The Authoritative Life of General William Booth | Page 5

I had to move away. I was
loath, very loath, to leave my dear widowed mother and my native

town, but I was compelled to do so, and to come to London. In the
great city I felt myself unutterably alone. I did not know a soul
excepting a brother-in-law, with whom I had not a particle of
communion.
"In many respects my new master very closely resembled the old one.
In one particular, however, he differed from him very materially, and
that was he made a great profession of religion. He believed in the
Divinity of Jesus Christ, and in the Church of which he was a member,
but seemed to be utterly ignorant of either the theory or practice of
experimental godliness. To the spiritual interests of the dead world
around him he was as indifferent as were the vicious crowds
themselves whom he so heartily despised. All he seemed to me to want
was to make money, and all he seemed to want me for was to help him
in the sordid selfish task.
"So it was work, work, work, morning, noon, and night. I was
practically a white slave, being only allowed my liberty on Sundays,
and an hour or two one night in the week, and even then the rule was
'Home by ten o'clock, or the door will be locked against you.' This law
was rigidly enforced in my case, although my employer knew that I
travelled long distances preaching the Gospel in which he and his wife
professed so loudly to believe. To get home in time, many a Sunday
night I have had to run long distances, after walking for miles, and
preaching twice during the day."
The contrast between those days and ours can hardly be realised by any
of us now. We may put down almost in figures some of the differences
that steam and electricity have made, linking all mankind together more
closely than Nottingham was then connected with London. But what
words can convey any picture of the development of intelligence and
sympathy that makes an occurrence in a London back street interest the
reading inhabitants of Germany, America, and Australia as intense as
those of our own country?
What a consolation it would have been to the apprentice lad, could he
have known how all his daily drudgery was fitting him to understand,
to comfort, and to help the toiling masses of every race and clime?
In the wonderful providence of God all these changes have been
allowed to leave England in as dominating a position as she held when
William Booth was born, if not to enhance her greatness and power, far

as some may consider beyond what she deserved. And yet all the time,
with or without our choice, our own activities, and even our faults and
neglects, have been helping other peoples, some of them born on our
soil, to become our rivals in everything. Happily the multiplication of
plans of intercourse is now merging the whole human race so much
into one community that one may hope yet to see the dawn of that
fraternity of peoples which may end the present prospects of wars
unparalleled in the past. How very much William Booth has
contributed to bring that universal brotherhood about this book may
suffice to hint.

Chapter II
Salvation In Youth

In convincing him that goodness was the only safe passport to peace
and prosperity of any lasting kind, William Booth's mother had happily
laid in the heart of her boy the best foundation for a happy life, "Be
good, William, and then all will be well," she had said to him over and
over again.
But how was he to "be good"? The English National Church, eighty
years ago, had reached a depth of cold formality and uselessness which
can hardly be imagined now. Nowhere was this more manifest than in
the "parish" church. The rich had their allotted pew, a sort of reserved
seat, into which no stranger dare enter, deserted though it might be by
its holders for months together. For the poor, seats were in some
churches placed in the broad aisles or at the back of the pulpit, so
conspicuously marking out the inferiority of all who sat in them as
almost to serve as a notice to every one that the ideas of Jesus Christ
had no place there. Even when an earnest clergyman came to any
church, he had really a battle against great prejudices on both sides if
he wished to make any of "the common people" feel welcome at
"common prayer." But the way the appointed services were "gone
through" was only too often such as to make every one look upon the
whole matter as one which only concerned the clergy.