Chapter VI: Part 6

Genius is never easy to understand. Its weakness is often related to its strength. It has what the French call the defects of its qualities. A great part of the Marechale's power certainly lay in her childlike humility. As a soul-winner she never gave the impression of condescending. She did not need to stoop; by nature and by grace she was meek and lowly in heart. What drew multitudes of poor sinners to her was their assurance that she would hear with human sympathy their tales of sin and sorrow. At one of her midnight suppers a French lady said to her, "I have been here all these years trying to bring these poor girls together. How is it that you succeed where I fail, in getting them to open their hearts to you?"

"Perhaps," said the Marechale, "it is because I do not make them feel that there is a difference between them and me."

With her humility there was bound up a certain measure of self-distrust. In her, as in her father, whom she resembled so strongly in spirit as well as in features, there was an extraordinary combination of confidence and diffidence. It used to be said by those who knew the General most intimately that, while he commanded an Army, he was apologetic to his cook. And if the Marechale had a splendid moral courage, as her manner of dealing with hostile crowds abundantly proved, she had also a womanly timidity in which there lay a certain subtle danger. So long as she had faith in her God-given instincts, and in the individual guidance of the Holy Spirit, she was unconquerable, but if anything undermined them her power was for the time being paralysed. For the criticisms of the world she cared little or nothing, but the real love and understanding of her comrades was as the breath of life to her. From them she was always eager to learn, and sometimes she let the judgment of others obscure her spiritual and womanly intuitions.

She would sit at the feet of this or that teacher who spoke with an air of wisdom and authority, when in nine cases out of ten the relation of teacher and taught ought to have been reversed. As a rule, her instincts made her a swift and unerring discerner of spirits, but there were exceptional cases in which it almost seemed disloyalty to "try the spirits whether they are of God." One of her life-long friends, Mr. W. T. Stead, who went down on the ill-fated _Titanic_, knew both sides of her character--her lion-like boldness as well as her dove-like gentleness. He used to relate how she one day invaded the office of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and summoned him with all the categorical imperiousness of her nature and her mission to quit politics and edit the _War Cry_. Yet he used to say to her, with a seriousness that was not altogether assumed, "You are damned by your humility!"

It is well known that the Marechale's husband was for a time a believer in Dr. Dowie, the Scotsman who founded Zion City beside Chicago. Finding that certain doctrines such as Faith Healing, the Second Advent, the Rapture of the Saints, which were to him, as to thousands of others, of vital importance,--were being faithfully preached by one who claimed to be the second Elijah, the Forerunner of Christ, Mr. Booth-Clibborn became a member of the Christian Catholic Church. Having been a Quaker minister before his twenty years of faithful service in the Salvation Army, he also cherished the hope of perfecting Zionism by adding to it his own peace principles.

The Marechale could not accept Dr. Dowie's claims, but in her intense desire for family unity she consented to go with her husband to see Zion City, taking her two eldest daughters, Evangeline and Victoria, then fourteen and thirteen years of age, and baby Josephine, who was but four months old, with her. They remained there four months, July to October, 1902.

The diary and letters which she wrote during that visit are psychologically and Spiritually among the most interesting human documents I have ever seen, and sufficiently indicate her attitude of mind at this time. But let us draw a veil, except for one or two incidents and extracts, over the dark anguish of soul, the torture of uncertainty, and the depths of despair which she then passed through.

She implored Dr. Dowie to take her husband and ordain him without her, but he emphatically refused to do so.

The following paragraph, taken from her diary, shows in what a painful predicament she found herself. Speaking of a friendly adviser, she says: "He said, as I was the wife, the responsibility was on my husband, and I must stand by him, even if he was in error, and God would forgive me if it was a mistake." I felt so much taken aback by the way he looked at the matter that I turned the key of my heart.

