Mildred Duff

“ Booth was full of sympathy. No one who was in need or in sorrow, or who was suffering, could meet her without finding out that, she was in sympathy with them. Her heart was tender with the love of Christ, and so she was deeply touched by the sin and sorrow around her just as He was. Even the miseries of the dumb animals moved her to efforts on their behalf. This sympathy made Mrs. Booth quick to see and appreciate the toil and self-denial of others, and ever grateful for any kindness shown to her or to The Army or to those in need of any kind. ”

“ In this way our Army Mother sought and cared for the drunkards long before Drunkards’ Brigades were dreamt of.
When, at a later time in her life, she first heard of the wicked and cruel way in which young girls are trapped and drawn into sin, Mrs. Booth’s soul was filled with a whirlwind of holy indignation.
’I feel as though I could not rest, but as though I must go and ferret out these monsters myself,’ she wrote. ’Almost everybody, notwithstanding the indignation, seems so content with talking. Nobody appears willing to take the responsibility of doing or risking anything. ”

“ Our Army Mother, too, was equally straight and fearless with the rich when, later on, they also came in crowds to hear her. She had but one message and one gospel for all alike. She says, ’By God’s help I will not regard the person of man, but will plainly and fearlessly declare the truth, come what may.’ God honoured this spirit, and her Meetings in the West-End of London, where the great and rich live, were some of the most glorious of her life. ”

“ Perhaps, by nature, you are not a worker. But what you are not by nature, you can become by grace. God can teach you to love work. And as you work, you will, like our dear Army Mother, learn better and better how to work; and your life, whenever God calls you to lay it down, shall be like hers, not unfinished, but complete.
VIII Goodness
’I see more than ever that the religion which is pleasing to God consists in doing and enduring His will, rather than in good sentiments and feelings. The Lord help us to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.’—Mrs. Booth. ”

“ Alas! how little we have of the faith that can “stand still, and see the Salvation of God.” What would you do if you were put in custody for two years, like Paul was? And yet that imprisonment at Rome sent the Gospel far and wide! God’s ways are not our ways. He takes in the whole field at once, and does the best He can for the entire world. Human wisdom never has been able at the time to comprehend His plans, but years after it has often seen their wisdom. ”

“ Besides her sewing, Katie read a great deal. First, as I have already told you, she read her Bible, and learnt to know God’s thoughts about the world and sin, and His wishes for His people. For seven months at one time Catherine had to lie on her face on a special sort of couch made on purpose for her; but she invented a contrivance by which, even then, she could read her Bible, though still remaining in the position that the doctors wished. Then, too, she would read good books–explanations of the Bible, about Holiness, soul-saving, lives of those who have lived and worked for God, and so on. ”

“ She was lying between earth and Heaven, thinking of the joy and peace awaiting her, when it seemed as if she saw the dark face of a heathen woman, and heard the cry, ‘Won’t you help us?’ The old love for perishing souls woke again directly, and she cried, ’Oh, yes, Lord, I will go anywhere to help poor struggling people. ”

“ Some time before she had talked to him in a Meeting, and urged him to get saved. The boy sat still and said nothing. ’Willie, I insist,’ said his mother at last. ’You must answer me. Will you give your heart to God or not? Yes or no?’
Willie looked up in her face steadily and answered back ‘No.’
Mrs. Booth said no more just then, but held on in faith and prayer, and some months later, to her unutterable thankfulness, she found him squeezed in among a number of other children at the penitent-form. He had, unasked, made his way there, and was weeping and confessing his sins with all his heart. ”

“ Many a time have I longed to be where the weary are at rest.
’Well, we must labour and wait a little longer; it may be that the clouds will break, and surround us with sunshine. Anyway, God lives above the clouds, and He will direct our path.’
The General and Mrs. Booth were holding Salvation services in London when our Army Mother was called to make a fresh sacrifice, never dreaming of the wonderful results that would spring from it. ”

“ Booth once, ’are we to put heart into people? Even grace seems to fail to do so in many instances. I think it needs mothers to do this from infancy upwards.’
You will recollect that Mrs. Mumford fostered this ‘heart’ and love in her little girl; and you will remember how keenly Katie felt, blazing up into wrath at any story of wrong or injury, and ready to sacrifice her life for those she loved. This spirit grew with her. She could not help caring and struggling to help all who needed her. The General often told her in later years that she was killing herself by carrying every one’s burdens. ”

“ When she was told by the Officer then in charge of our Junior Work in England that the children loved and prayed continually for her, she smiled.
‘The thought of the little ones,’ says some one who was there, ’brought our beloved Army Mother wholly out of herself and her pain and weariness.’
‘A very choice branch of the work,’ she said. ’I have often told Emma that I hoped when I was too old for public work God would let me end where I began–with the children. ”

