Above the note of joy, above the plentiful harvest, rings out so loudly the note of sorrow–’But the labourers are few!’ How few in comparison to the masses! So few labourers who will put off the coat of formality, who will pull up the sleeve of ease! Few who will work by the sweat of their brow and make a sacrifice for souls! Sacrifice is needed in God’s service to-day as much as ever, and never was there a more urgent call for men and women who, like our precious General, can say, ’I am never out of it; I sleep in it; I shall die in it.’ Nothing worth anything can be accomplished without sacrifice.
How many are there in God’s service who merely look on? More are wanted who will work. The success of The Army has been because of its willingness to come down to the level of the people–to strive to save them. A reckless dying to self is what is needed. Was it not dying made the harvest? The dying is part of the success. The grain was dropped into the ground, and died before it could spring forth and produce living results. There must be the dying to sin, and to self, and self-interests.
Men and women of heart are wanted–men and women, who in seeking souls will give themselves up in the spirit of the champion aviator who said, ’If I had not succeeded I should not have been here. I was determined to win, or die in the attempt.’
Labourers are wanted who will dig right deep down into the heart of sorrow, and find those desires and longings after purity and goodness which even the heart itself scarcely realizes are there.
In the man of the world, though one would hardly believe it as one sees the cynical look and sneer and hears him say, ’I don’t want your church–your Army!’ there is underneath, in spite of his apparent indifference, a longing after God and a disgust of the world.
Men and women are wanted to grapple with the vast harvest–this great opportunity–and to gather in God’s sheaves. Oh, to leave the world of vice and folly as naked as the earth is after the harvest! Empty public-houses! Empty gambling dens! Empty abodes of impurity! Empty slums! Empty all places where God is not! But thanksgiving in the home; the House of God filled with rejoicing people, telling out of hearts of gladness that labourers came into the fields of sin and gathered them in.
Many letters, folded and handled until almost worn to pieces, but treasured above gold, lie before me. They are addressed to Kate Lee’s spiritual children, to the sick, the discouraged, or those living far from an Army hall and rarely able to get to the meetings. These letters are short, often mere notes of one page, rarely running into more than two or three folios; and they are not clever. Kate had little imagination in her make up; she did not see pictures wherever her eyes lit, and never had time to give to studied composition. The value of these letters to us is that any ordinary girl, anyone with a heart ‘at leisure from itself’ could write such letters. Over and over again in The Army Founder’s life we find him saying, ‘It is heart work we want. HEART work.’ It is because Kate Lee’s letters came from a heart full of love that they reached hearts and never failed to bless them.
She had a delightful way of remembering the anniversary of some of her trophies’ conversion. She called them birthdays. Here is a little scrap to a man battling bravely against ill health and other adversities:–
I am enclosing a Money Order for five shillings so that you can get some little thing for yourself or your wife. Just a little birthday gift for your twelfth birthday. God bless you! Keep near to Jesus and do all in your power to lead those around you to Him. Praise Him that He has kept you all these years. He is a wonderful Saviour and worthy of our praise.
No work of art was so beautiful in the eyes of Kate Lee as the photographs of men and women to whom God had given ‘beauty for ashes.’ She writes to one:–