To one of her dearest friends she wrote a long letter, which was a cry out of the depths: "I am not easily given to discouragement or despair, but my position must make angels weep, if they can weep. I cannot bring myself to accept Dowie, so much in him violates the highest spiritual instincts I have.... The forcing of me outwardly does not convince me. I have yielded all along the line, and now here I am ... but I am not in despair. I have been. It seems to me as if God, who has seen the long agony, will himself open the door. I cannot go further in this direction.... I feel a fear over everything. I never was so unutterably unhappy in my life, never. Oh, will you not help me?"

One day the prophet was attacking some noted evangelists of the day. Presently he began to fulminate against the Salvation Army, and accused the General of failing to reprove the sins of the rich. The Marechale leapt to her feet, and facing the prophet with outstretched finger and flashing eye, an image of outraged justice, exclaimed, "That is an untruth! No man has been more faithful in reproving the rich than my father and it is cowardly of you to attack a man who is not here to defend himself." The prophet visibly quailed under the withering rebuke. It was the first time any one had withstood him to the face. With an hour of thundering oratory he tried to obliterate the impression made on the vast audience, but for once he was evidently checkmated.

At length Dr. Dowie, seeing he could not overcome the Marechale's opposition, and that her unwilling presence in the city was a disturbing factor among his people, requested her and her husband to withdraw. Mr. Booth-Clibborn, of whose absolute sincerity there can be no doubt, was keenly disappointed at having to turn his back upon Zion, which had become to him, as the Salvation Army in its early days a cause to live for, and if need be to die for.

The strain on the Marechale had been so great that when she arrived in England she was utterly prostrated. Two dear old cousins of her husband's, the Misses Susan and Esther Bell, in Eastbourne, nursed her back to life. Then came two dark, silent years in Brussels. The Marechale looked for a friend and found none. All the world believed that she had "joined Zion." The French papers announced that she had burned (_brule_) the principles for which she had once fought. Her daughter Victoria, who was with her in those years of lonely sorrow, writes: "Gradually her strength left her. She suffered dumbly, vainly hoping for some deliverance. Was this the Marechale who had led her army to battle and faced the howling mob with a smile on her face? Her sorrow had crushed and sapped her courage which the storm of persecution only served to quicken."

Her children had starvation staring them in the face; another terrible illness, brought on by household care, laid her low; her spirit was exhausted by the torturing strain of years; and she could hold out no longer. In a "blind faith, without conviction," she was received into Zion Church. Broken on the wheel of life, stretched too long upon the rack of this tough world, she accepted--like Savonarola and Galileo, like Cranmer and Jeanne d'Arc--an alien creed, without her reason being convinced or her heart won.

But--again like those--not for long. Her deliverance came in a startling fashion. Soon after her removal with her family to Paris, her husband began to suffer from the effects of a neglected influenza which settled in his knee. True to his principles, he refused to see a doctor. When he was at the brink of death, the Marechale brought in a physician in the guise of a friend. The sick man's case was at first pronounced to be hopeless, but three of the finest surgeons of Paris were hastily summoned, performed four operations, and saved his life, leaving him, however, crippled for the rest of his days.

The dismissal of Mr. Booth-Clibborn followed as a matter of course. He had violated the strictest laws of Zion by accepting the aid of surgery. Two of his own converts, now followers of Dr. Dowie, invaded the sick room, and handed him the fateful document. Some time afterward he wrote: "Dowie was a good man at one time. So was the devil. Dowie fell through the same sin--Pride." In addition to a statement which was published in four countries, he has recently borne the following conclusive testimony: "The Marechale would never have had anything to do with Dr. Dowie but for me. When she came near him it was on every occasion unwillingly. She suffered unutterable anguish, pain and grief, from the fact that from the first all her instincts, as well as the consciousness of her true religious interest, were against Dr. Dowie's spiritual personality, his ways, his claims, his style of government. If, in a kind of despair, she went with me into it, though she was in it she was not of it. It was never sought, it was endured. The only comfort in the enduring was the possibility of doing a little good meanwhile to people in it, and of ultimately helping in the opening of my eyes."

