  Produced by Al Haines. [image] THE MARÉCHALE THE MARÉCHALE (CATHERINE BOOTH-CLIBBORN) BY AUTHOR OF "HEBREW IDEALS," "THE BOOK OF JOB," ETC. HODDER & STOUGHTON COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY The right of translation is reserved Dedicated PREFACE This book is the unexpected result of a brief visit which the MarÉchale paid her daughter and the writer in the spring of this year. She was daily persuaded, not so much to talk of the past, as to live parts of her life over again, for in her case the telling of a story is the enacting of a drama. At a meal-time she rarely keeps her seat, though she is apparently unconscious of leaving it and surprised that she requires to return to it. She begins to describe an incident, to recall a conversation, to sketch a character, and straightway she is suiting the word to the action, the action to the word, holding the mirror up to nature, using her brilliant dramatic gift, which is as natural to her as singing is to birds, to call up faces, to bring back voices, to restore scenes, which are all, whether grave or gay, summoned out of a dead past that has suddenly, as by the wave of a magician's wand, become once more alive. One day I said to her, "Have you never thought of giving all this to the world?" She answered, "I am often asked to do so, and some day I may." Soon after she surprised me by saying, "I have come to the conclusion that something ought to be written now, and you must write it." A mass of materials in English, French and German—reports, letters, diaries, magazines, and other documents—has therefore been put at my disposal. I have not used a tithe of what I have received, and much of what is left is as good as what has been taken. More will ere long, I doubt not, see the light. One of my best sources of information has been the MarÉchale's own phenomenal memory, which I have tested times without number, and found invariably accurate, except in dates. Events are apt to be associated in her mind not so much with years as with homes and children, which are much more interesting. With regard to the subject of the fourteenth chapter, the MarÉchale would have preferred not to break the silence which she has maintained for a number of years, but after reading her letters and diaries I have urged her to let a brief statement be published, first because I feel that she owes something to her old comrades in the fight, and second for the sake of her own and her family's future work. Members of the family who have been consulted, as well as other friends, desire this even more strongly than the writer does. This book consists of a few sections from a life which, like Mrs. Browning's pomegranate, "shows within a heart blood-tinctured." To a heart of love add a spirit of fire, and you have the MarÉchale. Blood and fire—that is what she was at the beginning, and that is what she will be to the end. One has often heard her say that she has never been more in her element than when, on entering some town, she has found herself confronted, in a theater or casino, by "all the devils of the place." She is happy whenever "Jesus is going to have a chance for a night." In the natural course of things her greatest battles are still before her. England has need of her, France perhaps still greater need. May it be long before the MarÉchale reaches her last campaign! Meanwhile the old battle-cry, En Avant! The subject of this sketch—written during a brief respite from other work—is at present far away, but I know that what she desires to give to the world is a sense of the Divine, the miracle-working power which rewards a child-like faith, and that she will be glad if every reader closes the book with a Gloire À Dieu! J. S. CONTENTS CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV LIST OF PORTRAITS Catherine Booth . . . (From a drawing by Edward Clifford, exhibited in the Royal Academy and presented to Mrs. Booth) The MarÉchale in the CafÉ . . . (From the painting of Baron CederstrÖm) The MarÉchale . . . (From a photo taken in Paris, circa 1890) The MarÉchale . . . (From a photo taken in London in 1913) CHAPTER I FINELY TOUCHED TO FINE ISSUES In the summer of 1865 William Booth, Evangelist, found his life-work. For some time back his imagination had been more than usually active. He could not help thinking that all his past efforts had been but tentative solutions of a difficult problem. He felt the spur of a vague discontent. He seemed to be groping his way towards an unrealised ideal. At length he got the inner light he needed. While he was conducting a series of meetings in a tent pitched on the disused Quaker burying-ground at Baker's Row, Whitechapel, he saw his heavenly vision and heard his divine call. He accepted a mission which was no less real than those of Hebrew Prophets and Christian Apostles. The words in which he describes his vocation form part of the history of Christianity in England. "I found my heart," he says, "strongly and strangely drawn out on behalf of the million people living within a mile of the tent, ninety out of every hundred of whom, they told me, never heard the sound of the preacher's voice from year to year. 