their existence the salvation of sinful and erring men by the divine miracle of conversion. The orthodox party, rightly or wrongly, claimed to be the faithful guardians of Methodism, and kept a watchful eye upon revivals, ordering the services of the church with a far more rigid overlordship than existed in the Anglican Communion. Men tended to one camp or the other according to their temperaments, and for many years the separation was so deep and so wide that few dreamed it could ever be bridged.

Such was the nature of this agitation, and such the condition of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, in the year 1850, when William Booth, slaving hard to earn daily bread in London, was an obscure and discouraged lay preacher in its ranks, of whom neither the pontifical Dr. Bunting nor the rebellious and expelled Samuel Dunn — who had been his own minister in Nottingham - took the least account.

CHAPTER X

TELLS HOW WILLIAM BOOTH BECAME A PASTOR, AND INTRODUCES THE READER TO CATHERINE MUMFORD

1850-1851

THE storm of this disputation raged with violence. But it does not seem to have driven William Booth from his path or to have drawn him to the one side or the other. Mr. Booth," says W. T. Stead, "kept apart from the controversy. His sympathies were then, as always, on the side of authority."

This statement, which may surprise many people, is a true statement. William Booth was antipathetic to violent change, hated rebellion, suspected "reform," and cherished discipline and obedience as cardinal virtues. His story for the next twenty years is the tragic Odyssey of a strong and original soul labouring to follow his star along the beaten track of authority, struggling to get the new wine of his unquenchable zeal into the shrunken skins of tradition, striving to move his church along with him out of the slough of a stagnant formalism. And the irony of it is, that the churches which expelled him and literally drove him into the wilderness, which during the most difficult years of his existence opposed him, censured him, maligned him, not only came to adopt his methods and follow his example, but, when it was too late, made overtures for his reception into their midst.

In his old age William Booth was received by King Edward the Seventh. "Tell me, General," asked the Sovereign, "how do you get on now with the Churches? What is their attitude towards you?"

The old man looked shrewdly at the King, his eyes twinkled, and he made answer, "Sir, they imitate me." At which the King laughed with a good understanding.

At the age of twenty-one he was conservative and on the side of authority. He knew very well what dissension

existed in the Wesleyan body, but he endeavoured to stop his ears against the unprofitable sounds of discord.

What was in his mind, seething and burning there, at this momentous epoch of his life? Happily a letter exists, the oldest known of his letters, which answers that question with a fulness invaluable to this narrative. The letter is dated October 30, 1849, and is addressed to John Savage in Nottingham, one of the young men who had served as a disciple in the streets and slums of that city:

How are you going on? I know you are happy. I know you are living to God, and working for Jesus. Grasp still firmer the standard. Unfold still wider the battle-flag! Press still closer on the ranks of the enemy, and mark your pathway still more distinctly with trophies of Emmanuel's grace, and with enduring monuments of Jesus' power! The trumpet has given the signal for the conflict! Your General assures of success and a glorious reward; your crown is already held out. Then why delay? Why doubt? Onward! Onward! Onward! Christ for me! Be that your motto. . . be that your battle-cry . . be that your war-note . . . be that your consolation . . . be that your plea when asking the mercy of God - your end when offering it to man .. your hope when encircled by darkness . . . your triumph and victory when attacked and overcome by death! Christ for me! Tell it to men who are living and dying in sin! Tell it to Jesus, that you have chosen Him to be your Saviour and your God. Tell it to devils, and bid them. cease to harass, since you are determined to die for the truth!

I preached on Sabbath last- a respectable but dull and lifeless congregation. Notwithstanding I had liberty both praying and preaching, I had not the assistance of a single "Amen" or "Hallelujah" the whole of the service! It is hard work to labour for an hour and a half in the pulpit and then come down and do the work of the prayer-meeting as well! I want some Savages, and Proctors, and Frosts, and Hoveys, and Robinsons, here with me in the prayer-meetings, and glory to God we would carry all before us! Praise God for living at Nottingham every hour you are in it! Oh, to live Christ on earth, and to meet you once more, never to part, in a better world.