*CHAPTER XV*

*SURSUM CORDA!*

All the Marechale's hearers remember her penetrating gaze. No one ever encountered her eyes and saw them shift. Thousands have felt as if she were looking through all disguises into their very souls, and her tapering index finger has often made the bravest quail. "All through the night," wrote a convicted sinner, "I saw her finger pointing straight at me." And one feels certain that her look was never more direct, never more searching, than when it was turned inward. She has always had a passion for seeing things as they are, especially the things of the spirit.

We are not surprised, therefore, at her often repeated words: "This experience has taught me the folly of violating God-given instinct, and allowing the inner light of God's Holy Spirit to be darkened by man. When I compare myself with what I was in the past, in many respects it seems as if that person was dead!"

Drawn by the cords of love, held by ties too sacred to be broken, worn by years of poverty and sickness, and moving at last in a kind of trance, more dead than alive, one of God's truest and bravest servants blindly stumbled on till she found herself, for a time of agony, in a spiritual prison-house from which there seemed to be no escape.

Her greatest danger lay in a kind of fatalistic submission, which would have meant permanent disloyalty to her own ideals and convictions, as well as the abandonment of her vocation. She read the letters of Pere Didon, whose heroic acceptance of his destiny influenced her in the direction of sinking her individuality. And one cannot understand the exquisite torture of her position unless one realises that her mind had often been made an arena of conflict between the apparently irreconcilable claims of the domestic and the apostolic life. And yet, Father Hyacinth once said to her in Paris, "You are the only woman I have ever met who has reconciled the vocation of a mother with that of an apostle." It may be appropriate to say here that the prayers of both father and mother have been answered in the conversion of their ten children, who have of their own free will consecrated themselves to the service of Christ. Four sons and three daughters are already engaged in active evangelistic work, and have been used of God for the conversion of many souls.

To bring the Marechale back to liberty, God used the voices of nature, of children and of friends.

She had always had a poet's sensitive ear for earth's thousand voices of praise, and, sitting in a garden on a spring morning, she wrote: "The past, whoever was right or wrong, shall be buried. Let the dead bury their dead. Leave it, and this beautiful spring-tide let us begin again. The crocuses and snowdrops in this lovely garden all say, 'New Resurrection life!'"

Her own children's voices called her back into the thick of the old spiritual battle. "Now for the children," she wrote; "they must all see some salvation work, and they will feel the glow of the heavenly fire. It will warm them, and say something far more than all the Bible lessons in the world." Her eldest daughters, at that time girls of sixteen and fifteen, but with a wisdom far beyond their years, literally pushed her into the war, and if ever she was unable to go they buckled on their armour and took her place. "Mother writes me," says Victoria in her journal, "that Evangeline held a beautiful meeting on Sunday because she herself was too ill to go. Poor mother, it is difficult for her to keep up her courage." This diarist of fifteen thus philosophises on the meaning of her mother's sorrow. "Everybody can understand why God lets people of the world, the infidels, the self-seekers, the indifferent, suffer. It is to bring them to Himself through disappointments in the world, in themselves, and in others. But why He allows His children that love Him, those whose greatest wish is to serve Him--why He allows them to suffer is a mystery. Perhaps it is to bring them into still closer communion with Himself, so that they may become one with Him--His, body, soul and spirit, without reserve."

The Marechale's friends helped to bring her back to her predestined work of soul-winning.

During a time of awful silence, in which she never received a call and rarely a letter, she had not courage to visit any of her old comrades in Paris. Once, in her great sorrow, she wanted to get away to some sympathising friend and open her heart. At first she could think of no one, but suddenly she remembered a humble working woman, and, taking the train to Paris, she wearily climbed to the fifth story of a house in the Villette, sat down in this woman's little room, and burst into a flood of tears. Her friend tried to comfort her and, not quite understanding this passionate grief, made her lie down in her own bed while she prepared for her a delicious little French meal.

