Chapter III: Lay Ministry

Convictions such as we have just been reading of were bound to lead to immediate action. But it is most interesting to find that William Booth's first regular service for Christ was not called forth by any church, but simply by the spontaneous efforts of one or two young Converts like himself. No one could be more inclined towards the use of organisation and system than he always was, and yet he always advocated an organisation so open to all, and a system so elastic, that zeal might never be repressed, but only made the most of. It is, perhaps, fortunate that we have in one of his addresses to his own young Officers the following description of the way he began to work for the Salvation of his fellow-townsmen:--

"Directly after my conversion I had a bad attack of fever, and was
brought to the very edge of the grave. But God raised me up, and
led me out to work for Him, after a fashion which, considering my
youth and inexperience, must be pronounced remarkable. While
recovering from this illness, which left me far from strong, I
received a note from a companion, Will Sansom, asking me to make
haste and get well again, and help him in a Mission he had started
in a slum part of the town. No sooner was I able to get about than
I gladly joined him.

"The Meetings we held were very remarkable for those days. We used
to take out a chair into the street, and one of us mounting it
would give out a hymn, which we then sang with the help of, at the
most, three or four people. Then I would talk to the people, and
invite them to come with us to a Meeting in one of the houses.

"How I worked in those days! Remember that I was only an apprentice
lad of fifteen or sixteen. I used to leave business at 7 o'clock,
or soon after, and go visiting the sick, then these street
Meetings, and afterwards to some Meeting in a cottage, where we
would often get some one saved. After the Meeting I would often go
to see some dying person, arriving home about midnight to rest all
I could before rising next morning in time to reach my place of
business at 7 A.M. That was sharp exercise! How I can remember
rushing along the streets during my forty minutes' dinner-time,
reading the Bible or C. G. Finney's _Lectures on Revivals of
Religion_ as I went, careful, too, not to be a minute late. And at
this time I was far from strong physically; but full of
difficulties as those days were, they were nevertheless wonderful
seasons of blessing, and left pleasant memories that endure to this
hour.

"The leading men of the church to which I belonged were afraid I
was going too fast, and gave me plenty of cautions, quaking and
fearing at my every new departure; but none gave me a word of
encouragement. And yet the Society of which for those six
apprentice years I was a faithful member, was literally my heaven
on earth. Truly, I thought then there was one God, that John Wesley
was His prophet, and that the Methodists were His special people.
The church was at the time, I believe, one thousand members strong.
Much as I loved them, however, I mingled but little with them, and
had time for but few of their great gatherings, having chosen the
Meadow Platts as my parish, because my heart then as now went out
after the poorest of the poor.

"Thus my conversion made me, in a moment, a preacher of the Gospel.
The idea never dawned on me that any line was to be drawn between
one who had nothing else to do but preach and a saved apprentice
lad who only wanted 'to spread through all the earth abroad,' as we
used to sing, the fame of our Saviour. I have lived, thank God, to
witness the separation between layman and cleric become more and
more obscured, and to see Jesus Christ's idea of changing in a
moment ignorant fishermen into fishers of men nearer and nearer
realisation.

"But I had to battle for ten of the best years of my youth against
the barriers the Churches set up to prevent this natural following
of the Lamb wherever He leads. At that time they all but compelled
those who wished to minister to the souls of men to speak in
unnatural language and tones, and adopt habits of mind and life
which so completely separated them from the crowd as to make them
into a sort of princely caste, whom the masses of every clime
outwardly reverenced and inwardly despised.

"Lad though I was, a group of new Converts and other earnest souls
soon gathered around me, and greater things seemed to be ahead when
a great trial overtook me. The bosom friend already referred to was
taken from my side. We had been like David and Jonathan in the
intensity of our union and fellowship in our work for God. He had a
fine appearance, was a beautiful singer, and possessed a wonderful
gift in prayer. After I had spoken in our Open-Air Meeting he would
kneel down and wrestle with God until it seemed as though he would
move the very stones on which he knelt, as well as the hearts of
the people who heard him. Of how few of those men called ministers
or priests can anything like this be said!

"But the unexpected blow came. He fell into consumption. His
relations carried him up and down the country for change of air and
scene. All was done that could be done to save his life, but in
vain. The last change was to the Isle of Wight. In that lovely spot
the final hope fled. I remember their bringing him home to die. He
bade farewell to earth, and went triumphantly to Heaven singing--

And when to Jordan's flood I come,
Jehovah rules the tide,
And the waters He'll divide,
And the heavenly host will shout--
"Welcome Home!"

"What a trial that loss was to my young heart! It was rendered all
the greater from the fact that I had to go forward all alone in
face of an opposition which suddenly sprang up from the leading
functionaries of the church."

