Chapter VI: Revivalism

Not many days passed after William Booth's retirement from the ministry of the Methodist New Connexion before his faith was rewarded by a warm invitation to a small place at the other end of the country. One of his former Converts was a minister in the little seaport Hayle, in Cornwall, and he sent the call, "Come over and help us."

The Church had got into the stagnant condition which is so commonly experienced wherever contentment with routine long holds sway. Mr. and Mrs. Booth were not only welcomed, but given a free hand to take any course they pleased to fill the building with hearers, and to secure their Salvation.

Fighting now together, as they had learnt to do at Gateshead, they saw results more rapid and striking than they had ever known before, although they found themselves face to face with a population more disinclined for novelty, and especially for the novelties they introduced, than any they had before had to deal with. The General thus described at the time for the Connexional Magazine some of his first battles in Cornwall:--

"Hayle, Cornwall.

"When in London, you requested me to send now and then a report of
the Lord's working in connexion with my ministry, and thinking that
the following account of the Revival now in progress here will be
interesting to you, I forward it. We arrived here on the 10th
inst., and commenced labour on the following Sabbath. The chapel
was crowded. Gracious influences accompanied the word. Many
appeared to be deeply convicted of sin, but no decided cases of
conversion took place that day. On Monday afternoon we had a
service for Christians, and spoke on the hindrances to Christian
labour and Christian joy. Evening, chapel crowded. Very solemn
season. Nearly all the congregation stayed to the Prayer Meeting
that followed, and many appeared deeply affected, but refused to
seek the mercy of God. A strong prejudice prevails here against the
custom of inviting anxious inquirers to any particular part of the
building. The friends told me that this plan never had succeeded in
Cornwall; but I thought it the best, considering the crowded state
of the chapel, and therefore determined to try it. I gave a short
address, and again invited those who wished to decide for Christ to
come forward. After waiting a minute or two, the solemn silence was
broken by the cries of a woman who at once left her pew, and fell
down at the Mercy-Seat, and became the first-fruits of what I trust
will be a glorious harvest of immortal souls. She was quickly
followed by others, when a scene ensued beyond description. The
cries and groans were piercing in the extreme; and when the
stricken spirits apprehended Jesus as their Saviour, the shouts of
praise and thanksgiving were in proportion to the previous sorrow.

"Tuesday Evening.--Congregation again large. Prayer Meeting similar
to Monday night, and some very blessed cases of conversion.

"Wednesday.--Chapel full. Mrs. Booth spoke with much influence and
power. Glorious Prayer Meeting. An old woman who found the Saviour
jumped on her feet, and shouted, with her face beaming with
heavenly radiance, 'He's saved me! Glory to God! He's saved me, an
old sinner, sixty-three. Glory to God!' Other cases of great
interest transpired, and the people, with swimming eyes, and
glowing hearts, sang--

"'Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.'

"Thursday.--Preached from 'Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise
cast out.' Had a blessed Meeting. A woman who had herself found
Jesus during the week, pointed me to her husband. Found him fully
enlightened and deeply convicted. I urged him to immediate decision
and the full surrender of himself to God. He came out, and fell
down among the Penitents. He remained there about an hour. The
Meeting could not be concluded until near eleven o'clock, and many
were very reluctant to retire even then.

"Friday.--The first thing this morning my host informed me that he
had just heard of a mason who had been at the services every night,
and who had resolved to stop work until he found the Lord. Soon
after a young lady came in to tell us of a woman who had found
peace during the night. At the family altar this morning, a woman
in the employ of the gentleman with whom we are staying commenced
to bemoan her sinful condition and to cry for mercy. I asked her to
remain, and pointed her to Jesus, and she soon found rest through
believing. In the afternoon, met several anxious persons for prayer
and conversation. In the evening we had announced a public Prayer
Meeting. Before we reached the chapel we could hear the cries and
prayers of those already assembled. On entering, we found a strong
man praising God at the top of his voice for hearing his prayer and
pardoning his sins. It was the mason. He had been under deep
concern for three days; had not slept at all the night before, but
after a day's agony, he had found Jesus; and such tumultuous,
rapturous joy I think I never witnessed. Again and again, during
the evening, he broke out with a voice that drowned all others, and
rose above our songs of praise ascribing glory to Jesus for what He
had done for his soul. There were many other cases of almost equal
interest. The Meeting was not closed until eleven.

"About midnight, the Rev. J. Shone, the minister in charge of the
church, was called out to visit a woman who was in great distress.
He afterwards described her agony in seeking, and her joy in
finding, the Lord, together with the sympathy and exultation of her
friends with her, as one of the most thrilling scenes he ever
witnessed."

In a later report The General wrote:--

"Hayle, Cornwall.

"The work of the Lord here goes on gloriously. The services have
progressed with increasing power and success, and now the whole
neighbourhood is moved. Conversion is the topic of conversation in
all sorts of society. Every night, crowds are unable to gain
admission to the sanctuary. The oldest man in the church cannot
remember any religious movement of equal power. During the second
week, the Wesleyans opened a large room for united Prayer Meetings
at noon; since then, by their invitation, we have on several
occasions spoken in their chapels to densely crowded audiences;
services being simultaneously conducted in the chapel where the
movement originally commenced. One remarkable and gratifying
feature of the work is the large number of men who are found every
night amongst those who are anxious. Never have I seen so many men
at the same time smiting their breasts, and crying, 'God be
merciful to me a sinner,' Strong men, old men, young men, weeping
like children, broken-hearted on account of their sins. A number of
these are sailors, and scarcely a ship has gone out of this port
the last few days without taking among its crew one or more souls
newly-born for Heaven."