Twenty years before, on a dark winter night, the Marechale was passing along the Seine embankment on the way to her place of meeting on the Quai de Valmy. She noticed a girl gazing at the dark, cold waters, and a voice told her that she was meditating suicide. Touching her arm she said--

"Don't look at those black, cruel waters. Come with me and have a nice cup of coffee. You seem to be in trouble."

The girl, whose face was dark and sullen, looked at her suspiciously, and did not speak. The Marechale gently pleaded with her to come and hear a lady sing.

"She sings beautifully, and you will find light and warmth and comfort, and you will have a good cup of coffee. Do come with me."

The girl at length consented and came. She heard the Marechale herself sing. She sat right through the service without opening her lips and with a hard look on her face. At the end the Marechale went down beside her, asked if she had enjoyed the meeting, and said a word to her about the goodness of God. At the mention of the name of God, the girl burst into passionate speech.

"God! Don't talk to me of God! I hate Him. What has He done for me? Why did He take my mother? He doesn't care for me. If He did He would not have let me be born in prison. What have I done to deserve such a life as this? It isn't my fault."

But, while the Marechale talked with her and prayed with her, the girl's heart was softened. She began to attend the meetings, and soon gave her heart to the Lord Jesus. Born in a prison, and saved from suicide in the Seine, she became in turn her rescuer's best comforter in an hour of supreme sorrow.

When the Marechale at length plucked up heart to revisit England, after a long absence and silence, her steps were directed to the home of a dear friend and kindred spirit in South London. It was in early girlhood that Mrs. Holman of Jerviston was first attracted to the Marechale. Her mother had, as Lady Mayoress, invited Miss Booth, before the work began in France, to address a drawing-room meeting in her house, and the indelible impressions made on a receptive mind on that day proved an inspiration to a lifetime of quiet and devoted service of Christ. But so timid and dejected had the Marechale become that she dreaded the reception that might await her even in the home of a lifelong friend! She trembled as she dragged herself across Streatham Common. She sat down on a seat and--her ruling passion strong as ever--spoke to a beggar about his soul, feeling a certain new kinship with all outcasts and pariahs. When she stood before her friend's door she scarcely had courage to ring the bell, and if she had been told to go to the kitchen and have a cup of tea with the servants, she would have answered quite simply, "Yes, I will go." But Mr. Holman himself opened the door, and his hearty welcome and the outflow of a perfect sympathy at once cast all her fears to the winds. Her friends were ministering angels to her. They nursed her back to health, dried her tears, and made her smile. Their little daughter--now one of the sweetest singers in London--carolled to her every morning and awoke "the hallelujah bird" again in her own breast. And God Himself was meanwhile doing for her what even the best of friends could not do--giving her the Resurrection Life, re-animating her hope, baptising her afresh with the Spirit, not of fear, but of power and of love, breaking all shackles and making her free--free from the ensnaring fear of man, free to obey the Divine call she had received even as a child--woman's Pentecostal call to prophesy for Christ, her one and only Master.

_Aller An fang ist schwer_, and the difficulties which the Marechale encountered at the resumption of her work were enough to make any but the stoutest heart faint. If she had in the past shown a bravery transcending that of even the bravest all this was of small account compared to the heroism now required of her. In the past she had the help of her own people, her spiritual children, and a strong organization back of her. Now she was utterly alone, thousands all over the world had an erroneous conception of the entire situation, and many even believed she had made shipwreck of her faith. Her daughter Victoria stands out during that lonely period of beginnings. With remarkably clear judgment, discernment and sympathy she cheered and inspired her mother with her own enthusiastic hopefulness and vivid faith.

