Do not think, however, that our dear Army Mother’s consecration stopped here! No, indeed. One by one, as they became old enough, she gave up her children to the Work, and we shall never know all we owe as an Army to her beautiful spirit of devotion and sacrifice.
Let us stand together by her open grave in the autumn twilight. Her twenty-six years of fight and toil in The Salvation Army are over now, her spirit has been summoned Home. Listen. The Army Founder himself is the speaker. He is recalling the forty years which he and our dear Army Mother had trod together, and his words sum up better than any other words could do what she was to our Leader:–
‘If you had had a tree,’ he said, speaking to the vast crowd that stood round the grave, ’that had grown up in your garden, under your window, which for forty years had been your shadow from the burning sun, whose flowers had been the adornment and beauty of your life, whose fruit had been almost the stay of your existence, and the gardener had come along and swung his glittering axe and cut it down before your eyes, I think you would feel as though you had a blank–it might not be a big one–but a little blank in your life.
’If you had had a servant who for all this long time had served you without fee or reward, who had administered, for very love, to your health and comfort, and who suddenly passed away, you would miss that servant.
’If you had had a counsellor who, in hours–continually occurring–of perplexity and amazement, had ever advised you, and seldom advised wrong; whose advice you had followed, and seldom had reason to regret it; and the counsellor, while you were in the same intricate mazes of your existence, had passed away, you would miss that counsellor.
’If you had had a friend who had understood your very nature, the rise and fall of your feelings, the bent of your thoughts, and the purpose of your existence; a friend whose communion had ever been pleasant–the most pleasant of all other friends–to whom you had ever turned with satisfaction, and your friend had been taken away, you would feel some sorrow at the loss.
’If you had had a mother for your children who had cradled and nursed and trained them for the service of the living God, in which you most delighted–a mother, indeed, who had never ceased to bear their sorrows on her heart, and who had been ever willing to pour forth that heart’s blood in order to nourish them, and that darling mother had been taken from your side, you would feel it a sorrow.
’If you had had a wife, a sweet love of a wife, who for forty years had never given you real cause for grief; a wife who had stood with you, side by side, in the battle’s front, who had been a comrade to you, ever willing to interpose herself between you and the enemy, and ever the strongest when the battle was fiercest, and your beloved one had fallen before your eyes, I am sure there would be some excuse for your sorrow.
’Well, my comrades, you can roll all these qualities into one personality, and what would be lost in all I have lost in one. There has been taken away from me the light of my eyes, the inspiration of my soul, and we are about to lay all that remains of her in the grave. I have been looking right at the bottom of it here, and calculating how soon they may bring and lay me alongside of her, and my cry to God has been that every remaining hour of my life may make me readier to come and join her in death, to go and embrace her in life in the Eternal City.’