The consecration which William Booth made of himself to this work, with all the zeal and novelty with which it was characterised, was due, no doubt, to the teaching, influence, and example of James Caughey, a remarkable American minister who visited the town. Largely free from European opinions and customs in religious matters, and seeking only to advance the cause of Jesus Christ with all possible speed, this man to a very large extent liberated William Booth for life from any one set of plans, and led him towards that perfect faith in God's guidance which made him capable of new departures to any extent.

The old-fashioned representatives of officialdom grumbled in vain at novelties which have now become accepted necessities of all mission work.

"But just about this time," The General has told us, "another
difficulty started across my path in connexion with my business. I
have told you how intense had been the action of my conscience
before my conversion. But after my conversion it was naturally ever
increasingly sensitive to every question of right and wrong, with a
great preponderance as to the importance of what was right over
what was wrong. Ever since that day it has led me to measure my own
actions, and judge my own character by the standard of truth set up
in my soul by the Bible and the Holy Ghost; and it has not
permitted me to allow myself in the doing of things which I have
felt were wrong without great inward torture. I have always had a
great horror of hypocrisy--that is, of being unreal or false,
however fashionable the cursed thing might be, or whatever worldly
temptation might strive to lead me on to the track. In this I was
tested again and again in those early days, and at last there came
a crisis.

"Our business was a large one and the assistants were none too
many. On Saturdays there was always great pressure. Work often
continued into the early hours of Sunday. Now I had strong notions
in my youth and for long after--indeed, I entertain them now--about
the great importance of keeping the Sunday, or Sabbath as we always
called it, clear of unnecessary work.

"For instance, I walked in my young days thousands of miles on the
Sabbath, when I could for a trifling sum have ridden at ease,
rather than use any compulsory labour of man or beast for the
promotion of my comfort. I still think we ought to abstain from all
unnecessary work ourselves, and, as far as possible, arrange for
everybody about us to have one day's rest in seven. But, as I was
saying, I objected to working at my business on the Sabbath, which
I interpreted to mean after twelve o'clock on Saturday night. My
relatives and many of my religious friends laughed at my scruples;
but I paid no heed to them, and told my master I would not do it,
though he replied that if that were so he would simply discharge
me. I told him I was willing to begin on Monday morning as soon as
the clock struck twelve, and work until the clock struck twelve on
Saturday night, but that not one hour or one minute of Sunday would
I work for him or all his money.

"He kept his word, put me into the street, and I was laughed at by
everybody as a sort of fool. But I held out, and within seven days
he gave in, and, thinking my scrupulous conscience might serve his
turn he told me to come back again. I did so, and before another
fortnight had passed he went off with his young wife to Paris,
leaving the responsibilities of a business involving the income and
expenditure of hundreds of pounds weekly on my young shoulders.

"So I did not lose by that transaction in any way. With no little
suffering on four separate occasions, contrary to the judgments of
all around me, I have thus left every friend I had in the world,
and gone straight into what appeared positive ruin, so far as this
world was concerned, to meet the demands of conscience. But I have
trusted God, and done the right, and in every separate instance I
can now see that I have gained both for this world and the next as
the result.

"During all the period of my lay preaching, both in Nottingham and
London, I had to grapple with other difficulties. What with one
thing and another I had a great struggle at times to keep my head
above the waters, and my heart alive with peace and love. But I
held on to God and His grace, and the never-failing joy that I
experienced in leading souls to Christ carried me through."

How can anybody fail to see how much more the masses are likely to be influenced by the preaching, no matter how defective oratorically, of one who has thus lived in the midst of them--living, in fact, their very life of anxiety, suffering, and toil--than by that of men, however excellent, who come to them with the atmosphere of the study, the college, or the seminary?

And yet, after having been trained for a year in the rough-and-ready oratory of the streets, subject to interruptions and interjected sneers, The General was called upon, in order to be recognised as fit for registration as a lay preacher, to mount the pulpit and preach a "trial sermon"! Accustomed as he had become to talk out his heart with such words and illustrations as involuntarily presented themselves to the simple-minded, though often wicked and always ignorant crowds, who gathered around the chair on which he stood; able without difficulty to hold their attention when he had won it, and drive the truth home to their souls, in spite of the counter-attractions of a busy thoroughfare, he took very hardly to the stiff, cold process of sermonising and sermon-making such as was then in vogue, and it was some time before he had much liberty or made much progress in the business.

Still, in due time he was passed, first as a lay "preacher on trial," and later called as fully qualified to preach at any chapel in the district--this latter after a second year's activities and a "second trial sermon."