Can it be believed that just such victories as these led to the closing of almost all the Churches against him?

"In these days," The General has more recently written, "it has
become almost the fashion for the Churches to hold yearly 'revival'
or 'special' services, but forty years ago they were as unanimously
opposed to anything of the kind, and compelled me to gain outside
every Church organisation the one liberty I desired--to seek and
save the lost ones, who never enter any place of worship whatever.

"Let nobody suppose that I cherish any resentment against any of
the Churches on account of their former treatment of me, or that I
have a desire to throw a stone at any of them. From any such
feelings I believe that God has most mercifully preserved me all my
life, and I rejoice in the kindness on this account with which they
load me now in every land, as testimonies to that fact.

"But I want to make it clear to readers in lands far away from
Christendom why I was driven into the formation of an Organisation
entirely outside every Christian Church in order to accomplish my
object, and why my people everywhere, whilst having no more desire
than myself to come into dispute, or even discussion, with any
Church near them, must needs act as independently of them all as I
have done, no matter how friendly they may now be to us.

"Nothing could be more charming than the present attitude towards
us of every religious community in the United States, from the
Roman Catholics, whose Archbishop has publicly commended us, to the
Mormons, who are generally regarded as enemies of all Christianity,
and the Friends (commonly called Quakers) whose ideas of worship
seem to be at the uttermost extreme from ours. All are satisfied
that I and my people are not wishful to find fault with any
religious body whatever, but to spend all our time and energy in
combating the great evils of godlessness and selfishness which
threaten to sweep away all the people everywhere from any thought
above material things.

"Yet we have had to forbid our people to accept too often the
pressing invitations that pour upon them from all sides to hold
Meetings in Church buildings, lest they should lose touch with the
masses outside, and begin to be content with audiences of admirers.

"The thirty-six years of my life whilst I was groping about in vain
for a home and fellowship amongst Churches gave me to understand,
as only experience can, what are the thoughts and feelings of the
millions in Christian lands, who not only never enter a church, but
who feel it to be inconceivable that they ever should do so.

"If this experience has been invaluable to us in Christian lands,
how much more so is it in the far vaster countries of Asia and
Africa, where our work is only as yet in its beginnings. When I
went to Japan, the entire missionary community everywhere united to
uphold me as the exemplar of true Christlike action for the good of
all men. But the leaders of all the five sects of Buddhism were no
less unanimous in their welcome to me, or in their expressions of
prayerful desire for the success of my work.

"In India and Africa I have repeatedly seen supporting me in my
indoor and outdoor demonstrations the leaders of the Hindu, Parsee,
Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish, and Mohammedan communities, who had never
met with the Christians in so friendly a way before. I cannot think
this would have been the case had I ever become settled amongst any
Christian body in this country.

"Can any one wonder then that I see in all the unpleasant
experiences of my early days the hand of God Himself, leading me by
a way that I knew not--that I could scarcely believe indeed at the
time to be His way. Why should it have been so difficult for a man,
who only wished to lead the lost ones to the great Shepherd who
seeks them all to get or to remain within any existing fold, if it
was not that there lay before me and my Soldiers conquests
infinitely greater and more important than had ever yet been made?

"Oh, with what impatience I turn from the very thought of any of
the squabbles of Christian sects when I see all around me the
millions who want to avoid any thought of their great Friend and
Father, and of the coming Judge before whom we must all, perhaps
this very day, appear."

How easily excuses, which sound most plausible, are found for every sort of negligence in the service of God--indeed, for not serving Him at all!

"It is not my way, you see," says some one, who does not like to make any open profession of interest in Jesus Christ, as though our own preferences or opinions were to be the governing consideration in all that affects the interests of "our Lord"!

The General has proved that the old ideas connected with "the Master" can not only be revived but acted up to in our day, and the sense of shame for idle excuses drive out all the paltry pleas set up for indifference to the general ruin.

"At this season, nothing can be done" is as coolly pleaded to-day as if "in season, out of season" had never been written in our Divine Order-Book.

How often our forces in the midst of fairs, and race-days, and "slack times," have demonstrated that real soldiers of Christ can snatch victory, just when all around seems to ensure their defeat!

When The General began to form his Army, it was ordinarily assumed as a settled principle that Open-Air Work could only be done in fine weather, and the theory is still existent in many quarters. As if the comfort and convenience of "the workers," and not the danger and misery of the people, were to fix the times of such effort!

"But the people will not come," is even now pleaded as an excuse for the omission or abandonment of any imaginable attempt to do good. As if the people's general disinclination for anything that has to do with God were not the precise reason for His wish to "send out" His servants!

"Such a plan would never succeed here," is an almost invariable excuse made for not undertaking anything new. The General was never blind to differences between this and that locality and population. But he insisted that no plan that could be devised by those on any given spot, and especially no plan that has manifestly been blessed and used by God elsewhere should be dismissed without proper, earnest trial.

"But that has never been done, or has never done well here," seemed to him rather a reason for trying it with, perhaps, some little modification than for leaving a plan untried. The inexorable law to which he insisted that everything should bend was that nothing can excuse inactivity and want of enterprise where souls are perishing. And he was spared to see even Governments beginning to recognise that it is inexcusable to let sin triumph in "a Christian country." He proved that it was possible to raise up "Christian Soldiers," who would not only sing, or hear singing, in beautiful melody about "Marching, onward as to War"; but who would really do it, even when, it led to real battle.