.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 53446
   :PG.Title: The Maréchale
   :PG.Released: 2016-11-03
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: James Strahan
   :DC.Title: The Maréchale
              (Catherine Booth-Clibborn)
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1914
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE MARÉCHALE
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   .. _`THE MARÉCHALE`:

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      :alt: THE MARÉCHALE

      THE MARÉCHALE

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      THE MARÉCHALE

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      (CATHERINE BOOTH-CLIBBORN)

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      BY
      JAMES STRAHAN

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      AUTHOR OF "HEBREW IDEALS," "THE BOOK OF JOB," ETC.

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      HODDER & STOUGHTON
      NEW YORK
      GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

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      COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
      GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

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      *The right of translation is reserved*

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      Dedicated
      WITH REVERENCE AND AFFECTION TO
      THÉODORE MONOD
      WHO TAUGHT US TO SAY TO OUR DIVINE MASTER
      "NONE OF SELF AND ALL OF THEE"

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   PREFACE

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This book is the unexpected result of a brief
visit which the Maréchale paid her daughter
and the writer in the spring of this year.  She
was daily persuaded, not so much to talk of the
past, as to live parts of her life over again, for
in her case the telling of a story is the enacting
of a drama.  At a meal-time she rarely keeps
her seat, though she is apparently unconscious
of leaving it and surprised that she requires to
return to it.  She begins to describe an incident,
to recall a conversation, to sketch a character,
and straightway she is suiting the word to the
action, the action to the word, holding the
mirror up to nature, using her brilliant dramatic
gift, which is as natural to her as singing
is to birds, to call up faces, to bring back
voices, to restore scenes, which are all, whether
grave or gay, summoned out of a dead past
that has suddenly, as by the wave of a
magician's wand, become once more alive.

One day I said to her, "Have you never
thought of giving all this to the world?"  She
answered, "I am often asked to do so, and
some day I may."  Soon after she surprised
me by saying, "I have come to the conclusion
that something ought to be written now, and
you must write it."

A mass of materials in English, French and
German—reports, letters, diaries, magazines,
and other documents—has therefore been put
at my disposal.  I have not used a tithe of
what I have received, and much of what is
left is as good as what has been taken.  More
will ere long, I doubt not, see the light.  One
of my best sources of information has been the
Maréchale's own phenomenal memory, which I
have tested times without number, and found
invariably accurate, except in dates.  Events
are apt to be associated in her mind not so
much with years as with homes and children,
which are much more interesting.

With regard to the subject of the fourteenth
chapter, the Maréchale would have preferred
not to break the silence which she has maintained
for a number of years, but after reading
her letters and diaries I have urged her to let
a brief statement be published, first because
I feel that she owes something to her old
comrades in the fight, and second for the sake of
her own and her family's future work.  Members
of the family who have been consulted, as
well as other friends, desire this even more
strongly than the writer does.

This book consists of a few sections from a
life which, like Mrs. Browning's pomegranate,
"shows within a heart blood-tinctured." To
a heart of love add a spirit of fire, and you have
the Maréchale.  Blood and fire—that is what
she was at the beginning, and that is what she
will be to the end.  One has often heard her
say that she has never been more in her element
than when, on entering some town, she has
found herself confronted, in a theater or
casino, by "all the devils of the place." She is
happy whenever "Jesus is going to have a
chance for a night."  In the natural course of
things her greatest battles are still before her.
England has need of her, France perhaps still
greater need.  May it be long before the
Maréchale reaches her last campaign!  Meanwhile
the old battle-cry, *En Avant!*

The subject of this sketch—written during a
brief respite from other work—is at present far
away, but I know that what she desires to give
to the world is a sense of the Divine, the
miracle-working power which rewards a child-like
faith, and that she will be glad if every
reader closes the book with a *Gloire à Dieu!*

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\J. \S.

