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  "Its Cowardly Service vs. The Real Warfare"  

(Continued)
By Catherine Booth

I was sitting beside a warrior of the cross, one who carried the marks of many a desperate battle on his worn face. I whispered, "What should you think this people's conception of holding the fort is?" and he whispered back, "A seven-and-six-penny pew!" Alas, how true, in hundreds of instances. Are there any ministers here? If so, I ask you, Is it not true of three parts of your congregations? What do the people in your pews mean by holding the fort? What fort do they hold? They hold the fort valiantly on the stock exchange, in the bank, at the office, or behind the counter. Let anybody go and try to get the better of them there, and they will hold that fort valiantly enough; but what fort are they holding for Jesus Christ?

Here are two men, one is a professing Christian, the other an honorable man of the world. They are both, we will suppose, in the same business. Take their lives from day to day, and what is the difference between them? The one goes to church or chapel once or twice on Sunday. On the week day he gets up in the morning and has his breakfast, and perhaps he reads prayers out of a book, or perhaps not; this done and away be rushes to the city, to the business, where he works and thinks and plans with untiring energy till evening to make money. This is what he does six days in the week, without giving one hour per day to any kind of service to God or humanity, or even to the affairs of his own or his children's souls. The other man does just the same, only he does not go to church on Sunday, or read prayers. If you look into the lives of these two men at the end of the week, you can't find that the professed Christian has done one iota for the kingdom of God more than the other.

You can't find that he has spoken to any one about his soul, he would think it out of season to talk about religion in the shop, the counting-house, or on the exchange. He has never buttoned-holed any of his acquaintances or friends in his own house; he has never knelt down by the side of any poor wandering brother or sister, never visited any sick one or prayed with the dying; he has not done a thing for the Lord Jesus, and yet he will go to chapel and sing, "Hold the fort" on Sunday, as though he had been living the life of a saint all the week. I ask, Why should such a man be called a Christian any more than his neighbor over the way? Oh, friends, it is time we wiped away this reproach, and put it out of the power of infidels and atheists to wag their heads and say, "What do ye more than others?" It is time we drummed out of the professed armies of our Lord all such renegades or hypocrites!

Further, the great mass of these modern Christians cannot enter into this fight because they REFUSE TO BEAR THE CONSEQUENCES.

Fighting is hard work, whatever sort of fighting it is. You cannot fight without wounds of body, heart or soul. You cannot be a soldier without enduring "hardness," and genteel Christians don't like hardness -- they won't have the consequences.

First, they won't lose their reputation; they won't be counted fools and fanatics. I was thinking the other day, if we could have a list of the names of every person, high and low, rich and poor, who however been to the meetings of the Salvation Army, and who has received light and truth, and been called and claimed by God for this war, but who has gone back into the wilderness, what a list that would be! And more than half of this drawing back has been because people have been ashamed to own where they got their blessing, or where they might have had it. Friends, the recording angel keeps such a list! A gentleman answered the other day, when bewailing his miserable spiritual condition, and one of our friends asked him to go to a holiness-meeting, "not in my own town." If he had been in London, and could have crept in with the crowd into the great Congress Hall, where nobody would have recognized him, he would have gone, but not in his own town. That reveals the secret of thousands of people having resisted the light, and lost the blessing they might have had. It was the same spirit of false shame which prompted the question of the Pharisees, "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?"

My brother, my sister, listen:-- while you care what any man or woman on earth thinks about you, or the instruments used of God to bless you, never expect to keep your blessing, for you never will. That man will go blundering on in his present lean and skeleton condition to the grave, and probably into hell, unless he repents, and finds out his mistake, and does his first works. Ashamed! Won't be thought fanatical or weak, won't be mixed up with these common people. "Not in my own town, not in my own family," -- too proud to confess that I am not just what I should be, and that I am going amongst those poor people to be made better. Oh, dear no, not if heaven depended upon it. Listen! "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of my words, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels."