The greatest service anyone could render the Marechale was to bid her go on, fulfil her destiny, believe that God would again mightily use and bless her. It might seem a small thing to say, "Be of good cheer," yet it was one of those "little nothings" for which she was ever afterwards profoundly grateful. I remember her coming one evening into my Chelsea study in a mood of depression, baffled by life's insoluble mysteries. Wondering what would lighten for her the burden and the weary weight, I took down Browning and began to read "Rabbi ben Ezra," which was new to her. From the opening words--

The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was planned--

to the magnificent close, that inspired _Sursum Corda_ thrilled her as a message direct from the great Heart of God. Only in one thing did she venture to differ from the poet. "He sees his heaven beyond," she said; "I want mine down here in the salvation of souls."

As soon as she resumed her work, she had her reward in signs following everywhere. Doors opened to her, first in England, then in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. She brought the breath of life into many churches, rekindled the zeal of many workers for Christ, and broke the chains which had bound multitudes of souls to an evil past.

Her own experience had given her, as a physician of souls, perhaps a deeper sympathy, a surer insight, a greater power to grapple with every form of evil than ever she had before. It became her mission to save people from themselves by convincing them that only one thing is entirely worth doing--living like Christ by letting Christ live in them. There are certainly few evangelists who have changed the whole current of so many lives in our country. Young ladies about to pass within convent walls have found a more excellent way by receiving the living Christ into their hearts. Actors and singers have consecrated their gifts to Christ and His kingdom. Young men of the world have heard the call of God and resolved to enter the ministry or go to the mission-field. God's gift of life has revealed to many questioning eyes its glorious possibilities. Multitudes who had no faith have heard another say that she has faith for them--a faith which has somehow dispelled the mists of doubt and error and brought them into the sunlight of Divine love.

At the same time her ever-deepening knowledge of her two books, the Bible and the Heart of Man, have made her a unique preacher to preachers. One night at Keswick, in the summer of 1907, a brilliant young Scottish minister, who was a member of a large house-party of clergymen attending the annual Convention, came home late for supper.

"Excuse me," he said, as he sat down, "but I could not tear myself away from the open-air meeting in the Square. I never heard such speaking in my life. I stood transfixed. The preacher was the daughter of General Booth, and I never knew the English language was such a magnificent weapon until to-night. Her preaching was extraordinary."

Next day, through Dr. Harry Guinness, who was her host, she was invited to address that house-party. Another preacher who was present has recorded his impressions. "After tea we all gathered our chairs in a circle round her as she opened up some sacred chapters in her life. Hour after hour sped. No one thought of moving to go to the Tent meetings. There we sat spellbound, through a long evening, feeling we had never come across such a being before. This was the first of many such meetings, to which as many outsiders were invited as the large drawing-room could hold. What evenings these were! Highland worthies sat gazing at her with open-mouthed wonder, held by her witchery, her strange tales from actual life, by her wisdom and pathos. Her voice, rich and sweet, sometimes fell to dreamy cadences, and sometimes rose to the bugling of a gale. It thrilled people and it melted them. Her eyes were wonderful. Sometimes they rested on one person in the audience with a soft and appealing look; then they gleamed and blazed with holy passion. Her long arms with their fine tapering fingers--how they helped to express her mind! But it was the face that was the great exponent, and as emotions played on her own mobile features she also touched the deep chords of every minister's heart. What struck us most was the access she won to the hearts of penitents. The mother-love in her was so deep and real that we all felt as if we, too, could give her our sacred confidences. A favourite word of hers was from St. Augustine, 'Love, and do as you like,' and every man in our company felt she was a living illustration of it. Her beautiful and choice language, simple, fresh, exquisitely fitting, and used with superb ease and mastery, was a constant amazement. She never attempted addresses or expositions, but her talks, for no other name would she apply, were now and again gemmed with texts which came as with a flash of diamonds, flaming."