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   CONTENTS

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CHAPTER I

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`Finely Touched to Fine Issues`_

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CHAPTER II

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`A Girl Evangelist`_


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CHAPTER III

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`The Secret of Evangelism`_


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CHAPTER IV

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`Christ in Paris`_


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CHAPTER V

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`Freedom to Worship God`_


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CHAPTER VI

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`The Soul of France`_


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CHAPTER VII

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`Woman's Vocation`_


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CHAPTER VIII

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`The Renunciation of Home`_


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CHAPTER IX

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`The Friendship of Christ`_


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CHAPTER X

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`The Burning Question`_


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CHAPTER XI

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`The Prodigal Son`_


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CHAPTER XII

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`So Great Faith`_


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CHAPTER XIII

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`Beauty for Ashes`_


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CHAPTER XIV

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`To Thine Own Self Be True`_


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CHAPTER XV

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`Sursum Corda!`_

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   LIST OF PORTRAITS

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`The Maréchale`_ . . . *Frontispiece*

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Catherine Booth . . . `32`_

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(*From a drawing by Edward Clifford, exhibited in the Royal Academy
and presented to Mrs. Booth*)

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The Maréchale in the Café . . . `114`_

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(*From the painting of Baron Cederström*)

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The Maréchale . . . `160`_

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(*From a photo taken in Paris, circa 1890*)

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The Maréchale . . . `302`_

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(*From a photo taken in London in 1913*)

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.. _`FINELY TOUCHED TO FINE ISSUES`:

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   CHAPTER I


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   FINELY TOUCHED TO FINE ISSUES

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In the summer of 1865 William Booth,
Evangelist, found his life-work.  For some
time back his imagination had been more than
usually active.  He could not help thinking
that all his past efforts had been but tentative
solutions of a difficult problem.  He felt the
spur of a vague discontent.  He seemed to be
groping his way towards an unrealised ideal.
At length he got the inner light he needed.
While he was conducting a series of meetings
in a tent pitched on the disused Quaker
burying-ground at Baker's Row, Whitechapel, he
saw his heavenly vision and heard his divine
call.  He accepted a mission which was no less
real than those of Hebrew Prophets and Christian
Apostles.  The words in which he describes
his vocation form part of the history of
Christianity in England.  "I found my heart," he
says, "strongly and strangely drawn out on
behalf of the million people living within a mile
of the tent, ninety out of every hundred of
whom, they told me, never heard the sound of
the preacher's voice from year to year.  'Here
is a sphere!' was being whispered continually
in my inward ear by an inward voice ... and
I was continually haunted with a desire to
offer myself to Jesus Christ as an apostle for
the heathen of East London.  The idea or
heavenly vision or whatever you may call it
overcame me; I yielded to it; and what has
happened since is, I think, not only my
justification, but an evidence that my offer was accepted."

Thus it was that on a memorable June night,
having ended his meeting and after-meeting,
he rushed home, tired as usual, but with a
strange light in his face which indicated an
unusual glow in his heart.

"Darling," he exclaimed to his wife, "I
have found my destiny!"

His unexpected words, like the touch of
Ithuriel's spear, proved the quality of his
life-mate's womanhood.  For a moment she
trembled under the test.  While her husband
poured out his burning words about the
heathenism of London, and expressed his
conviction that it was his duty to stop and
preach to these East End multitudes, she sat
gazing into the empty fireplace.  The voice of
the tempter—so she imagined—whispered to
her, "This means another new departure,
another start in life."  She thought of five
little heads asleep on their pillows upstairs,
and remembered that she had already passed
through more than one time of domestic
anxiety.  But no woman living at that time
was more ready for acts of daring faith; few,
if any, were so animated by scorn of miserable
aims that end in self.  After silently thinking
and praying for some minutes, she said:

"Well, if you feel you ought to stay, stay.
We have trusted the Lord once for our support
and we can trust Him again."

Thus the die was cast, and the day ended
with one of those scenes by which our common
humanity is ennobled.  "Together," he says,
"we humbled ourselves before God, and dedicated
our lives to the task that it seemed we
had been praying for for twenty-five years.
Her heart came over to my heart.  We resolved
that this poor, submerged, giddy, careless
people should henceforth become our
people and our God their God as far as we
could induce them to accept Him, and for this
end we would face poverty, persecution, or
whatever Providence might permit in our
consecration to what we believed to be the way
God had mapped out for us."

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One feels perfectly certain that these two
modern apostles would have fulfilled their
destiny even if they had stood alone; but it
could scarcely have been so ample and glorious
a destiny if God had not given them children
who inherited their gifts and helped them to
realise their ideals.  It is the simple truth that
the ruling passion of each of their eight sons
and daughters has been the love of souls; each
of them has exulted to spend and be spent in
the service of Christ, which is the service of
humanity; and if one of them has been too
feeble in her health to be a militant Salvationist,
the great Captain of our salvation accepts
the will for the deed.