Then, further, these modern Christians refuse to give their substance to carry on the war. You see war is impossible without money. I wish it were not so, but I cannot help it. This war is as impossible as any other, without money. Men and women must eat to live, however little they may manage with. And traveling expenses, rent of buildings, announcements, working expenses, prosecutions, breakdowns through sickness, etc.; etc., must be met. This war, I say, must have money, AND THE MORE WAR THE MORE MONEY IS WANTED. How many of these mongrel Christians, when faced with the needs of the war chest, exclaim, "Money again! always begging." Now contrast the feelings of these same people when there is any great popular national war on foot. Then, what do they say in their newspapers, in their public meeting? They say to their statesmen: "You must ask for grants; you must not stick fast for money. We must win. John Bull must not be beaten for the sake of a few millions!" Ah, ah! their hearts are in this warfare!

The women would sell their ornaments, and the men would hand over their balances, rather than England's freedom or greatness should be sacrificed. Now then, I say that if the Christians of this London and this England of ours had the true war spirit, the spirit which says, "I want the world for Christ Jesus: I want my King to reign over the hearts of men: He shall win, be it at the cost of money or blood, or all else," -- if this spirit possessed them, instead of begrudging and reckoning how little they could give, and how much would save appearances, they would try how far they could deny themselves, and how much they could give. Oh! is this not true? Can you contradict it?

Then, what am I to think of a band of professed soldiers who are always grumbling about having to give their money to extend the reign of their king, whom they profess to love more than all else besides! I do not propose to dwell on the beggarly subterfuges for getting money which these Christians resort to; it would make my cheeks crimson with shame. I said to a lady a little while ago, who was working an elaborate piece of embroidery for a bazaar, "Why don't you give the money, and use your time for something better? She answered, "This will sell for more than it costs." "Then reckon what it will sell for, and give the money; don't sit at home making other people's finery, instead of visiting the sick and seeking to save the lost!" It makes me burn with shame to think how money is raised for so-called religious purposes by semi-worldly concerts, entertainments, penny readings, and bazaars, at which there is frequently positive gambling to raise money for Jesus Christ, whom they say they love more than fathers, mothers; husbands, wives, houses or lands, or anything else on earth!

And these are the people who accuse the Salvation Army of want of reverence! I have sometimes talked to ladies when they have been expensively dressed, and they have said, "Really, I do not care for these things." "Then," I have said, "it is passing strange you should be willing to spend your money for them. People generally care for the things they pay for." If Christians really cared for the reign of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men, if their hearts were set on His Kingdom and on doing all they possibly could to extend it, if it were the highest ambition of their souls, the waking and sleeping idea of their minds, do you think they would grudge to pay for it? Oh no; any child knows they would not. Such professed concern is a mockery!

Further, these modern Christians refuse to give themselves or their children to the propagation of the kingdom.

They studiously bring up their children from three or four years of age to eighteen or twenty, grinding it into them every. day of their lives, for six and eight hours a day, how to get on and up in this world; but when Jesus Christ wants one of them -- especially if he or she happens to be clever -- to do any unpopular, or, in the eyes of the world, vulgar work for Him -- any work that will bring a cross they consider it absolutely throwing that child away. All the ordinary, silly, sickly circles of gossip, and croquet, and drawing-room occupations, are considered most respectable and satisfactory in the case of young girls, alongside of any one of them giving her self up to seek and to save the lost. I heard a young lady say of a large circle of Christian friends: "While I was in frivolity and sin they all let me alone; I never had a letter, that I remember, from any of them about my soul; but as soon as they found that I had given myself to work amongst the poor and the lost, then they all woke up to a deep concern about my future, and I was flooded with letters from these Christian friends?"

Oh! what do you think Jesus Christ would say to such people? Would He not say, as He said of their representatives, the Pharisees, "Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoreth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me"? Why should that daughter be thought thrown away who conies out and chooses a voluntary poverty and humility, and becomes a salvation officer to win poor lost men and women, for whom you say Jesus Christ shed His blood? If they were worth His blood, surely they are worth your daughter's respectability! Then why, because she chooses to sacrifice it, should she be put at a disadvantage compared with her elder or younger sisters, who spend their time in the frivolities of the world? Answer, all ye parents, professed followers of the despised Nazarene!