When he once got on to this sermon-making line he took the best models he could find--men like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and, above all, C. G. Finney, who he could be certain had never sought in their preaching for human applause, but for the glory of God and the good of souls alone.

In the Psalms, as in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, we have the most unmistakable guidance upon this subject, showing it to have been God's purpose so to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh that all His people should be true prophets--not all, of course, of the same calibre or style, but all capable of warning and teaching, in all wisdom, every one whom they could reach.

The work of the ministry is another thing altogether. Let no one suppose that The Salvation Army at all underrates the "separation" unto His work of those whom God has chosen for entire devotion to some task, whatever it be. As to those whom we take away from their secular calling to become our Officers, I will only say here that we judge of their fitness not alone by their ability to speak, but by their having proved themselves to be so devoted to the poor that we can rely upon their readiness to act as servants of the very neediest in any way that lies within their power. Only two persons at each of our Stations, the Officers actually in command, receive any payment whatever from The Army. All the others associated with us, many of them wearing our uniform and holding some particular office, give freely their leisure-time and money to the work, and may be spoken of as "lay preachers."

Our young "local preacher" generally spent his Sundays in some distant village where he had been appointed to preach, just as is the case in these days with thousands of our Soldiers.

"My homeward walk, often alone through the dark, muddy fields and
lanes," he tells us, "would be enlivened by snatches of the songs
we had been singing in our Meetings, and late into the night people
might have heard my solitary prayers and praises. 'Don't sit up
singing till twelve o'clock after a hard day's work,' was one of
the first needed pieces of practical advice I got from my best
adviser of later years."

"But we never felt we could have too much of God's service and
praise, and scarcely regarded the grave itself as a terminus for
our usefulness; for in the case of a girl who had attended our
Cottage Meetings, and who had died of consumption, we lads
organised something very like one of our present-day Salvation Army
Funerals.

"Having ministered to the poor girl's necessities during her
sickness, comforted her in her last hours of pain, sung hymns of
triumph round her bed as her spirit took its passage to the skies,
we had the right, as her only friends, to order her funeral, and we
resolved to make the most of it for the good of her neighbours.

"Although it was in the depth of winter, and snow lay thick on the
ground, we brought the coffin out into the street, sang and prayed
around it, and urged the few neighbours who stood shivering by, or
listening at their doors and windows, to prepare for their dying
day. We then processioned to the Cholera Burial Ground, as the
cemetery in which the poorest of Nottingham were buried was called,
obtaining permission from the Chaplain to hold another little
Meeting by the grave-side, after he had read the ordinary Service.
I cannot but feel that the hand of God was upon me in those days,
teaching me how much lay preachers could do."

How wonderful that the lad who did all that in the teeth of religious convention and opinion should have lived to organise just such battles and just such funerals all round the world, and to train hundreds of thousands of Soldiers of Christ to do likewise! What a termination to his own career he was preparing all the time, when the City of London was to suspend the traffic of many of its busiest thoroughfares for hours to let his coffin pass through with a procession of his uniformed Soldiers a mile long!

With regard to the question of a "Call to the ministry," that bugbear of so many souls, The General constantly expressed himself as follows:--

"How can anybody with spiritual eyesight talk of having no call,
when there are such multitudes around them who never hear a word
about God, and never intend to; who can never hear, indeed, without
the sort of preacher who will force himself upon them? Can a man
keep right in his own soul, who can see all that, and yet stand
waiting for a 'call' to preach? Would they wait so for a 'call' to
help any one to escape from a burning building, or to snatch a
sinking child from a watery grave?

"Does not growth in grace, or even ordinary growth of intelligence,
necessarily bring with it that deepened sense of eternal truths
which must intensify the conviction of duty to the perishing world?

"Does not an unselfish love, the love that goes out towards the
unloving, demand of a truly loving soul immediate action for the
Salvation of the unloved?"

"And, are there not persons who know that they possess special
gifts, such as robust health, natural eloquence or power of voice,
which specially make them responsible for doing something for
souls?

"And yet I do not at all forget, that above and beyond all these
things, there does come to some a special and direct call, which it
is peculiarly fatal to disregard, and peculiarly strengthening to
enjoy and act upon.

"I believe that there have been many eminently holy and useful men
who never had such a call; but that does not at all prevent any one
from asking God for it, or blessing Him for His special kindness
when He gives it."

There is, I think, no doubt that God did give to young William Booth such a call, although he never spoke of it, perhaps lest he might discourage any who, without enjoying any such manifestation, acted upon the principles just referred to. At any rate, he battled through any season of doubt he had with regard to it, and came out into a certainty that left him no room for question or fear.