Among all the bold and original acts by
which the breath and the flame of a new life
have been brought into the modern Church,
none is more striking, and yet none more
simple and natural, than the revival, after all these
centuries, of the apostolic ministry of
women.  Like Philip the Evangelist of Cæsarea,
William and Catherine Booth "had four
daughters who did prophesy"; brave and
gifted English girls who, baptised with the
Holy Spirit, used their dower of burning
eloquence to bring sinners to the mercy-seat.
If to-day "the women that publish the tidings
are a great host," the fact illustrates the power
of example.  In every new movement there
must be daring pioneers and self-sacrificing
leaders.  For woman's "liberty of prophesying,"
as for every other form of freedom, the
price has had to be paid.  The purpose of this
little book is to sketch the life of the eldest of
General Booth's four daughter-evangelists,
who was called to carry the spirit of the
Gospel—Christ's own spirit of love—first into many
of the cities of England, and afterwards, in
fulfilment of her distinctive life-work, into
France and Switzerland, Holland and Belgium.
If her story could be told as it deserves
to be, it would stand out as one of the most
remarkable modern records of Christian work,
for there is perhaps no one living to-day who
has seen so much of what Henry Drummond
used to call "the contemporary activities of the
Holy Ghost."

Catherine Booth the elder, the Mother of the
Army, was already in her thirty-second year
when she wrote her famous brochure upon
*Female Ministry*, and, not without fear and trembling,
delivered her first evangelistic address in
the Bethesda Chapel at Gateshead-on-Tyne,
where her husband was minister.  Little
Catherine, who had been baptised in that chapel,
was in her second year when her mother began
public speaking, and in her seventh when her
father found his destiny.  Probably no child
ever had greater privileges than she enjoyed.
Her earthly home was a house of God and a
gate of heaven; and from the first she seemed
to respond to all that was highest and best in
her environment.  She was one of those happy
souls who have no memory of their conversion,
who cannot recall a time when they did not
heartily love the Lord Jesus Christ.

Her father was the centre of all her childish
thoughts and most vivid recollections, and
nothing could ever really dislodge him from
the first place in her affections.  An interesting
page from her earliest memories may be
reproduced.  When she was three or four years
old, her father was a Wesleyan Pastor in
Cornwall, where his ministry led to a revival
in which hundreds of souls found salvation.
One night Katie was taken by her nurse to the
meeting, and, on arrival, found herself before
a flight of steps leading up to the gallery.
Thinking herself quite a big girl, she wished to
climb, but nurse, fearing the crowd, snatched
her up and carried her to the top.  At length
they were inside, and what the child then saw
and heard remained for ever vividly impressed
on her imagination.  The great building was
crammed.  Away down on the platform stood
her father, with her mother sitting beside him.
He was leading the singing, keeping time with
his folded umbrella, and this was the chorus:

   |  Let the winds blow high, or the winds blow low,
   |  It's a pleasant sail to Canaan, hallelujah!

How well did the eager-hearted little maid
enjoy that voyage, and how proud she was of
her captain!  The winds blew low and the
sun shone upon her in those days.  But it could
not always be fair weather.  Often since that
far-off Cornish time have the winds blown
high, and sometimes the mariner has felt
herself tossed, chartless and rudderless, on dark
tempestuous seas; but ever the winds have
fallen, the sun has shone out again over the
waves; and to how many tens of thousands
has this daughter of music sung, with sweet
variations, her father's song—"It's a pleasant
sail to Canaan, hallelujah!"

The Booth children were left in no mist of
doubt as to their future.  There was an end,
a point, a purpose, in their life.  They grew up
in an atmosphere of decision.  Many children
are made timid, diffident, ineffective by their
training.  They are constantly told how
naughty they are, till they begin to believe
that they are good for nothing.  The Booth
parents acted on a different principle.  They
had faith in their children and for their
children.  When Katie was still a little girl in
socks, her mother would say to her, "Now,
Katie, you are not here in this world for
yourself.  You have been sent for others.  *The
world is waiting for you.*"  What a phrase that
was to send a little girl to bed with!  There she
turned the words over and over in her own
mind.  "Mother says the world is waiting for
me.  Oh, I must be good....  How selfish I was
in taking that orange!"  The lesson was worth
£1000 to a child.  In the development of
Katie's mind and character her mother's
influence was naturally very strong.  The
fellowship between them soon became peculiarly
intimate, and it was the mother's joy to find her
*alter ego* in the daughter who bore her name.