Oh, the stories I could unfold, the dozens of letters that could be produced, pleading with young men and women whose hearts God has touched with pity for the perishing multitudes; bringing all the considerations of family ties, worldly position, future prospects, wealthy alliances, and I know not what else, in order to induce them to turn aside from the path of self-sacrifice and whole-hearted abandonment to the interests of the kingdom. I sometimes wonder that Christian parents and friends dare utter such words or pen such letters. I wonder that the ink does not turn red as they write, and that their accusing consciences do not force them to sign their names "Judas."

What a different spirit parents and friends manifest with respect to their children and wards when the war-fever seizes the nation! Mothers give their sons -- it may be with tears and heartaches -- nevertheless ungrudgingly, to face the horrors of foreign warfare, in the shape of loneliness, toil, long marchings, exposure, privation, fever, dysentery, and a desolate death; and in other instances to wounds, loss of limbs, enfeebled constitutions, or violent death.

Nay, women themselves have gone to such a war with the bravery of men, making lint, nursing the wounded, and inspiring the weak or wavering, and even working the guns; and as one rank has fallen, others have rushed in to fill up the bleeding gaps. But is it so in this warfare? It used to be. No grander enthusiasm, no more heroic self-sacrifice, no more determined abandonment, has ever fired human souls than has been exhibited in the cause of Jesus Christ; but alas! it is a long while ago. The Christians of this age, as a rule, want all their time, strength, and ability, and that of their children also, to enable them to climb up the ladder of this world's social position; to get up, UP, from whence God -- if Christ's teaching means anything -- will say, "Thou fool!" and hurl them down to perdition when they have done.

Friends, is it not true? If so, we ought to go down on our faces and weep, and have a confession service -- first, for those who feel that this truth applies to themselves; and second, for those who, although their own consciences acquit them, know that it applies to thousands round about us. Like the prophets of old did, let us humble ourselves for the sins of our people. Let us take their iniquities on our hearts as far as we may, weep over them, confess for them, and pray for them, and then set ourselves to try to arouse them up to a sense of their responsibility and danger.

Further, I charge it on the professors of popular Christianity that they have no valor in the fight for truth and for God.

They hold not fast the faith once delivered to the saints, but surrender first one point and then another of God's revelation to any skeptical heathen who may see fit to attack it. They bid Godspeed alike to all professed prophets and creeds, simply because it is a matter of indifference with them whether truth or error shall prevail; in fact, they are most tolerant of false teachers because they propound the easiest doctrine, often patronizing the most monstrous contradictions and shameless caricatures of the gospel. There can be no doubt that millions of souls are being sacrificed to the godless, senseless antinomian gospels of the present day, gospels which have been hacked and hewed worse than any poor vivisected animal. The very standards and landmarks of goodness, truth, honesty, chastity, and godliness are broken down, and the people are taught that they have nothing to do, to sacrifice, or to suffer, in order to be saved and to get into heaven, in fact that they call get there as easily by the broad road as by the narrow way; and all who preach the truth as Christ preached it are stigmatized as legal -- as workmongers, as antichrists and papists.

Further, these modern Christians lack all enthusiasm in the warfare.

Look at their poor, gasping, half-hearted, uncertain profession of personal religion. They condemn anybody who dares get up and tell out any definite change that God has wrought in them, or of any glowing experience of the love, sufficiency, and power of Christ to save. They characterize all such testimony as self-exaltation and vainglory, whereas they ought to know that one of the main purposes of Christ in establishing a kingdom on the earth was that His servants might be His witnesses -- not witnesses merely of His existence, but of His power to save from sin and its consequences. They should also study the writings of Paul, whom they claim as their great apostle, and note his bold, comprehensive, and persistent expression of his own personal experience, which occupied so large a share of his epistles.

Look at the cold, stiff, stilted public service of these modern Christians; note how they pray, sitting looking about, without reverence or decency, while their ministers pray for them by proxy; listen to their songs, mostly sung by a few dressed-up dolls perched in an organ-loft or singing pew, doing their praises for them, perhaps with a profane or drunken leader at so much a year. Listen to the preaching, -- as a rule, cold dissertations and abstractions or platitudes, "moving not a hair of the polished divine" who utters them, nor of the people who listen. An amen or hallelujah would sound almost as much out of place as it would be on the gallows Who would ever imagine that such a minister and such worshippers were professedly serving Him of whom it was said, "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire"? Alas, alas such worshippers have nothing to be enthusiastic about.

