’By your peace of conscience on a dying bed; by the eternal destinies of your children, by your care for never-dying souls; by the love you owe your Saviour, I beseech you banish the drink.
’Tell me no more of charity towards brewers, distillers, and publicans. Your false charity to these has already consigned millions to an untimely Hell!... Arise, Christians, arise, and fight this foe! You and you alone are able, for your God will fight for you!’
Another thing for which our Army Mother fought, and which to-day we owe in great measure to her efforts, is the position to which women have been lifted as speakers and teachers in God’s work. She first, as we have seen, opened the way herself; and then she left it open, encouraging and helping tens of thousands of simple, holy women all round the world to follow in her steps.
She had a tough battle to wage. All classes wrote and spoke against women being allowed to stand and speak for God in the open air or in public halls; but, strong in faith and courage, convinced that she had Divine authority for what she did, our Army Mother fought on, arguing, writing, preaching on the matter. Now to-day there is scarcely a land where The Army bonnet is not known and loved, nor where Army women cannot gain a crowd of respectful listeners.
Now I am going to show you some of the hindrances in spite of which our Army Mother fought on.
The first of these hindrances was the burden which God allowed Mrs. Booth to carry all through her life–a weak and suffering body. She said, when her life was drawing to its close, that suffering seemed to have been her special lot, and that she could scarcely remember a day in her life when she had been wholly free from pain.
‘I don’t care about my body,’ she exclaimed when lying in her last illness. ’It has been a poor old troublesome affair. I shall be glad for it to be sealed up. It is time it was. Oh, I have dragged it wearily about.’
Most women suffering as she did, with a weak spine, heart disease, and over-strained nerves, would have lived the life of an invalid. But the warrior spirit within forced her body along. Scores of times she has gone from her bed to the Meeting, and then, exhausted and fainting with the effort, has had to be almost carried home. But she had done her work, and sent the arrow of conviction into hundreds of hearts.
Writing after one special strain of work and anxiety, she says:–
’The excitement made me worse than I have been for two years. My heart was really alarming, and for two days I could hardly bear any clothes to touch me. This has disheartened me again as to my condition. But God reigns, and He will keep me alive as long as He needs me.’