Katie's memories of her early London life
were bound up with the Christian Mission.
Hand in hand with her sister Emma, and often
singing with her "I mean with Jesus Christ
to dwell, will you go?" she walked every
Sunday morning along the great road leading to
Whitechapel.  Ineffaceable impressions were
made on her sensitive mind by the open-air
preaching at Mile End Waste, Bethnal Green
and Hackney; by the apostolic spirit of holy
enthusiasm; by the Friday morning
prayer-meetings, where the officers met alone to
plead with God and wrestle in tears for more
power.  All this became the warp and woof
of her own spiritual life, preparing her for her
high calling.  And, though she could not
remember the day of her new birth, she clearly
recalled several times when she consecrated
herself, body and soul, to God.  In a great
whitewashed building in the East End her
father preached on "The King's daughters are
all glorious within," and she prayed that she
might have the inner purity which would make
her a child of God.  From a meeting of
Christian workers she ran home to her room, shut
herself in, and deliberately gave her heart and
life to Christ.  She could not, perhaps, realise
all that her covenant meant, but one thing she
understood—that she was called to yield herself
completely to do His will and to save souls.

There was plenty of laughter and fun in that
home.  The Booth children were all born with
the dramatic instinct, and the spirit of the
Christian Mission invaded the nursery.  Not
only were the great dramas of the Bible—Joseph
and his brothers, David and Goliath,
Daniel and the lions, and a score of others—enacted
there, but the meeting and the penitent
form, the drunkard and the backslider, the
hopeful and the desperate case were all reproduced
in the plays of the children.  Katie and
Emma brought their babies to the meeting,
and the babies generally insisted on crying,
to the despair of Bramwell or Ballington, who
stopped preaching to give the stern order,
"Take the babies out of the theatre," against
which the mothers indignantly protested,
"Papa would not have stopped, papa would
have gone on preaching anyhow."  But the
dramatic masterpiece was Ballington dealing
with an interesting case—generally a pillow—coaxing,
dragging, banging the poor reluctant
penitent to the mercy-seat and exclaiming,
"Ah! this is a good case, bless him! ... Give
up the drink, brother."  That is a scene which
is still sometimes re-enacted to the delight of
new generations.

Jesus Himself watched the games of the
children who piped and mourned in the
market-place.  Life is none the less strenuous for
its interludes of mirth.  Catherine, who was
dramatic to the finger-tips, was very early
mastered by a sense of the sacredness of duty.
The moral ideal set before her was the highest,
and her conscience was tremulously sensitive.
She was oppressed with the sense of what
ought to be, and inconsolable when she failed
to attain it.  A word of rebuke cut her like a
knife, and she would sometimes weep far into
the night if she thought she had put pleasure
before duty.  It is a great thing to make
religion real to children, and especially to give
them a sense of the obligation to please Christ
in everything.  Mrs. Booth found Katie ready
to go all lengths with her, and even to outrun
her, in her ideas of what was right and what
was wrong for Christians.  It is amusing to
hear that when the mother was going out one
day to buy new frocks for her little girls,
Katie's words to her were not "Do buy us
something pretty!" but "Mind you get
something Christian!" and that when Mrs. Booth
came home with her purchases, and Katie
rushed downstairs to meet her, the child's first
inquiry was, "Are they Christian?"

But the sense of duty may become morbid
if it is not transmuted by love.  Many servants
of God never learn the secret which makes
Christ's yoke easy and His burden light.  They
have to confess to themselves that they cannot
say, "To do Thy will, O Lord, I take delight."  It
would have been strange if any of the Booth
children had not learned the secret.  Catherine
discovered it early, learned it thoroughly, and
it became in after years one of the hidden
sources of her power.  As a child she lived in
union with Christ; she practised and felt the
Real Presence; she understood that Christianity
is a Divine Service transfigured by a Divine
Friendship.  In Victoria Park there was a
shady alley where she was in the habit of
walking, because Some One walked beside her!  In
Clifton, where she lived for a time, she had a
tiny upper room in which she felt that she was
never alone!  That was her childhood's religion,
which she never needed to change.  She found
it to be utterly independent of time and place,
form and ceremony.  In the glare of public
life, in the storm of persecution, in the hour of
temptation and danger, she had always a
cathedral into which she could retire that she
might find peace.  She was spiritually akin
with the Hebrew mystics who lived in the secret
place of the Most High, who had at all times
a pavilion from the strife of tongues.  In her
Neuchâtel prison she wrote some simple words
which sent a thrill through the heart of
Christian Europe:

