This was the reason that, on her deathbed, she could say, turning to the Chief of the Staff, ’I have no vain regrets about the past. As far as my strength allowed, I have finished the work I had to do as I went along; and now I leave it, all imperfect as it has been, in His hands.’
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.
When our first General stood on that October evening by the grave of his beloved wife, and spoke to us with a breaking heart of our Army Mother, he unfolded to us the three great qualities which made her character so beautiful. First, and foremost, she was good; secondly, she was love; and, thirdly, she was a Warrior. Let us, following The General’s outline, look at these three leading qualities in her life. ‘First,’ he said, ’she was good. She was washed in the Blood of the Lamb. To the last moment her cry was “a sinner saved by grace.” She was a thorough hater of shams, hypocrisies, and make-believes. Her goodness was of a practical sort. “By their fruits ye shall know them” was a text she often quoted, and one by which she was always willing to be judged.’
It is of this ‘goodness of a practical sort’ that I want first to tell you, before we consider that soul goodness which made her life so holy.
Mrs. Booth could not imagine any goodness apart from industry. As we have already seen, she considered it a sin to waste precious time. Any one who was lazy she could not endure, and when one such offered for the work she wrote of him:–
’I do hope you will not throw a lot of money away in trying H–––, just for want of courage to tell him at once that he will not do, because I am sure that it will be thrown away. 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. But besides this came her own letter-writing, preparing for her Meetings, and also the hours she spent consulting and advising The General, whose voice, ‘Here, Kate,’ would call her from the nursery or kitchen to help him decide some important question.