Catherine Booth | Page 5

it was worth
it, ten thousand times over, as we can all see to-day.
Very soon after this victory Catherine became really converted.
'What!' you say. 'Was she not converted before this?'
No. All her life she had, like many children trained to-day in
Salvationist homes, felt God's Holy Spirit striving with her. Sometimes,
when quite a little girl, her mother would find her crying because she
felt how she had sinned against God.
But when she was about fifteen she longed to know that she was really
saved.
'Don't be silly,' said the Devil in her heart. 'You have been as good as
saved all your life. You have always wanted to do right. How can you
expect such a sudden change as if you were a great big drunkard? It's
absurd.'
'But my heart is as bad as the heart of a big sinner,' cried poor Katie in
an agony of fear. 'I have been as bad inside, if not in my outward
actions and words.'
And then she took hold of God in faith. 'Lord, I must be converted. I
cannot rest till Thou hast changed my whole nature; do for me what
Thou dost do, for the thieves and drunkards.'
But for six weeks it seemed as if God did not hear her cry. She grew
more and more unhappy. All her past sins rose before her: those bursts
of temper when she was at school, those wrong thoughts and feelings.
Yes, the Bible was true when it said: 'The heart is deceitful above all

things and desperately wicked.'
Katie argued, too, like this: 'I cannot recollect any time or place where I
claimed Salvation and the forgiveness of my sins; if God has saved me,
He would surely have made me certain of it. Anyway, I must and will
know it. I must have the assurance that I am God's child.'
Unable to rest, she would pace her room till two o'clock in the morning,
and would lie down at last, with her Bible and hymn-book under her
pillow, praying that God would Himself tell her that her sins were
forgiven. At last, one morning, as she woke, she opened her
hymn-book, and read these words:--
My God, I am Thine, What a comfort divine, What a blessing to know
that my Jesus is mine.
Now she had read and sung these lines scores of times before, but they
came this morning with a new power to her soul.
'I am Thine!' 'My Jesus is mine!' she exclaimed. 'Lord, it is true!--I do
believe it! My sins are forgiven. I belong to Thee!' and her whole soul
was filled with light and joy. She now possessed what she had been
seeking all these weeks--the assurance of Salvation! And then what do
you think she did? She threw on a wrapper, and, without waiting to
dress, hurried across to her mother's room, and tapped at the door.
'Come in,' said her mother's voice; and Katie, her face shining with joy,
burst into the room. 'Mamma, mamma, I am a child of God! My sins
are forgiven--Jesus is my Saviour!' she cried, flinging herself into her
mother's arms. And this was the same Katie, who had been so shy and
backward that she had never before dared to speak about her spiritual
anxieties, even to her mother! Ah! what a change real conversion, or
change of heart, had made.
For the next six months Katie was so happy that she felt as if she were
walking on air. 'I used to tremble,' she tells us, 'and even long to die,
lest I should back-slide or lose the sense of God's favour.'
But as time went on she learned, as we all have to do, to walk by faith,
not by sight, and to serve and follow the Saviour whether she had
happy feelings or not.
But you must not suppose, because Katie had the assurance of
Salvation, that therefore she had no more fighting. No--indeed, her
fighting days had only just begun.
One of her great difficulties, which many Corps Cadets will understand,

was that she felt so nervous about doing anything in public. No one, of
course, asked her to speak--such a thing was never dreamed of; but the
lady who took the Bible Class which she attended regularly would now
and then ask her to pray. 'Miss Mumford will pray,' the lady would say,
when they were all kneeling together.
But Katie was too shy to begin, and sometimes they would wait for
several minutes before she had courage to say a few words. 'Don't ask
me to pray again,' she said one day to her leader; 'the excitement and
agitation make me quite ill.'
'I can't help that,' was the very wise answer; 'you must break