Thus she revealed herself to men who know that the care of all cares is the "cure" of souls--_cura curarum cura animarum_. She warned them that the "apostolic life," the most Christ-like of all vocations, is only for those who are willing to "fill up that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ." Prayer and fasting, love and sacrifice, real asceticism combined with joyful enthusiasm are the conditions of success in the never-ending warfare with evil. The world will always be a broad field of battle. But the living Christ gives so much of His real presence that His service is liberty and His rewards are sure. No breath of human praise can compare with the fervent and life-long gratitude which souls rescued from the powers of darkness bear to their deliverer. Since the Marechale laid aside the French language---perhaps only for a time--and resumed her mother-tongue, she has received literally thousands of English letters from both continents testifying to blessings received through her ministry. I here give a few carefully selected extracts from these letters with a few words of introduction.

One Sunday morning, as the Marechale was about to address a large congregation, the minister whispered to her: "You see those two young ladies in black, if you can do anything with them, it would be a miracle."

In one of the after-meetings of the mission, the Marechale approached the elder of these ladies and ventured to speak with her, but intense reserve on her part made conversation impossible. A cloud of utter despair seemed to have settled on her spirit. The look in her eyes revealed sorrow too deep for words.

This is her story:

"At twelve o'clock one night I was returning home from business with my mother and only sister. I found the body of my father hanging in the corridor! I was so horrified that for a moment I could not move, then, recovering my presence of mind, I put out the lights and called my mother and sister to another door, just in time to prevent them seeing the sight. _But I can never forget it!_

"Then my mother's health broke down, and for four years I faithfully watched and cared for her.

"During this second painful trial I received the startling news that my dearest and only brother had met with a serious accident while driving his own automobile. On arriving at the hospital in all haste I was met with the words, 'Too late.' He was gone! The scene which followed is too terrible for me to speak of. We adored him! The effects of the shock hastened my mother's death. We said good-bye to her, and oh, the recollection of it haunts me still.

"After my mother's death my sister and I left the house of tragedy, broken down with sorrow and grief. These blows were beyond my powers of endurance. In vain did I seek some ray of comfort. Then I grew careless! Wine began to get a hold on me; and I sank into depths of despair, of which you only know. I really thought there was no God, and contemplated ending my own existence.

"Through it all the Lord was looking down in tender compassion and love. He sent you at this critical time in my sad career.

"When I look back on the past I can only praise God for what He has done for me, through you.

"I am now conscious of the fact that He has washed and redeemed me through the precious blood. Jesus is very dear to me. He is the Lily of the Valley, the fairest of ten thousand to my soul. The pleasures of the world have henceforth no attraction for me, in Him I can overcome all temptations."

The following is from a gentleman in America, who, for thirty-five years, had never entered a church. He happened to hear the Marechale once, and, rushing into the vestry, he broke down utterly and told her the tragical story of his life.

He was an illegitimate child, and his mother often used to beat him until the blood ran. As a lad he struggled hard to be good, and, although he was sometimes led astray through the drink, he always shunned anything of an immoral character.

He married a sweet German girl, and by honest labour obtained a very good position in New York, where he was esteemed by all who knew him.

At this juncture he met the French woman who ruined his life. He told the Marechale between his sobs that his wife naturally refused to have him back. Remorse and anguish of mind had driven him twice to attempt suicide, but he was miraculously rescued. In January, 1914, he writes:

"Dear Marechale and honored Spiritual Mother:

"It was with joy that I received your dear letter. God has indeed been wonderfully good to me, an undeserving sinner! He has rolled away the stone from a heart heavy with sin and sorrow. I thank Him daily for His mercy, and wonder how I could ever have lived so long without Him. No wonder I failed and would have been lost, had I not found Him at last through you, dear Marechale. Life has a new meaning for me. It is a pleasure to live now, and before it was a curse. The musicians are playing ragtime while I am writing this, but God is playing another melody in my heart. I thank Him for the opportunity I have here to do good. God has indeed changed me. He has given me great power over the minds of my men. The change which, with His help, I have been able to effect in their natures in two short weeks is wonderful to see. I am happy, very happy.