In spite of a phraseology which may slightly disturb a later refinement, this letter has a ring of truth which is worth an infinite amount of prettiness and decorous restraint. It is the letter of a true man, the authentic cry of a soul desperately earnest. One can no more doubt this utterance than one can doubt the Psalms of David. Narrow

and limited may have been the youth's outlook upon the world, wild and strange his language, panting and overheated his zeal, but never yet did a charlatan so utter his soul to a friend.

With such a temperament he was destined to suffer the dark reactions of ecstasy and boundless confidence. There were moments when his soul was plunged into dejection, moments when he doubted his call, moments when he was thrown into despair merely by contact with a shallow culture or a little theological pomposity.

But again and again the youth threw off the oppression of this scepticism, felt within himself strong and indubitable the call of God. The young man's tragedy was this, that he felt at his highest moments of ecstasy so boundless and so utter a gratitude to God for bliss of such incomparable rapture that he could not doubt in those moments of ravishment his power to save mankind by lifting them up with him into this same region of faith. But when ecstasy had passed, when the soul had returned to its poor troubled and shabby tenement of clay, then came the natural reaction which all idealists experience the feeling of exhaustion, the haunting fear that never can one lift humanity to God, that one is not scholar enough to enter into controversy with the least of the devils. Was he truly called? Had God indeed got a work for him to do? Was he not perhaps dangerously inflated with conceit in this feeling that he could do something for the Kingdom of Christ?

Concerning my pulpit efforts, I am more than ever discouraged. Upon becoming acquainted with my congregations, I am surprised at the amount of intellect which I have endeavoured to address. I am waking up as it were from a dream, and discover that my hopes are vanity, and that I literally know nothing.

I preached yesterday at Norwood- a dear people. In the morning "Oh, Lord, revive thy work" was accompanied with blessings, and in the evening "Jesus weeping over Jerusalem," though not attended by pleasurable feelings by myself, yet I hope went home to some hearts. I saw nothing done!

Afterwards I had some conversation with one of our local preachers respecting the subject with regard to which my heart.

is still burning-I mean the full work. He advises me by all means to offer myself next March, and leave it in the hands of God and the Church. What say you? You are my friend, the chosen of my companions, the man after my own heart. What say you? I want to be a devoted, simple, and sincere follower of the Bleeding Lamb. I do not desire the pastor's crust without having most distinctly received the pastor's call. And yet my inmost spirit is panting for the delightful enjoyment of telling from morn till eve, from eve till midnight, the glad tidings that mercy is free.

Mercy! Have you heard the word? Have you felt its power? Mercy! Can you describe its hidden, unfathomable meaning? Mercy! Let the sound be borne on every breeze! Mercy! Shout it to the world around until there is not a sinunpardoned, a pollution-spotted, a hell-marked spirit unwashed, unsanctified! Until there is not a sign of the curse in existence, not a sorrow unsoothed! not a tear unwiped away! until the world is flooded with salvation and all men are bathing in its life-giving streams!

In April, 1850, he writes to this same friend in Notting

ham:

But you ask "What is your plan?" Why,_go_out to Australia as Chaplain on board a convict ship. To face the storm and the billow, and the tempest's rolling wave, and to preach to the very worst of men Christ's Salvation.

The idea of breaking away from his monotonous toil and throwing himself into some hard and heroic work lasted until November of the same year, when we find him writing to the same friend:

I am thinking of offering for the general work abroad or at home, where the Church will send me, or where the world hath need of me. What say you? You know I would prefer the home work, but the difficulties are so numerous, my ability is not equal to the task. It is evident, my Superintendent told me so, that preachers are not wanted.

An incident occurred at this juncture, however, destined to influence the whole course of his after life. Among the people who listened to his preaching was an enthusiastic Wesleyan layman of no very lovable and agreeable type, but nevertheless a man of some character, and one who knew a great man when he saw him. This Wesleyan lay