'Here is a sphere!' was being whispered continually in my inward ear by an inward voice ... and I was continually haunted with a desire to offer myself to Jesus Christ as an apostle for the heathen of East London. The idea or heavenly vision or whatever you may call it overcame me; I yielded to it; and what has happened since is, I think, not only my justification, but an evidence that my offer was accepted." Thus it was that on a memorable June night, having ended his meeting and after-meeting, he rushed home, tired as usual, but with a strange light in his face which indicated an unusual glow in his heart. "Darling," he exclaimed to his wife, "I have found my destiny!" His unexpected words, like the touch of Ithuriel's spear, proved the quality of his life-mate's womanhood. For a moment she trembled under the test. While her husband poured out his burning words about the heathenism of London, and expressed his conviction that it was his duty to stop and preach to these East End multitudes, she sat gazing into the empty fireplace. The voice of the tempter—so she imagined—whispered to her, "This means another new departure, another start in life." She thought of five little heads asleep on their pillows upstairs, and remembered that she had already passed through more than one time of domestic anxiety. But no woman living at that time was more ready for acts of daring faith; few, if any, were so animated by scorn of miserable aims that end in self. After silently thinking and praying for some minutes, she said: "Well, if you feel you ought to stay, stay. We have trusted the Lord once for our support and we can trust Him again." Thus the die was cast, and the day ended with one of those scenes by which our common humanity is ennobled. "Together," he says, "we humbled ourselves before God, and dedicated our lives to the task that it seemed we had been praying for for twenty-five years. Her heart came over to my heart. We resolved that this poor, submerged, giddy, careless people should henceforth become our people and our God their God as far as we could induce them to accept Him, and for this end we would face poverty, persecution, or whatever Providence might permit in our consecration to what we believed to be the way God had mapped out for us." One feels perfectly certain that these two modern apostles would have fulfilled their destiny even if they had stood alone; but it could scarcely have been so ample and glorious a destiny if God had not given them children who inherited their gifts and helped them to realise their ideals. It is the simple truth that the ruling passion of each of their eight sons and daughters has been the love of souls; each of them has exulted to spend and be spent in the service of Christ, which is the service of humanity; and if one of them has been too feeble in her health to be a militant Salvationist, the great Captain of our salvation accepts the will for the deed. Among all the bold and original acts by which the breath and the flame of a new life have been brought into the modern Church, none is more striking, and yet none more simple and natural, than the revival, after all these centuries, of the apostolic ministry of women. Like Philip the Evangelist of CÆsarea, William and Catherine Booth "had four daughters who did prophesy"; brave and gifted English girls who, baptised with the Holy Spirit, used their dower of burning eloquence to bring sinners to the mercy-seat. If to-day "the women that publish the tidings are a great host," the fact illustrates the power of example. In every new movement there must be daring pioneers and self-sacrificing leaders. For woman's "liberty of prophesying," as for every other form of freedom, the price has had to be paid. The purpose of this little book is to sketch the life of the eldest of General Booth's four daughter-evangelists, who was called to carry the spirit of the Gospel—Christ's own spirit of love—first into many of the cities of England, and afterwards, in fulfilment of her distinctive life-work, into France and Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. If her story could be told as it deserves to be, it would stand out as one of the most remarkable modern records of Christian work, for there is perhaps no one living to-day who has seen so much of what Henry Drummond used to call "the contemporary activities of the Holy Ghost." Catherine Booth the elder, the Mother of the Army, was already in her thirty-second year when she wrote her famous brochure upon Female Ministry, and, not without fear and trembling, delivered her first evangelistic address in the Bethesda Chapel at Gateshead-on-Tyne, where her husband was minister. Little Catherine, who had been baptised in that chapel, was in her second year when her mother began public speaking, and in her seventh when her father found his destiny. Probably no child ever had greater privileges than she enjoyed. Her earthly home was a house of God and a gate of heaven; and from the first she seemed to respond to all that was highest and best in her environment. She was one of those happy souls who have no memory of their conversion, who cannot recall a time when they did not heartily love the Lord Jesus Christ. Her father was the centre of all her childish thoughts and most vivid recollections, and nothing could ever really dislodge him from the first place in her affections. An interesting page from her earliest memories may be reproduced. When she was three or four years old, her father was a Wesleyan Pastor in Cornwall, where his ministry led to a revival in which hundreds of souls found salvation. One night Katie was taken by her nurse to the meeting, and, on arrival, found herself before a flight of steps leading up to the gallery. Thinking herself quite a big girl, she wished to climb, but nurse, fearing the crowd, snatched her up and carried her to the top. At length they were inside, and what the child then saw and heard remained for ever vividly impressed on her imagination. The great building was crammed. Away down on the platform stood her father, with her mother sitting beside him. He was leading the singing, keeping time with his folded umbrella, and this was the chorus:
How well did the eager-hearted little maid enjoy that voyage, and how proud she was of her captain! The winds blew low and the sun shone upon her in those days. But it could not always be fair weather. Often since that far-off Cornish time have the winds blown high, and sometimes the mariner has felt herself tossed, chartless and rudderless, on dark tempestuous seas; but ever the winds have fallen, the sun has shone out again over the waves; and to how many tens of thousands has this daughter of music sung, with sweet variations, her father's song—"It's a pleasant sail to Canaan, hallelujah!" The Booth children were left in no mist of doubt as to their future. There was an end, a point, a purpose, in their life. They grew up in an atmosphere of decision. Many children are made timid, diffident, ineffective by their training. They are constantly told how naughty they are, till they begin to believe that they are good for nothing. The Booth parents acted on a different principle. They had faith in their children and for their children. When Katie was still a little girl in socks, her mother would say to her, "Now, Katie, you are not here in this world for yourself. You have been sent for others. The world is waiting for you." What a phrase that was to send a little girl to bed with! There she turned the words over and over in her own mind. "Mother says the world is waiting for me. Oh, I must be good.... How selfish I was in taking that orange!" The lesson was worth £1000 to a child. In the development of Katie's mind and character her mother's influence was naturally very strong. The fellowship between them soon became peculiarly intimate, and it was the mother's joy to find her alter ego in the daughter who bore her name. Katie's memories of her early London life were bound up with the Christian Mission. Hand in hand with her sister Emma, and often singing with her "I mean with Jesus Christ to dwell, will you go?" she walked every Sunday morning along the great road leading to Whitechapel. Ineffaceable impressions were made on her sensitive mind by the open-air preaching at Mile End Waste, Bethnal Green and Hackney; by the apostolic spirit of holy enthusiasm; by the Friday morning prayer-meetings, where the officers met alone to plead with God and wrestle in tears for more power. All this became the warp and woof of her own spiritual life, preparing her for her high calling. And, though she could not remember the day of her new birth, she clearly recalled several times when she consecrated herself, body and soul, to God. In a great whitewashed building in the East End her father preached on "The King's daughters are all glorious within," and she prayed that she might have the inner purity which would make her a child of God. From a meeting of Christian workers she ran home to her room, shut herself in, and deliberately gave her heart and life to Christ. She could not, perhaps, realise all that her covenant meant, but one thing she understood—that she was called to yield herself completely to do His will and to save souls. There was plenty of laughter and fun in that home. The Booth children were all born with the dramatic instinct, and the spirit of the Christian Mission invaded the nursery. Not only were the great dramas of the Bible—Joseph and his brothers, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lions, and a score of others—enacted there, but the meeting and the penitent form, the drunkard and the backslider, the hopeful and the desperate case were all reproduced in the plays of the children. Katie and Emma brought their babies to the meeting, and the babies generally insisted on crying, to the despair of Bramwell or Ballington, who stopped preaching to give the stern order, "Take the babies out of the theatre," against which the mothers indignantly protested, "Papa would not have stopped, papa would have gone on preaching anyhow." But the dramatic masterpiece was Ballington dealing with an interesting case—generally a pillow—coaxing, dragging, banging the poor reluctant penitent to the mercy-seat and exclaiming, "Ah! this is a good case, bless him! ... Give up the drink, brother." That is a scene which is still sometimes re-enacted to the delight of new generations. Jesus Himself watched the games of the children who piped and mourned in the market-place. Life is none the less strenuous for its interludes of mirth. Catherine, who was dramatic to the finger-tips, was very early mastered by a sense of the sacredness of duty. The moral ideal set before her was the highest, and her conscience was tremulously sensitive. She was oppressed with the sense of what ought to be, and inconsolable when she failed to attain it. A word of rebuke cut her like a knife, and she would sometimes weep far into the night if she thought she had put pleasure before duty. It is a great thing to make religion real to children, and especially to give them a sense of the obligation to please Christ in everything. Mrs. Booth found Katie ready to go all lengths with her, and even to outrun her, in her ideas of what was right and what was wrong for Christians. It is amusing to hear that when the mother was going out one day to buy new frocks for her little girls, Katie's words to her were not "Do buy us something pretty!" but "Mind you get something Christian!" and that when Mrs. Booth came home with her purchases, and Katie rushed downstairs to meet