   |  Best Beloved of my soul,
   |    I am here alone with Thee;
   |  And my prison is a heaven,
   |    Since Thou sharest it with me.





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.. _`A GIRL EVANGELIST`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   A GIRL EVANGELIST

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When the heart is warm and full the lips
become eloquent.  Jesus expects each of His
followers to testify for Him.  His redeemed
ones should need little persuasion to plead His
cause.  Every genuine conversion creates a
new advocate for His side.  Dumbness is one
of the signs of unreality in religion.  The sin
of silence received due castigation, in public
and in private, from the tongues of fire which
the Spirit gave to William and Catherine
Booth.  Their children therefore learned that
it is every Christian's calling to speak in season
and out of season for Christ, to press His
claims upon the willing and the unwilling alike.
Katie, it appears, began among her little
companions in the Victoria Park.  Her old nurse
still remembers how she would gather little
groups about her and tell them of the Saviour's
love.  When she was in her twelfth year, she
lived for some time with a family in Clifton,
along with whom she attended the Church of
England.  One Sunday evening the Vicar,
who had noticed her earnest gaze fixed on his
face, sent for her that he might have a little
talk with her.  He asked her what she liked
best in the Bible, and she answered "The
Atonement."  He was so struck by her intelligence
that he offered her a children's class,
which soon grew large.  Week by week she
talked to the little ones of sin and the Saviour.
Letting story-books go, she went for their
conversion.  Having to return home on her twelfth
birthday—the last day on which she could
travel with a half-ticket—she told her mother
of her great longing to continue her work
among children.  Her mother readily consented,
and soon there was a weekly gathering
of young folk in a downstairs room of the
Gore Road house.  After a while Katie had the
assistance of her sister Emma, who was her
junior by little more than a year.  Tears were
shed, confessions made, and lives changed in
that room.  And there two of the most brilliant
evangelists of our time first learned to
deal with souls.  They were in every way
kindred spirits.  Long afterwards one finds
Emma writing to Catherine: "We will always
be 'special sisters.'  We were Ma's two first
girls, and were brought up side by side—and
side by side we will labour and love till we
stand with our children in her presence again
before the Throne!"

Katie was thirteen when she first spoke in
public.  No one asked her to do it; she yielded
to an irresistible inward impulse.  Her eldest
brother was conducting an open-air meeting
opposite a low public-house at the corner of Cat
and Mutton Bridge in Hackney.  Katie was
beside him, and whispered, "I will say a few
words."  Her brother was delighted, and she
delivered her message with a directness and
fluency which compelled attention and proved
her a born speaker.  Not very long after, she
spoke in the hearing of the General, who wrote
to his wife, "I don't know whether I told you
how pleased I was with dear Katie speaking
in the streets on Sunday morning.  It was
very nice and effective.  Bless her!"  "From
this time," says Mr. Booth in a document of
great importance, "she continued occasionally
to speak in public meetings, but it was not
until she was between fourteen and fifteen,
when she was with me in Ryde, Isle of Wight,
that I fully realised and settled the question.
During that time my eldest son joined us for
a few days, and, with another friend or two,
held open-air meetings; on one of these
occasions Catherine accompanied them, and her
brother induced her to say a few words, which
it appears fell with extraordinary power upon
the listening crowd of men and others, such as
usually comprise the visitors at these places.
On their return my son described to me the
effects of her address, but, not being fully
emancipated from my old ideas of propriety, I
remonstrated and urged such objections as
I presume any other mother, consecrated but
not fully enlightened, might have urged
against her being thrust into such a public
position at such an early age.  My son, gazing at
me with great solemnity and tenderness, said,
'Mamma, dear, you will have to settle this
question with God, for she is as surely called
and inspired by Him for this particular work
as yourself.'  These words were God's message
to my soul, and helped me to pull myself up
as to the ground of my objection.  I retired
to my room, and, after pouring out my heart
to God, settled the question that henceforth
I would raise no barrier between any of my
children and the carrying out of His will
concerning them, trying to rejoice that they, not
less than myself, should be counted worthy to
suffer shame for His name."