“ Booth was a soul-winner. A little while before her spirit passed into the presence of God, and when she knew that death was quite near to her, she said: ’Tell the Soldiers that the great consolation for a Salvationist on his dying bed is to feel that he has been a soul-winner.’
Wherever she went–in the houses of strangers as well as of friends, in the Meetings, great and small, when she was welcomed and when she was not, whether alone or with others–she laboured to lead souls to Christ. I have known her at one time spend as much trouble to win one as at another time to win fifty. ”

“ Mumford early taught her daughter was that our bodies will not live for ever. She took Katie to see the body of her infant brother who had just died; and, though she was not more than two years old at the time, Katie never forgot that first lesson. Spiritual things were even then real to her, just because they were so real to her mother. Heaven was home to her, and Jesus her best Friend, ever near to help and guide her.
Truthfulness was a second of those early lessons which remained with our Army Mother all her life. ”

“ All the bright and happy, as well as the clouded and sorrowful times 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 loved us.’
William Booth and Catherine Mumford were married in London, on June 15, 1855 ”

“ And do not we see enough all round us to show that unless people adopt things on principle, because they see it to be right, they soon change? Look at the folks who promise to give up tobacco and dress, for the sake of getting into berths; how soon it evaporates! No, my lad, wait a bit. “Couldst thou not watch with Me one hour?” Jesus lived a single life for your sake all the way through. Can you not live so till He finds you one after His own heart? I feel sure He will. Pray about it in faith. ”

“ There was no harm in what he wanted to do. You should watch against a hectoring spirit, and mind the difference between a sacrifice of truth and principle, and one only of self-importance or of mere feeling. ”

“ Booth strove constantly to teach all who were around her to work as she did. ‘You have begun well enough–now carry it through,’ she would say again and again to her children, and whether it was a doll’s frock, or an article for ‘The War Cry,’ or a series of Meetings, it was always the same. Unfinished, half-done work she detested with all her soul. ’If a thing is worth beginning at all, then it is worth finishing,’ she would say ”

“ Now to-day there is scarcely a land where The Army bonnet is not known and loved, nor where Army women cannot gain a crowd of respectful listeners.
Now I am going to show you some of the hindrances in spite of which our Army Mother fought on.
The first of these hindrances was the burden which God allowed Mrs. Booth to carry all through her life–a weak and suffering body. She said, when her life was drawing to its close, that suffering seemed to have been her special lot, and that she could scarcely remember a day in her life when she had been wholly free from pain. ”

“ It is best to know ourselves, but we Salvationists are in danger of erring on the other side. We look too much at ourselves apart from Him who is or would be our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Faith in Him as your keeper will do more in five minutes than years of conflict without it.’
Once, in another letter, she gives us a beautiful bit of her own soul’s experience on this subject:–
’I had such a view of His love and faithfulness on the journey from Wellingborough, that I thought I would never doubt again about anything. ”

“ It is the nature of the man that is at fault, and not his circumstances. He is a drone, and nothing, no change of place or position, can ever make him into a bee. He never ought to have left his trade; he never would have done so if he had thought soul-saving was harder work!’
Extravagance and waste of every kind she abhorred, and had she not been so careful in planning and arranging, her time and money would again and again have run short. The sewing, mending, and housekeeping needed for a family of little children when means are scarce would have been burden enough for most mothers. ”

“ Working men came in their dinner-hour, with their tools on their backs and tears in their eyes; mothers lifted up their little children to look at the one who had taught them the way of life; and, best of all, by the side of her coffin knelt many a wanderer and backslider to give themselves afresh to God.
More than one poor girl went direct from the Congress Hall to the Rescue Homes, to begin to live ‘as she would have wished’; and the Cadets on guard were all the time dealing with drunkards and helping those who desired to begin from thenceforth to live a new and different life. ”

“ Fix your eyes simply on the glory of God, and care not for frown or praise of man. Rest not till your soul is fully alive to God.’ How truly she herself carried this out in her own Meetings you will hear later on. ”

“ The Dome, a great building holding three thousand people, had been taken for her Meetings.
‘I can never forget my feelings,’ says this Soldier-saint, ’as I stood upon the platform and looked upon the people, realizing that among them all there was no one to help me. When I commenced the Prayer Meeting, for which I should think quite nine hundred remained, Satan said to me, as I came down from the platform according to my custom, “You will never ask such people as these to come and kneel down here? You will only make a fool of yourself if you do.” ”

“ One step well and firmly taken is better than two with a slip backwards. Poor human nature seems as though it must go to extremes–either all or none, too much or too little, idleness or being killed with work! ”

“ Katie Mumford, as she was then called, had no sister to play with, and of her four brothers only one lived to be a man. But her dear mother more than made up for every lack, and from her lips the little girl learned those blessed lessons which, in her turn, she has taught to us. ”

“ But it will be extravagant and enthusiastic in spite of all my schooling. If I ever get to Heaven, what rapture shall I know! No, there is no fear of our loving each other too much. How can we love each other more than Christ has loved us? ”