her, the child's first inquiry was, "Are they Christian?" But the sense of duty may become morbid if it is not transmuted by love. Many servants of God never learn the secret which makes Christ's yoke easy and His burden light. They have to confess to themselves that they cannot say, "To do Thy will, O Lord, I take delight." It would have been strange if any of the Booth children had not learned the secret. Catherine discovered it early, learned it thoroughly, and it became in after years one of the hidden sources of her power. As a child she lived in union with Christ; she practised and felt the Real Presence; she understood that Christianity is a Divine Service transfigured by a Divine Friendship. In Victoria Park there was a shady alley where she was in the habit of walking, because Some One walked beside her! In Clifton, where she lived for a time, she had a tiny upper room in which she felt that she was never alone! That was her childhood's religion, which she never needed to change. She found it to be utterly independent of time and place, form and ceremony. In the glare of public life, in the storm of persecution, in the hour of temptation and danger, she had always a cathedral into which she could retire that she might find peace. She was spiritually akin with the Hebrew mystics who lived in the secret place of the Most High, who had at all times a pavilion from the strife of tongues. In her NeuchÂtel prison she wrote some simple words which sent a thrill through the heart of Christian Europe:
CHAPTER II A GIRL EVANGELIST When the heart is warm and full the lips become eloquent. Jesus expects each of His followers to testify for Him. His redeemed ones should need little persuasion to plead His cause. Every genuine conversion creates a new advocate for His side. Dumbness is one of the signs of unreality in religion. The sin of silence received due castigation, in public and in private, from the tongues of fire which the Spirit gave to William and Catherine Booth. Their children therefore learned that it is every Christian's calling to speak in season and out of season for Christ, to press His claims upon the willing and the unwilling alike. Katie, it appears, began among her little companions in the Victoria Park. Her old nurse still remembers how she would gather little groups about her and tell them of the Saviour's love. When she was in her twelfth year, she lived for some time with a family in Clifton, along with whom she attended the Church of England. One Sunday evening the Vicar, who had noticed her earnest gaze fixed on his face, sent for her that he might have a little talk with her. He asked her what she liked best in the Bible, and she answered "The Atonement." He was so struck by her intelligence that he offered her a children's class, which soon grew large. Week by week she talked to the little ones of sin and the Saviour. Letting story-books go, she went for their conversion. Having to return home on her twelfth birthday—the last day on which she could travel with a half-ticket—she told her mother of her great longing to continue her work among children. Her mother readily consented, and soon there was a weekly gathering of young folk in a downstairs room of the Gore Road house. After a while Katie had the assistance of her sister Emma, who was her junior by little more than a year. Tears were shed, confessions made, and lives changed in that room. And there two of the most brilliant evangelists of our time first learned to deal with souls. They were in every way kindred spirits. Long afterwards one finds Emma writing to Catherine: "We will always be 'special sisters.' We were Ma's two first girls, and were brought up side by side—and side by side we will labour and love till we stand with our children in her presence again before the Throne!" Katie was thirteen when she first spoke in public. No one asked her to do it; she yielded to an irresistible inward impulse. Her eldest brother was conducting an open-air meeting opposite a low public-house at the corner of Cat and Mutton Bridge in Hackney. Katie was beside him, and whispered, "I will say a few words." Her brother was delighted, and she delivered her message with a directness and fluency which compelled attention and proved her a born speaker. Not very long after, she spoke in the hearing of the General, who wrote to his wife, "I don't know whether I told you how pleased I was with dear Katie speaking in the streets on Sunday morning. It was very nice and effective. Bless her!" "From this time," says Mr. Booth in a document of great importance, "she continued occasionally to speak in public meetings, but it was not until she was between fourteen and fifteen, when she was with me in Ryde, Isle of Wight, that I fully realised and settled the question. During that time my eldest son joined us for a few days, and, with another friend or two, held open-air meetings; on one of these occasions Catherine accompanied them, and her brother induced her to say a few words, which it appears fell with extraordinary power upon the listening crowd of men and others, such as usually comprise the visitors at these places. On their return my son described to me the effects of her address, but, not being fully emancipated from my old ideas of propriety, I remonstrated and urged such objections as I presume any other mother, consecrated but not fully enlightened, might have urged against her being thrust into such a public position at such an early age. My son, gazing at me with great solemnity and tenderness, said, 'Mamma, dear, you will have to settle this