From that time Catherine's path was clearly
marked out.  While she continued her education,
which included a special liking for French,
she gradually undertook more and more public
work.  Her father's delight in her ripening
powers found frequent utterance, and her
companionship with him during the next six
years of work is one of the most beautiful
things in the literature of evangelism.
"William," said Mrs. Booth about this time, "writes
that he is utterly amazed at Katie; he had no
idea that she could speak as she does.  He
says that she is a born leader, and will if she
keeps right see thousands saved....  Praise
His name that she can stand in my stead, and
bear His name to perishing souls."  After
holding meetings in different parts of London,
from Stratford and Poplar to Hammersmith,
Catherine began, just before she was seventeen,
to conduct evangelistic campaigns in many of
the other great cities of England, sometimes
lasting three weeks or a month.  The largest
building in the town densely crowded Sunday
after Sunday, and frequently on week nights
as well; hundreds of people to speak to about
their souls' salvation every week; correspondence
and travel; ceaseless labour and
responsibility—these things absorbed all her
energies of body and mind.  She was but a
frail girl, and suffered for a time from a
curvature of spine, which compelled her to lie on
her back in great weakness and pain.  If she
yet overcame, it is evident that she was
"marvellously helped."

In 1876 Katie was one of the speakers at the
annual Conference in the People's Hall,
Whitechapel.  As she appeared on the platform,
she was described by her lifelong friend,
R. C. Morgan of *The Christian*, as "a fragile,
ladylike girl of seventeen, half woman, half
child, a characteristic product of the Christian
Mission, whose words fell like summer rain
upon the upturned faces of the crowd."  This
was the Conference at which the epoch-making
measure was adopted of appointing women
evangelists to the sole charge of stations.  Miss
Booth was reserved "for general evangelistic
tours."

It is interesting to glance through the
numbers of the old *Christian Mission Magazine* and
light upon brief reports of Catherine's work.
From Hammersmith (1875): "Miss Kate
Booth [age 16] spent a Sabbath with us,
preaching twice with great acceptance.  A large
audience was deeply impressed, and some, we
trust, were truly converted to God."  From
Poplar: "Mr. Bramwell and Miss C. Booth
were with us.  On the Sunday and Monday
evening the hall was crowded, and some thirty
souls at the two services sought salvation....
On Easter Sunday one sister's face was cut
with a stone, and heavy stones fell upon some
on many occasions of late; but we endure as
seeing Him who is invisible."  From
Portsmouth: "Miss Booth, assisted by W. Bramwell
Booth, commenced a series of special services,
which God owned and blessed to the salvation
of many precious souls.  In the morning
Miss Booth preached, and all felt it good to be
there.  Then a love-feast was conducted by
W. B. Booth in the afternoon....  In the
evening Miss Booth preached in the music-hall to
upwards of three thousand people.  The Spirit
applied the Word with power, and seventeen
broke away from the ranks of sin and enlisted
under the banner of Jesus Christ."  Again
from Portsmouth, some months later: "We
had a visit from Miss Booth with her brother
Mr. Bramwell, and again the dear Lord blessed
their labours in this town.  Each service was
fraught with Divine power; many trembled
under the Word, and anxious ones came
forward seeking forgiveness of sins, until the
penitent-rail and vestry were filled with those
who, in bitterness of soul, sought pardon and
peace through Jesus."

