Another of her hindrances, and one which was almost more difficult to overcome than weakness of body, was depression.
I wonder if you know what that is? If so, it will help you to realize that Mrs. Booth had to fight it also.
The Devil seemed allowed to try and test her faith to the uttermost, and at times to blot out all peace and glory from her soul. During one such time of darkness she writes:–
’I know I ought not, of all saints, or sinners either, to be depressed. I know it dishonours my Lord, grieves His Spirit, and injures me greatly; and I would fain hide from everybody to prevent their seeing it. But I cannot help it. I have struggled hard, more than any one knows, for a long time against it. Sometimes I have literally held myself, head and heart and hand, and waited for the floods to pass over me.’
But our Army Mother did not give up working for God, and sit down in despair, because she was thus tried. One day, just before leaving for a great West-End Meeting, in which God made her words as a sharp two-edged sword, she wrote this to one of her children:–
’I have been very much depressed since you left–more so than usual. It is of no use reasoning with myself when these fits of despondency are on me. I must hold on and fight my passage through; and when I get to Heaven the light and joy will be all the greater. If I dared give up working I should do so a hundred times over; but I dare not.’
Another and constant hindrance which our Army Mother had to fight for the greater part of her life was poverty. It was so difficult, many times, to make two ends meet. She had, during many years of her life, no regular money coming in on which to depend, and during that time it was a constant struggle to have her children properly cared for and give them the needed education.
But most of all did our Army Mother show herself a warrior in her own Salvation campaigns. In those early days there were no praying Soldiers and Sergeants to be had to deal with the penitents–no one, either, to lead her singing, scarcely even to keep the doors or take up the collection. She would arrive in a town absolutely alone. A hall had been taken in which she was to speak, and she would hire a tiny lodging, or stay in whatever home would receive her, and set to work. We can scarcely understand the loneliness of her position. Here was a proof of her mighty faith in God.
She began these solitary campaigns when her sixth child was but a few weeks old, and God most wonderfully owned her labours. At one place she saw one hundred grown-up people and two hundred children come to her penitent-form in six days. But it was a fearful battle.
‘I have a comfortable little cot to stay in,’ she writes to her mother from one such battle-field, ’very small and humble; but it is clean and quiet; and when I feel nervous no one knows the value of quietness. I have felt it hard work lately. Many a time have I longed to be where the weary are at rest.’