"There is surely a devil, for he has sorely tempted me, but I shake him off like a feather, smiling happily in my God-given strength. I say to him, 'I fear you not, for I belong to Christ Jesus forever.'

"I am indeed in an unholy place. It is given over to the devil in every form, but what matters, I belong to Christ for all time.

"In prayer and humility I thank and greet thee, Beloved Marechale."

A beautiful girl in society writes the following:

"All night long I have whispered your name over and over again to myself, saying, 'You have given me life, Marechale, do you hear me? LIFE!!!!' I was dying of remorse and fear. I shudder when I think of what would have become of me if I had not come to you. I used to say to myself, 'Oh, well, what's the use, I have sinned beyond recall, so why not sin again, and again, and again? I am destined for Hell anyway, I may just as well get there as fast as I can'--that is what you have saved me from.

"I wonder how many times I have prayed 'Let me forget, only let me forget,' and the more I would pray, the more I would remember, and the more I would remember the more terrified I would get, until life seemed to slip away from me, and I would fall down, down, down, into a bottomless pit of horror.... And now I LIVE!!!! Oh, Marechale (how I love that name, it sounds like music to me!) My mother gave life to my poor miserable body, but you gave life to my soul. My mother would not mind me loving you so if she knew that you gave me back to her."

Again she writes: "I have lived alone, absolutely alone. God only knows how utterly alone I have been! But now I have Him, a _Some One who cares_! Is it not wonderful, Marechale, I am no longer alone for I have my Christ? The warm thing that flames in my soul is the _knowledge that He loves me_! Now I know why all these years I have searched with empty hands for something. I have it now, I _LIVE!!!!_"

A young gentleman whose life was transformed through attending the meetings held by the Marechale's family in Keswick writes from Beyrout, Syria:

"Oh! what a responsibility it is for us to be the ambassadors of Christ, to represent Him to those who do not know Him, to be His Images! If it were not for us Christians, who so often stand in His way, Christ might have a chance. Some of the college men are meeting daily in my room to pray and I wish you could hear them praying in English, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian and even Abyssinian. You would not understand the words, but you could never mistake the spirit.

"To-day I invited a man whom I know is in the hold of a terrible vice. He came, and during the half hour he looked as though he had made a mistake in coming, but, before he left, he had led in prayer for strength to overcome temptation.

"Don't you think America is a fine country? And yet, with all its great resources, opportunities and phenomenal progress, it is a very wicked country in many parts. Races, nations and individuals may prosper and succeed in plans for betterment and still be without the realisation of God,--they may be 'Good but Godless.'"

With the tribute of one grateful heart this sketch may fitly close.

"I have been used in the past in the conversion of hundreds of souls, but I made a _compromise_ and it has spelt ruin to my soul. No one knows how vile I have been, meriting desertion by God and man.... I had resolved to end my existence, but somehow I was brought to that meeting to hear about that Russian lady. Even then I _determined_ you should not influence me, but God somehow through you gripped my life. I saw myself in the true light as (I say the words not in their usual sense) a 'blasted hypocrite.' Don't forget to echo and re-echo the words that reached me, 'Compromise with the world spells ruin.' That burnt into my soul.... I remember while you spoke a big lump rising in my throat, and just as you were closing your address the thought came, 'I wonder if she would understand.' Ay, more, I remember how you received me that day. God bless you. I came out of hell. I have a clear sky. I want to let you know that the consciousness of forgiveness of the past has come with almost an overwhelming force, and an awful load has gone. No daughter ever loved mother more than I love you, I know that. Why is it? Because God made you the means of my salvation. My heart just bursts with love and gratitude. So I am yours, and at that last great day you will see it if I come through at last.... Dear one, have you ever thought of this--some one by a gallant effort rescues lives from fire or shipwreck; the world applauds and honours the deliverer. You (by the grace of God) rescued me from shipwreck of soul. Christ will own it before His Father and all the countless multitudes."

THE END