They have no personal participation in the Spirit or purposes of their professed Lord, no realization of His presence, and no glowing anticipation of His predicted triumphs. But watch the change when the time for dismissal comes; see the rush of acquaintances at the church or chapel doors to shake hands with one another; listen to the rush of tongues; there is plenty of enthusiasm now! Frank's prizes at school or honors at college, Harry's promotion in the killing army, Gertrude's recent engagement, or Lizzie's new baby, -- these are topics in which the heart is interested, and so the tongue is inspired, and the soul comes forth from its lethargy! Alas for the little children who watch the altered countenances and listen to the interested tone and manner of mother and father during the progress of these congratulations! No wonder if they conclude that this is the reality, and what they have been witnessing in the church or chapel is a sham. No wonder such a Christianity cannot hold its own against the forces of the enemy; no cause is so hopeless as one without enthusiasm. People who do not care much are sure to go to the wall.

Further, I. charge these modern Christians with a lack of missionary enterprise.

No wonder, if they reason from the value and effect of their religion on their own characters and lives, that they do not see the importance of sending it to the heathen; and from all accounts it does no more for the heathen abroad than for the Christians at home. Alas, alas! on all these points popular Christianity must be confessed, when weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, to be found lamentably wanting.

Friends, what about yours?

The Real Warfare

We will now glance at two or three of the main characteristics of that warfare to which Christ has called His soldiers.

First: Christ's soldiers must be imbued with the spirit of the war.

Love to the King and concern for His interests must be the master passion of the soul. All outward effort, even that which springs from a sense of duty, will fail without this. The hardship and suffering involved in real spiritual warfare are too great for any motive but that of love. It is said that one of the soldiers of Napoleon, when being operated upon for the extraction of a bullet, exclaimed, "Cut a little deeper and you will find my general's name," meaning that it was engraven on his heart. So must the image and glory of Christ be engraven on the heart of every successful soldier of Christ. It must be the all-subduing passion of his life to bring the reign of Jesus Christ over the hearts and souls of men. A little child who has this spirit will subjugate others to his King, while the most talented and learned and active, without it, will accomplish comparatively little. If the hearts of the Christians of this generation were inspired with this spirit, and set on winning the world for God, we should soon see nations shaken to their center, and millions of souls translated into the kingdom.

Secondly: The soldiers of Christ must be abandoned to the war.

They must be thoroughly committed to God's side: there can be no neutrals in this warfare. When the soldier enlists and takes the queen's shilling, he ceases to be his own property, but becomes the property of his country, must go where he is sent, stand at any post to which he is assigned, even if it be at the cannon's mouth. He gives up the ways and comforts of civilians, and goes forth with his life in his hand, in obedience to the will of his sovereign.

If I understand it, that is just what Jesus Christ demands of every one of His soldiers, and nothing less.

Some one may ask, "But we cannot all be ministers, or missionaries, or officers in the Salvation Army; must we not attend to the avocations of this life, and work for the bread that perisheth for ourselves and our families?" Certainly, but the great end in all we do must be the promotion of the kingdom. A man may work in order that he may eat, but he must eat to live, not to himself or for the promotion of his own purposes, but for his King, and for the advancement of His interests; and if his heart is really set on this, he will have no desire to work at his secular calling longer than is absolutely necessary to promote this object. When the necessary amount of work is done, he will gladly lay aside his implements of husbandry or handicraft for the sword of the Spirit, and for the conflict with ignorance, vice, and misery.

Instead of spending his evenings in ease and self-indulgence, he will betake himself to the streets or other places of resort for the people, and will spend what would have been his leisure hours in pressing. on them the claims of God and of His truth. There will be no running away, no forsaking of the cross, no shrinking from the hard places of the field; but a determined pushing of the battle to the gate, even amid weariness, opposition, and sometimes in the face of dire defeat. I ask, Was it any less a devotion than this which actuated the martyrs and confessors of old? Have I depicted an abandonment greater than that which they understood to be their duty and privilege? If they might have drawn back, why did they persevere, many of them, through long years of conflict and persecution, culminating in stripes, imprisonment, and death? It is evident that they understood fidelity to Christ to involve the most perfect self-abandonment, both in life and in death.

