CHAPTER III
THE SECRET OF EVANGELISM
After many victories at home, William and Catherine Booth began to look abroad. They realised that "the field is the world," and they longed to commence operations on the Continent. In the summer of 1881, with high hopes and some natural fears, they dedicated their eldest daughter to France. In giving her they gave their best. Delicate girl though she was, she had become one of the greatest spiritual forces in England. She swayed vast multitudes by something higher than mere eloquence. Wherever she went revivals broke out and hundreds were converted. There was a pathos and a power in her appeals which made them irresistible.
At the time of her departure she received many letters from friends whom she had spiritually helped, and who realised how much they would miss her in England. Nowhere had she done more good, nowhere could her absence create a greater blank, than in her own home. Her sister Eva wrote: "I cannot bear the thought that you are gone. You have always understood me. I hope one day to be of some use to you, in return for all you have done for me." And her brother Herbert wrote her: "You cannot know how much I felt your leaving. The blow came so suddenly. You were gone. Only God and myself know how much I had lost in you. I can truthfully say that you have been everything to me, and if it had not been for you I should never have been where and what I am spiritually at present. God bless you a thousand thousand times. Oh! how I long to be of some little service to you after all you have been to me.... Thousands upon thousands of true, loving hearts are bearing you up at the Eternal throne, mine among them. You have a chance that men of the past would have given their blood for, and that the very angels in Heaven covet."
There was no Entente Cordiale in those days, and at the thought of parting with Katie, and letting her go to live in the slums of Paris, Mrs. Booth confessed that she "felt unutterable things." In a letter to a friend she wrote: "The papers I read on the state of Society in Paris make me shudder, and I see all the dangers to which our darling will be exposed!" But if her fears were great, her faith was greater. Asked by Lady Cairns how she dared to send a girl so young and unprotected into such surroundings, she answered, "Her innocence is her strength, and Katie knows the Lord." And if Katie herself was asked to define Christianity, she answered, "Christianity is heroism!" For a girl of this spirit, was there, after all, anything so formidable in the French people? Was there not rather a pre-established harmony between her and the pleasant land of France, as her remarkable predilection for the French language already seemed to indicate? Is any nation in the world so chivalrous as the French? any nation so sensitive to the charm of manner, the magnetic power of personality? any nation—in spite of all its hatred of clericalism—gifted with so infallible a sense of the beauty of true holiness? Courage, camarade!
What were the ideas with which Catherine began her work in Paris? What was her plan of campaign? How did she hope to conquer? On these points let us listen to herself. "I saw," she says, "that the bridge to France was—making the French people believe in me. That is what the Protestants do not understand. They preach the Bible, they write books, they offer tracts. But that does not do the work. 'Curse your bibles, your books, your tracts!' cry the French. I have seen thousands of testaments given away to very little purpose. I have seen them torn up to light cigars. And the conviction that took shape in my mind was that, unless I could inspire faith in me, there was no hope. Only if Jesus is lifted up in flesh and blood, will He to-day draw all men to Him. If I cannot give Him, I shall fail. France has not waited till now for religion, for preaching, for eloquence. Something more is needed. 'I that speak unto thee am He'—there is a sense in which the world is waiting for that to-day. You may say that this leads to fanaticism, to all sorts of error; and yet I always come back to it. Christ's primary idea, His means of saving the world, is, after all, personality. The face, the character, the life of Jesus is to be seen in men and women. This is the bridge to the seething masses who believe in nothing, who hate religion, who cry 'Down with Jesus Christ!' What sympathy I felt with them as I listened to their angry cries against something which they had never really seen or known. They shout 'Jesuits,' but they have never seen Jesus. Could they but see Him, they would still 'receive Him gladly.' It is the priests' religion that has made them bitter. 'Money to be baptised! Money to be married! Money to be buried!' was what I heard them mutter. Ah! they are quick to recognise the comedian in religion, and equally quick to recognise the real thing. France is more sensitive to disinterested love than any nation I have ever known. France will never accept a religion without sacrifice.
"These were the convictions with which I began the work in Paris, and, if I had to begin it over again to-day, I would go on the same lines. When I knew what I had to do, my mind was at rest. I said, 'We will lay ourselves out for them; they shall know where we live, they can watch us day and night, they shall see what we do and judge us.' And the wonderful thing in those first years of our work in France and Switzerland was the flame. We lighted it all along the line. Wherever we went we brought the fire with us, we fanned it, we communicated it. We could not help doing so, because it was in us, and that was what made us sufferers. The fire had to be burning in us day and night. That is our symbol—the fire, the fire!
Seigneur, ce que mon coeur réclame,
C'est le Feu ...
Le seul secret de la Victoire,
C'est le Feu.
We all know what the fire is. It warms and it burns; it scorches the Pharisees and makes the cowards fly. But the poor, tempted, unhappy world knows by whom it is kindled, and says: 'I know Thee who Thou art—the Holy One of God!'
"That was what filled the halls at Havre and Rouen, Nîmes and Bordeaux, Brussels and Liège. We personified Some One, and that was the attraction. I have not the insufferable conceit to suppose that it was anything in me that drew them. What am I? Dust and ashes. But if you have the fire, it draws, it melts; it consumes all selfishness; it makes you love as He loves; it gives you a heart of steel to yourself, and the tenderest of hearts to others; it gives you eyes to see what no one else sees, to hear what others have never given themselves the trouble to listen to. And men rush to you because you are what you are; you are as He was in the world; you have His sympathy, His Divine love, His Divine patience. Therefore He gives you the victory over the world; and what is money, what are houses, lands, anything, compared with that?