The Authoritative Life of General William Booth | Page 8

life were all in opposition to this
whole-hearted devotion. No one at first took me by the hand and urged
me forward, or gave me any instruction or hint likely to help me in the
difficulties I had at once to encounter in my consecration to this
service."
This clear experience and teaching of an absolutely new life, that
"eternal life" which Jesus Christ promises to all His true followers, is
indispensable to the right understanding of everything in connexion
with the career we are recording. Without such an experience nothing
of what follows could have been possible. With it the continual
resistance to every contrary teaching and influence, and the strenuous
struggle by all possible means to propagate it are inevitable.
One is amazed at this time of day, to find intelligent men writing as

though there were some mysticism, or something quite beyond ordinary
understanding, in this theory of conversion, or regeneration.
Precisely the process which The General thus describes in his own case
must of necessity follow any thoughtful and prayerful consideration of
the mission and Gospel of Christ. Either we must reject the whole Bible
story or we must admit that "all we like sheep have gone astray," taking
our own course, in contempt of God's wishes. To be convinced of that
must plunge any soul into just such a depth of sorrow and anxiety as
left this lad no rest until he had found peace in submission to his God.
No outside influences or appearances can either produce or be
substituted for the deep, inward resolve of the wandering soul, "I will
arise, and go to my Father." Whether that decision be come to in some
crowded Meeting, or in the loneliness of some midnight hour is quite
unimportant. But how can there be true repentance, or the beginning of
reconciliation with God, until that point is reached?
And whenever that returning to God takes place, there is the same
abundant pardon, the same change of heart, the same new birth, which
has here been described. What can be more simple and matter of fact?
Take away the need and possibility of such "conversion," and this
whole life becomes a delusion, and the proclamation of Jesus Christ as
a Saviour of men inexcusable. What has created any mystery around
the question amongst Christians, if not the sacramental theory, which
more or less contradicts it all? In almost all Christian Churches a theory
is set up that a baby by some ceremonial act becomes suddenly
regenerated, "made a child of God, and an heir of His Kingdom."
If that were the case, there could, of course, have been no need for the
later regeneration of that child; but I do not believe that an ecclesiastic
could be found, from the Vatican to the most remote island-parish
where children are "christened," who would profess to have seen such a
regenerated child alive. There is notoriously no such change
accomplished in any one, until the individual himself, convinced of his
own godless condition, cries to God for His Salvation, and receives that
great gift.
What a foundation for life was the certainty which that lad got as he
knelt in that little room in Nottingham! Into that same "full assurance"
he was later on to lead many millions--young and old--of many lands.
The simple Army verse:--

I know thy sins are all forgiven, Glory to the Bleeding Lamb! And I am
on my way to Heaven, Glory to the Bleeding Lamb!
embalms for ever that grand starting-point of the soul, from which our
people have been able, in ignorance of almost everything else of Divine
truth, to commence a career of holy living, and of loving effort for the
souls of others.
How much more weight those few words carry than the most eloquent
address bereft of that certainty of tone could ever have!
That certainty which rests not upon any study of books, even of the
Bible itself, but upon the soul's own believing vision of the Lamb of
God who has taken its sins away; that certainty which changes in a
moment the prison darkness of the sin-chained into the light and joy
and power of the liberated slave of Christ; that is the great conquest of
the Salvation Soldier everywhere.
And yet, perhaps, in the eyes of an unbelieving world, and a doubting
Church, that was General Booth's great offence all through life. To
think of having uneducated and formerly godless people "bawling" the
"mysteries of the faith" through the streets of "Christian" cities, where
it had hitherto been thought inconsistent with Christian humility for any
one to dare to say they really knew Him "whom to know is life eternal"!
Oh, that was the root objection to all The General's preaching and
action.
And it was