The Authoritative Life of General William Booth | Page 7

find peace with God.
"The entrance to the Heavenly Kingdom was closed against me by an
evil act of the past which required restitution. In a boyish trading affair
I had managed to make a profit out of my companions, whilst giving
them to suppose that what I did was all in the way of a generous
fellowship. As a testimonial of their gratitude they had given me a
silver pencil-case. Merely to return their gift would have been

comparatively easy, but to confess the deception I had practised upon
them was a humiliation to which for some days I could not bring
myself.
"I remember, as if it were but yesterday, the spot in the corner of a
room under the chapel, the hour, the resolution to end the matter, the
rising up and rushing forth, the finding of the young fellow I had
chiefly wronged, the acknowledgment of my sin, the return of the
pencil-case--the instant rolling away from my heart of the guilty burden,
the peace that came in its place, and the going forth to serve my God
and my generation from that hour.
"It was in the open street that this great change passed over me, and if I
could only have possessed the flagstone on which I stood at that happy
moment, the sight of it occasionally might have been as useful to me as
the stones carried up long ago from the bed of the Jordan were to the
Israelites who had passed over them dry-shod.
"Since that night, for it was near upon eleven o'clock when the happy
change was realised, the business of my life has been not only to make
a holy character but to live a life of loving activity in the service of God
and man. I have ever felt that true religion consists not only in being
holy myself, but in assisting my Crucified Lord in His work of saving
men and women, making them into His Soldiers, keeping them faithful
to death, and so getting them into Heaven.
"I have had to encounter all sorts of difficulties as I have travelled
along this road. The world has been against me, sometimes very
intensely, and often very stupidly. I have had difficulties similar to
those of other men, with my own bodily appetites, with my mental
disposition, and with my natural unbelief.
"Many people, both religious and irreligious, are apt to think that they
are more unfavourably constituted than their comrades and neighbours,
and that their circumstances and surroundings are peculiarly unfriendly
to the discharge of the duties they owe to God and man.
"I have been no exception in this matter. Many a time I have been
tempted to say to myself, 'There is no one fixed so awkwardly for holy
living and faithful fighting as I am.' But I have been encouraged to
resist the delusion by remembering the words of the Apostle Paul:
'There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man.'
"I am not pretending to say that I have worked harder, or practised

more self-denial, or endured more hardships at any particular time of
my life than have those around me; but I do want those who feel any
interest in me to understand that faithfulness to God in the discharge of
duty and the maintenance of a good conscience have cost me as severe
a struggle as they can cost any Salvation Soldier in London, Berlin,
Paris, New York, or Tokio to-day.
"One reason for the victory I daily gained from the moment of my
conversion was, no doubt, my complete and immediate separation from
the godless world. I turned my back on it. I gave it up, having made up
my mind beforehand that if I did go in for God I would do so with all
my might. Rather than yearning for the world's pleasures, books, gains,
or recreations, I found my new nature leading me to come away from it
all. It had lost all charm for me. What were all the novels, even those of
Sir Walter Scott or Fenimore Cooper, compared with the story of my
Saviour? What were the choicest orators compared with Paul? What
was the hope of money-earning, even with all my desire to help my
poor mother and sisters, in comparison with the imperishable wealth of
ingathered souls? I soon began to despise everything the world had to
offer me.
"In those days I felt, as I believe many Converts do, that I could
willingly and joyfully travel to the ends of the earth for Jesus Christ,
and suffer anything imaginable to help the souls of other men. Jesus
Christ had baptised me, according to His eternal promise, with His
Spirit and with Fire.
"Yet the surroundings of my early