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Catherine Booth

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<h1>II</h1> <h2>Conversion and Soul Struggles</h2> ’No soul was ever yet saved who was too idle to seek.’–Mrs. Booth. Perhaps you, the Corps Cadet, for whom I am especially writing this little book, have been tempted to break your vows by becoming engaged to some one who does not want to be an Officer. And you think, perhaps, that no one understands your feelings. You will be surprised, then, to know that our Army Mother had just such a battle to fight when she was a girl. She had a cousin, a little older than herself, who was tall and very clever. He came with his parents to stay in her home, and Katie had not seen him since they were young children. He quickly grew very fond of his cousin, and Catherine found how nice it was to have some one to give her presents and to love her as he did. At last he begged her to promise that by and by she would be engaged to him. Now Katie was very perplexed. On the one hand she loved her cousin, and did not want to grieve him, and yet in her heart she knew he was not truly given up to God, and would not help her in her soul. ‘Go to the Meeting with you, Katie?’ he used to say. ’Of course, I’ll go anywhere to please you.’ But then, while she was trying to get a blessing, he would be scratching little pictures on the back of the seat to make her laugh. Perhaps you can guess the struggle it was for Katie to decide what her answer should be. ’If you will only say “yes,” and be engaged to him, I am sure you will be able to help him, and very likely get him properly saved,’ the Devil would whisper. ’Break it off now, Katie; do not go another step; you know God cannot smile on it.’ That was how her conscience spoke. At last, one day as she was truly praying and seeking for light, she read the verse in 2 Corinthians vi. 14: ’Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.’ It came to her as the voice of God. ‘I will do it, Lord,’ she said, after a long struggle; and she sat down, and wrote her cousin a letter, telling him just why she could never be engaged to him, and breaking it all off for ever. Then she turned back to her home duties, and did not re-open the question. And did our Army Mother in after years regret that she had acted like this? No, indeed; she has told us that she saw plainly later on that, if just then she had chosen to follow her own feelings and wishes, instead of obeying God’s command, all her life would have been altered, and she would never have done the glorious work He had planned for her. It was a hard battle at the time, and cost her many tears; but it was worth it, ten thousand times over, as we can all see to-day. Very soon after this victory Catherine became really converted. ‘What!’ you say. ‘Was she not converted before this?’ No. All her life she had, like many children trained to-day in Salvationist homes, felt God’s Holy Spirit striving with her. Sometimes, when quite a little girl, her mother would find her crying because she felt how she had sinned against God. But when she was about fifteen she longed to know that she was really saved. ‘Don’t be silly,’ said the Devil in her heart. ’You have been as good as saved all your life. You have always wanted to do right. How can you expect such a sudden change as if you were a great big drunkard? It’s absurd.’ ‘But my heart is as bad as the heart of a big sinner,’ cried poor Katie in an agony of fear. ’I have been as bad inside, if not in my outward actions and words.’ And then she took hold of God in faith. ’Lord, I must be converted. I cannot rest till Thou hast changed my whole nature; do for me what Thou dost do, for the thieves and drunkards.’ But for six weeks it seemed as if God did not hear her cry. She grew more and more unhappy. All her past sins rose before her: those bursts of temper when she was at school, those wrong thoughts and feelings. Yes, the Bible was true when it said: ’The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.’ Katie argued, too, like this: ’I cannot recollect any time or place where I claimed Salvation and the forgiveness of my sins; if God has saved me, He would surely have made me certain of it. Anyway, I must and will know it. I must have the assurance that I am God’s child.’ Unable to rest, she would pace her room till two o’clock in the morning, and would lie down at last, with her Bible and hymn-book under her pillow, praying that God would Himself tell her that her sins were forgiven. At last, one morning, as she woke, she opened her hymn-book, and read these words:– My God, I am Thine, What a comfort divine, What a blessing to know that my Jesus is mine. Now she had read and sung these lines scores of times before, but they came this morning with a new power to her soul. ‘I am Thine!’ ‘My Jesus is mine!’ she exclaimed. ’Lord, it is true!–I do believe it! My sins are forgiven. I belong to Thee!’ and her whole soul was filled with light and joy. She now possessed what she had been seeking all these weeks–the assurance of Salvation! And then what do you think she did? She threw on a wrapper, and, without waiting to dress, hurried across to her mother’s room, and tapped at the door. ‘Come in,’ said her mother’s voice; and Katie, her face shining with joy, burst into the room. ’Mamma, mamma, I am a child of God! My sins are forgiven–Jesus is my Saviour!’ she cried, flinging herself into her mother’s arms. And this was the same Katie, who had been so shy and backward that she had never before dared to speak about her spiritual anxieties, even to her mother! Ah! what a change real conversion, or change of heart, had made. For the next six months Katie was so happy that she felt as if she were walking on air. ‘I used to tremble,’ she tells us, ’and even long to die, lest I should back-slide or lose the sense of God’s favour.’ But as time went on she learned, as we all have to do, to walk by faith, not by sight, and to serve and follow the Saviour whether she had happy feelings or not. But you must not suppose, because Katie had the assurance of Salvation, that therefore she had no more fighting. No–indeed, her fighting days had only just begun. One of her great difficulties, which many Corps Cadets will understand, was that she felt so nervous about doing anything in public. No one, of course, asked her to speak–such a thing was never dreamed of; but the lady who took the Bible Class which she attended regularly would now and then ask her to pray. ‘Miss Mumford will pray,’ the lady would say, when they were all kneeling together. But Katie was too shy to begin, and sometimes they would wait for several minutes before she had courage to say a few words. ’Don’t ask me to pray again,’ she said one day to her leader; ’the excitement and agitation make me quite ill.’ ‘I can’t help that,’ was the very wise answer; ’you must break through your timidity; for otherwise you will be of no use to God.’ And did Katie persevere? Yes, indeed, she did. Here is an entry made some time later in the diary that she kept, which shows you how very much her experience was like yours:– ’I have not been blessed so much for weeks as I was to-night. I prayed aloud. The cross was great, but so was the reward. My heart beat violently, but I felt some liberty.’ Though Catherine’s spine difficulty was better, she was still very delicate, and at the age of eighteen every one felt sure she was going into a decline. But, sick or well, her soul grew stronger, and her desire to please and serve God better increased every day. ‘I do love Thee,’ she wrote in the same little diary, ’but I want to love Thee more.’ It was not till many years later that Catherine received the blessing of a clean heart; but even now she had begun to desire and long for it. She also writes at this time: ’I see that this Full Salvation is very necessary if I am to glorify God below, and find my way to Heaven. I want a clean heart. Lord, take me and seal me.’ Some people, even after they are converted, are too proud to own themselves wrong, or to confess when they have sinned. Catherine was not of that sort. In one of her letters to her mother she ends with these words:– ’Pray for me, dear mother, and believe me, with all my faults and besetments, your loving child.’ Her hunger after a holy life was real and practical. She knew she must learn to live by method–that is, doing right, whether she liked it or not–and not by feelings, if she was to be of use in the world. So at the end of the year she wrote some new resolutions; and as they may be of help to you, I will copy them for you just as she put them down:– ’I have been writing a few daily rules for the coming year, which I hope will prove a blessing to me, by the grace of God. I have got a paper of printed rules also, which I intend to read once a week. May the Lord help me to keep to them! But, above all, I am determined to search the Scriptures more attentively, for in them I have eternal life. I have read my Bible through twice during the past sixteen months, but I must read it with more prayer for light and understanding. Oh, may it be my meat and drink! May I meditate on it day and night! And then I shall bring forth fruit in season; my leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever I do shall prosper.’ She had also her own private ways of denying herself, not for the sake of earning money or praise by it, but simply because she felt it was right. One of these rules was to do without dinner, and butter at breakfast, once in the week, because she felt it helped her in her soul. I cannot end this chapter without telling you of the one great sorrow which darkened all her early years. Some of you, I know, will enter into her feelings so well. Her father, at one time saved and earnest about the souls of others, had grown cold and backslidden, and now never even went near a Meeting. You can fancy what agony this was to both Mrs. Mumford and her daughter. They prayed and wept in vain–he only seemed to get more indifferent. Catherine would sometimes write her feelings and her sorrow in her diary, and there we read:– ’I sometimes get into an agony of feeling while praying for my dear father. Oh, my Lord, answer prayer, and bring him back to Thyself! Never let that tongue which once delighted in praising Thee, and in showing others Thy willingness to save, be engaged in uttering the lamentations of the lost! Oh, awful thought! Lord, have mercy! Save, Oh! save him in any way Thou seest best, though it be ever so painful. If by removing me Thou canst do this, cut short Thy work, and take me Home. Let me be bold to speak in Thy name. Oh, give me true courage and liberty, and when I write to him, bless what I say to the good of his soul!’ For many years this prayer of Catherine’s was not answered; but she held on, as you must do for those you love, in faith and prayer; and at last she had the unspeakable joy of seeing her dear father come back to God through one of her own Meetings which he had attended. His last years were full of peace, and were spent in serving God and rejoicing in His Salvation. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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