Catherine Booth | Page 6

through
your timidity; for otherwise you will be of no use to God.'
And did Katie persevere? Yes, indeed, she did. Here is an entry made
some time later in the diary that she kept, which shows you how very
much her experience was like yours:--
'I have not been blessed so much for weeks as I was to-night. I prayed
aloud. The cross was great, but so was the reward.
My heart beat violently, but I felt some liberty.'
Though Catherine's spine difficulty was better, she was still very
delicate, and at the age of eighteen every one felt sure she was going
into a decline. But, sick or well, her soul grew stronger, and her desire
to please and serve God better increased every day.
'I do love Thee,' she wrote in the same little diary, 'but I want to love
Thee more.'
It was not till many years later that Catherine received the blessing of a
clean heart; but even now she had begun to desire and long for it. She
also writes at this time: 'I see that this Full Salvation is very necessary
if I am to glorify God below, and find my way to Heaven. I want a
clean heart. Lord, take me and seal me.'
Some people, even after they are converted, are too proud to own
themselves wrong, or to confess when they have sinned. Catherine was
not of that sort. In one of her letters to her mother she ends with these
words:--
'Pray for me, dear mother, and believe me, with all my faults and
besetments, your loving child.'
Her hunger after a holy life was real and practical. She knew she must
learn to live by method--that is, doing right, whether she liked it or
not--and not by feelings, if she was to be of use in the world.

So at the end of the year she wrote some new resolutions; and as they
may be of help to you, I will copy them for you just as she put them
down:--
'I have been writing a few daily rules for the coming year, which I hope
will prove a blessing to me, by the grace of God. I have got a paper of
printed rules also, which I intend to read once a week. May the Lord
help me to keep to them! But, above all, I am determined to search the
Scriptures more attentively, for in them I have eternal life. I have read
my Bible through twice during the past sixteen months, but I must read
it with more prayer for light and understanding. Oh, may it be my meat
and drink! May I meditate on it day and night! And then I shall bring
forth fruit in season; my leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever I do
shall prosper.'
She had also her own private ways of denying herself, not for the sake
of earning money or praise by it, but simply because she felt it was
right. One of these rules was to do without dinner, and butter at
breakfast, once in the week, because she felt it helped her in her soul.
I cannot end this chapter without telling you of the one great sorrow
which darkened all her early years. Some of you, I know, will enter into
her feelings so well.
Her father, at one time saved and earnest about the souls of others, had
grown cold and backslidden, and now never even went near a Meeting.
You can fancy what agony this was to both Mrs. Mumford and her
daughter. They prayed and wept in vain--he only seemed to get more
indifferent. Catherine would sometimes write her feelings and her
sorrow in her diary, and there we read:--
'I sometimes get into an agony of feeling while praying for my dear
father. Oh, my Lord, answer prayer, and bring him back to Thyself!
Never let that tongue which once delighted in praising Thee, and in
showing others Thy willingness to save, be engaged in uttering the
lamentations of the lost! Oh, awful thought! Lord, have mercy! Save,
Oh! save him in any way Thou seest best, though it be ever so painful.
If by removing me Thou canst do this, cut short Thy work, and take me
Home. Let me be bold to speak in Thy name. Oh, give me true courage
and liberty, and when I write to him, bless what I say to the good of his
soul!'
For many years this prayer of Catherine's was not answered; but she

held on, as you must do for those you love, in faith and prayer; and at
last she had the unspeakable joy of seeing her dear father come back to
God through one of her own Meetings which he