendid cases. I am more than ever attached to the people. They are thorough-going folks. Just my sort. I love them dearly, and shall stand by them and help them when I can.

I have just taken hold of that sketch you sent me on "Be not deceived," and am about to make a full sermon upon it. I like it much. It is admirable. I want you to write some short articles for our magazine. Begin one and get it done by the time I come up. It will do you a world of good. I am sure you can do it. I will look them over and send them to the editor.

I want a sermon on the Flood, one on Jonah, and one on the Judgment. Send me some bare thoughts; some clear startling outlines. Nothing moves the people like the terrific. They must have hell-fire flashed before their faces, or they will not move. Last night I preached a sermon on Christ weeping over sinners, and only one came forward, although several confessed to much holy feeling and influence. When I preached about the harvest and the wicked being turned away, numbers came. We must have that kind of truth which will move sinners.

I have written by this post to Dr. Cooke. I tell him that I am in love with no half measures, and I am determined to seek success. I am doing better in my soul. Am resolved to live nearer God, and put confidence in Him. Let us live for Heaven!

 

To these triumphant letters Catherine Mumford replied with a like enthusiasm:

Bless you! Bless you! Your note has, like joy's seraphic fingers, touched the deepest chords in my heart, and what I write is but like the trembling echoes of a distant harp. If you were here, I would pour out the full strain into your bosom and press you to my heart. God is too good! I feel happier than I have done for months. You will think me extravagant.

Well, bless God. He made me so. Yes, we shall, I believe it, be very happy.

Do I remember? Yes, I remember all that has bound us together. All the bright and happy as well as the clouded and sorrowful of our fellowship. Nothing relating to you, can time or place erase from my memory. Your words, your looks, your actions, even the most trivial and incidental, come up before me as fresh as life. If I meet a child called William, I am more interested in him than in any other. Bless you! Keep your spirits up and hope much for the future. God lives and loves us, and we shall be one in Him, loving each other as Christ has loved us.

 

Thus by communion our delight shall grow!

Thus streams of mingled bliss swell higher as they flow

Thus angels mix their flames and more divinely glow!

 

The success of William Booth as a preacher was now so definitely established that the Church to which he had allied himself could not with decency forbid his acceptance of the invitations which began to pour in from many parts of the country. There were those among the authorities who disliked the method of revivalism; a conservative and orthodox spirit existed in the New Connexion which was distinctly antagonistic to the furious crusades of their young recruit; nevertheless, so importunate were the calls, so manifest the triumph of the revivalist, and so cold and dead and formal was the general life of the Church, that active opposition held its hand, and even criticism bated its breath.

After the visit to Lincolnshire William Booth returned to London, but was soon called to a series of services in Bristol. From Bristol he went to Guernsey, where his efforts seem to have reached a remarkable degree of success. "Last night," he writes from there in October, 1854, "I preached my first sermon. The congregation was middling; very respectable, stiff, and quiet. I let off a few heavy guns at the lazy formality so prevalent, and with some effect. They opened their eyes at some of the things I said." Three days later he says: "My preaching is highly spoken of. The Lord is working. I trust that to-morrow we shall have a crash--a glorious breakdown." Still later: "To-night many went away unable to get into the chapel. The aisles were crowded, and up to eleven o'clock it was almost an impossibility to get them up to the communion rail, owing to the crush."

When he departed from Guernsey numbers of people came down to the pier to wave their adieux to him.

That he was modest and diffident in spite of his popularity as a preacher is clear from his refusal to undertake a visit to the Potteries. The invitation came from the President of the Connexion, who was quartered at Hanley, and whose chapel was said to be "the largest dissenting place of worship in the world." Despite his signal success in Guernsey, William Booth declined this call to Staffordshire. He argued that "he was too young, and that he had but recently entered the denomination, that his circuit would suffer by his prolonged absence, and that these irregular services would hinder him in preparing himself for the ordinary pastoral duties of the future." In spite of the cogency of these arguments, and their sincerity, he was finally prevailed upon by the urgent pressure of the President and many le