Then, third: Christ's soldiers must understand the tactics of war.

In order to do this, they must make it a subject of earnest and prayerful study how to make the most of their time, talents, money, or any other resources which God may have placed at their command for the advancement of the kingdom. They must think and scheme how best to attack the enemy. Only think of the time, trouble, skill, and money that are expended by great killing armies in planning for stratagem, and maneuver in order to surprise and overcome their enemies. Some of you will remember reading, in the records of the last German and French war, that the German officers were better acquainted with the geography of France than the French themselves; they knew every road, by-way, and field, likely to be available for their purpose.

Think of the time and trouble that must have been expended in becoming thus familiar with a foreign country, and compare this with the haphazard, rule-of-thumb kind of way in which spiritual warfare is for the most part conducted. Think of the undigested schemes and abortive plans, throwing away both labor and money, embarked in by professed Christian soldiers, who have never, perhaps, spent a day's anxious thought and prayer over them in their lives. Think also of the shameful indifference-which cannot be characterized as warfare at all-of the ordinary services and arrangements of the churches.

It often makes my heart ache as I pass some stately, closed-up church or chapel, with its antiquated board with a shame-faced, insignificant announcement that the "Reverend So-and-so will preach," or a "Gospel address will be delivered" at such a time on such a day; in which it is evident nothing is contemplated beyond securing the eye and attention of those who already have a liking for going to churches and chapels. And as I sometimes read the lists of meetings connected with ordinary churches, I say to myself, "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be," is evidently the creed of the originators of this program, not with respect, perhaps, to the doctrines they preach, but with respect to the old-fashioned, effete methods by which they continue to publish them. Oh, is it not time that the professed children of light should learn, as the great Captain of our salvation exhorted them, wisdom by contrast with the children of darkness?

As I heard some friends talking the other day about the rescue of Gordon, and listened to their calculations as to the probable cost being some millions of money, and perhaps thousands of lives, I could not help thinking, yes, and I suppose all England (the Christians included) will think this quite a legitimate expenditure of both money and life to rescue this one man and the little band who is with him; and yet, if we were to ask for a few millions of money, and propose to sacrifice a few hundreds of lives in the rescue of millions of the human race from a bondage of misery and destruction ten thousand times more appalling than that which threatens General Gordon, they would call us mad enthusiasts and senseless fanatics. Alas, alas we may well ask, Where is the zeal of the Christians of this generation for the Lord of hosts? How much do they care about His reign over the hearts of their fellow men? What is their appreciation of the present and eternal benefits embraced in His salvation; or what is their estimate of the "crown of life" which he promises to give to every one of His conquering soldiers?

Fourth: The soldiers of Christ must believe in victory.

Faith in victory is an indispensable condition to successful warfare of any kind. It is universally recognized by generals of killing armies, that if the enthusiasm of expected conquest be destroyed, and their troops imbued with fear and doubt as to the ultimate result, defeat is all but certain. This is equally true with respect to spiritual warfare, hence the repeated and comprehensive assurance and promises of victory from the great Captain of our salvation The true soldier of Christ, who has the spirit of the war and who is abandoned to its interests, has an earnest in his soul of coming victory. He knows it is only a question of time, and time is nothing to love!

As he is lying in the trenches, or taking long marches, or suffering for the want of common necessaries, or enduring the sharpest bayonets or heaviest fire of the enemy, or lying wounded, overcome by fatigue, pressed by discouragement, realizing the greatness of the conflict in contrast with his own weakness -- in the very darkest hours and severest straits, he has the herald of coming victory sounding in his ears. The faithful soldier knows that he shall win, and that his King will ultimately reign, not only over a few, but over all the kingdoms of this earth, and that He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.

This faith inspires Him to endure hardship and to suffer loss, to hold on. He never thinks of turning his back to the foe, or shirking the cross, or turning the stones into bread, or of trying to shorten the march. He never thinks of withdrawing from the thick of the fight, but goes on through perils by land, by sea, by his own countrymen, by the heathen, by false brethren at home and abroad. He looks onward through the dark clouds to the proud moment when the King will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" He listens, and above the din of the earthly conflict he hears the words, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life!"

Catherine Booth - Mother of the Salvation Army

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