question with God, for she is as surely called and inspired by Him for this particular work as yourself.' These words were God's message to my soul, and helped me to pull myself up as to the ground of my objection. I retired to my room, and, after pouring out my heart to God, settled the question that henceforth I would raise no barrier between any of my children and the carrying out of His will concerning them, trying to rejoice that they, not less than myself, should be counted worthy to suffer shame for His name." From that time Catherine's path was clearly marked out. While she continued her education, which included a special liking for French, she gradually undertook more and more public work. Her father's delight in her ripening powers found frequent utterance, and her companionship with him during the next six years of work is one of the most beautiful things in the literature of evangelism. "William," said Mrs. Booth about this time, "writes that he is utterly amazed at Katie; he had no idea that she could speak as she does. He says that she is a born leader, and will if she keeps right see thousands saved.... Praise His name that she can stand in my stead, and bear His name to perishing souls." After holding meetings in different parts of London, from Stratford and Poplar to Hammersmith, Catherine began, just before she was seventeen, to conduct evangelistic campaigns in many of the other great cities of England, sometimes lasting three weeks or a month. The largest building in the town densely crowded Sunday after Sunday, and frequently on week nights as well; hundreds of people to speak to about their souls' salvation every week; correspondence and travel; ceaseless labour and responsibility—these things absorbed all her energies of body and mind. She was but a frail girl, and suffered for a time from a curvature of spine, which compelled her to lie on her back in great weakness and pain. If she yet overcame, it is evident that she was "marvellously helped." In 1876 Katie was one of the speakers at the annual Conference in the People's Hall, Whitechapel. As she appeared on the platform, she was described by her lifelong friend, R. C. Morgan of The Christian, as "a fragile, ladylike girl of seventeen, half woman, half child, a characteristic product of the Christian Mission, whose words fell like summer rain upon the upturned faces of the crowd." This was the Conference at which the epoch-making measure was adopted of appointing women evangelists to the sole charge of stations. Miss Booth was reserved "for general evangelistic tours." It is interesting to glance through the numbers of the old Christian Mission Magazine and light upon brief reports of Catherine's work. From Hammersmith (1875): "Miss Kate Booth [age 16] spent a Sabbath with us, preaching twice with great acceptance. A large audience was deeply impressed, and some, we trust, were truly converted to God." From Poplar: "Mr. Bramwell and Miss C. Booth were with us. On the Sunday and Monday evening the hall was crowded, and some thirty souls at the two services sought salvation.... On Easter Sunday one sister's face was cut with a stone, and heavy stones fell upon some on many occasions of late; but we endure as seeing Him who is invisible." From Portsmouth: "Miss Booth, assisted by W. Bramwell Booth, commenced a series of special services, which God owned and blessed to the salvation of many precious souls. In the morning Miss Booth preached, and all felt it good to be there. Then a love-feast was conducted by W. B. Booth in the afternoon.... In the evening Miss Booth preached in the music-hall to upwards of three thousand people. The Spirit applied the Word with power, and seventeen broke away from the ranks of sin and enlisted under the banner of Jesus Christ." Again from Portsmouth, some months later: "We had a visit from Miss Booth with her brother Mr. Bramwell, and again the dear Lord blessed their labours in this town. Each service was fraught with Divine power; many trembled under the Word, and anxious ones came forward seeking forgiveness of sins, until the penitent-rail and vestry were filled with those who, in bitterness of soul, sought pardon and peace through Jesus." From Limehouse (1876): "We had dear Miss Booth and her brother, and a blessed day. In the evening she preached with wonderful power, and ten or twelve came out for God. May they be kept faithful!" From Portsmouth: "Miss Booth's visit was made of the Lord a great blessing to us all. Very few who listened to her in the morning will forget how she pleaded with us to present our bodies a living sacrifice. Oh, may God bless her and make her a mighty blessing, for Christ's sake." From Whitechapel (1877): "An earnest appeal was made at one of our Sunday evening services by Miss Booth, from 'Run, speak to that young man.' Although in very delicate health, the Lord blessedly assisted her. The word was with power, and eleven souls decided for Jesus, among whom was the converted Potman. This young man was a leader in petty and mischievous annoyances. The genuineness of his conversion was evidenced by his giving up the public-house work to seek more honourable employment." From Middlesbro' (1878): "Miss Booth visited us for five days, and many blood-bought souls have been blessed and saved. Her first Sunday with us was a day of power, and it will not be soon forgotten by those present. It was a grand sight to see a large hall filled to the door with anxious hearers, while hundreds went away; but the grandest sight of all was to see old and young flocking to the penitent form." From Leicester: "Miss Booth's services may be summarised in the statement that she had twenty-two souls the first Sunday evening, and increasing victory thereafter right on to the end." At Whitby there was a six weeks' campaign, organised by Captain Cadman. On the first Sunday "the large hall, which holds three thousand, was well filled, and in the after service many souls were brought to Jesus." On the second Sunday "Miss Booth was listened to with breathless attention. In the after service we drew the net to land, having a multitude of fishes, and among them we found we had caught a fox-hunter, a dog-fancier, drunkards, a Roman Catholic, and many others. In the week-night services souls were saved every night. The proprietor of the hall had got some large bills out announcing 'Troupe of Arctic Skaters in the Congress Hall for a week,' but he put them off by telling them it was no use coming, as all the town was being evangelised." The concluding services "drew great crowds from all parts of town and country, rich and poor, until the hall was so filled that there was no standing room." In a Consecration meeting, "After Miss Booth's address we formed a large ring in the centre of the hall, which brought the power down upon us; hundreds looked on with astonishment and tears in their eyes, whilst others gave themselves wholly to God.... Ministers, like Nicodemus of old, came to see by what power these miracles were wrought, and, going back to their congregations, resolved to serve God better, and to preach the gospel more faithfully in the future." From Leeds: "Miss Booth in the Circus. A glorious month. Hard-hearted sinners broken down. Best of all, our own people have been getting blessedly near to God. On Sunday mornings love feasts from nine to ten.... It would be impossible to give even an outline of the various and glorious cases of conversion that have come under our notice through the month which is past. For truly Christ has been bringing to His fold rich and poor, young and old." From Cardiff: "The question, 'Does this work stand?' received a magnificent reply on Sunday. The crowds who filled the Stuart Hall, to hear Miss Booth, were the largest any one can remember seeing during all the four years of the Mission's history there." From King's Lynn: "Miss Booth's Mission. The town has had a royal visit from the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. There has been a great awakening, and trembling, and turning to the Lord. Whole families have been saved, and whole courts have sought salvation. Our holiness meeting will never be forgotten.... The work here rolls on gloriously. Not only in Lynn but for miles round the town it is well known that a marvellous work has been done and is still going forward." All these battles and victories were naturally followed by the General with intense interest, and as often as it was possible he was at his daughter's side. Mrs. Booth joined them when they were opening a campaign together at Stockton-on-Tees, and sent her impressions to a friend. "Pa and Katie had a blessed beginning yesterday. Theatre crowded at night, and fifteen cases. I heard Katie for the first time since we were at Cardiff. I was astonished at the advance she had made. I wish you had been there, I think you would have been as pleased as I was. It was sweet, tender, forcible, and Divine. I could only adore and weep. She looked like an angel, and the people were melted, and spellbound like children." The General began to call her his "BlÜcher," for she helped to win many a hard-fought battle which he might otherwise have lost. When the rowdies threatened to take the upper hand at a meeting, he would say, "Put on Katie, she's our last card; if she fails we'll close the meeting." "I remember," wrote her eldest brother, "a striking instance of this occurring in a certain northern town on a Sunday night. A crowd assembled at the doors of the theatre, composed of the lowest and roughest of the town, who, overpowering the doorkeepers, pressed into the building and took complete possession of one of the galleries, so that by the time the remainder of the theatre was occupied this portion of it represented a scene more like a crowded tap-room than the gallery of what was for the moment a place of worship. Rows of men sat smoking and spitting, others were talking and laughing aloud, while many with hats on were standing in the aisles and passages, bandying to and fro jokes and criticisms of the coarsest character. All this continued with little intermission during the opening exercises, and the more timid among us had practically given up hope about the meeting, when Miss Booth rose, and standing in front of the little table just before the footlights, commenced to sing, with such feeling and unction as it is impossible to describe with pen and ink,
There was instantaneous silence over the whole house; after singing two or three stanzas, she stopped and announced her text, 'Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like His.' While she did so nearly every head in the gallery was uncovered, and within fifteen minutes both she and every one of the fifteen hundred people present were completely absorbed in her subject, and for forty minutes no one stirred or spoke among that unruly crowd, until she made her concluding appeal, and called for volunteers to begin the new life of righteousness, when a great big navvy-looking man rose up, and in the midst of the throng in the gallery exclaimed, 'I'll make one!' He was followed by thirty others that night." |
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