From Limehouse (1876): "We had dear
Miss Booth and her brother, and a blessed day.
In the evening she preached with wonderful
power, and ten or twelve came out for God.
May they be kept faithful!"  From Portsmouth:
"Miss Booth's visit was made of the
Lord a great blessing to us all.  Very few who
listened to her in the morning will forget how
she pleaded with us to present our bodies a
living sacrifice.  Oh, may God bless her and
make her a mighty blessing, for Christ's
sake."  From Whitechapel (1877): "An earnest
appeal was made at one of our Sunday evening
services by Miss Booth, from 'Run, speak to
that young man.'  Although in very delicate
health, the Lord blessedly assisted her.  The
word was with power, and eleven souls decided
for Jesus, among whom was the converted
Potman.  This young man was a leader in petty
and mischievous annoyances.  The genuineness
of his conversion was evidenced by his giving
up the public-house work to seek more
honourable employment."  From Middlesbro' (1878):
"Miss Booth visited us for five days, and
many blood-bought souls have been blessed and
saved.  Her first Sunday with us was a day
of power, and it will not be soon forgotten by
those present.  It was a grand sight to see
a large hall filled to the door with anxious
hearers, while hundreds went away; but the
grandest sight of all was to see old and young
flocking to the penitent form."  From
Leicester: "Miss Booth's services may be
summarised in the statement that she had
twenty-two souls the first Sunday evening, and
increasing victory thereafter right on to the end."

At Whitby there was a six weeks' campaign,
organised by Captain Cadman.  On the first
Sunday "the large hall, which holds three
thousand, was well filled, and in the after
service many souls were brought to Jesus."  On
the second Sunday "Miss Booth was listened
to with breathless attention.  In the after
service we drew the net to land, having a
multitude of fishes, and among them we found we
had caught a fox-hunter, a dog-fancier,
drunkards, a Roman Catholic, and many others.  In
the week-night services souls were saved every
night.  The proprietor of the hall had got
some large bills out announcing 'Troupe of
Arctic Skaters in the Congress Hall for a
week,' but he put them off by telling them it
was no use coming, as all the town was being
evangelised."  The concluding services "drew
great crowds from all parts of town and country,
rich and poor, until the hall was so filled
that there was no standing room."  In a
Consecration meeting, "After Miss Booth's
address we formed a large ring in the centre of
the hall, which brought the power down upon
us; hundreds looked on with astonishment and
tears in their eyes, whilst others gave
themselves wholly to God....  Ministers, like
Nicodemus of old, came to see by what power these
miracles were wrought, and, going back to
their congregations, resolved to serve God
better, and to preach the gospel more faithfully
in the future."

From Leeds: "Miss Booth in the Circus.
A glorious month.  Hard-hearted sinners
broken down.  Best of all, our own people
have been getting blessedly near to God.  On
Sunday mornings love feasts from nine to ten....
It would be impossible to give even an outline
of the various and glorious cases of
conversion that have come under our notice
through the month which is past.  For truly
Christ has been bringing to His fold rich and
poor, young and old."  From Cardiff: "The
question, 'Does this work stand?' received a
magnificent reply on Sunday.  The crowds
who filled the Stuart Hall, to hear Miss Booth,
were the largest any one can remember seeing
during all the four years of the Mission's
history there."  From King's Lynn: "Miss
Booth's Mission.  The town has had a royal
visit from the Lord of Lords and King of
Kings.  There has been a great awakening,
and trembling, and turning to the Lord.
Whole families have been saved, and whole
courts have sought salvation.  Our holiness
meeting will never be forgotten....  The work
here rolls on gloriously.  Not only in Lynn but
for miles round the town it is well known that
a marvellous work has been done and is still
going forward."

All these battles and victories were naturally
followed by the General with intense interest,
and as often as it was possible he was at his
daughter's side.  Mrs. Booth joined them when
they were opening a campaign together at
Stockton-on-Tees, and sent her impressions to
a friend.  "Pa and Katie had a blessed
beginning yesterday.  Theatre crowded at night,
and fifteen cases.  I heard Katie for the first
time since we were at Cardiff.  I was
astonished at the advance she had made.  I wish
you had been there, I think you would have
been as pleased as I was.  It was sweet, tender,
forcible, and Divine.  I could only adore and
weep.  She looked like an angel, and the
people were melted, and spellbound like children."  The
General began to call her his "Blücher,"
for she helped to win many a hard-fought
battle which he might otherwise have lost.  When
the rowdies threatened to take the upper hand
at a meeting, he would say, "Put on Katie,
she's our last card; if she fails we'll close the
meeting."

"I remember," wrote her eldest brother, "a
striking instance of this occurring in a certain
northern town on a Sunday night.  A crowd
assembled at the doors of the theatre, composed
of the lowest and roughest of the town, who,
overpowering the doorkeepers, pressed into the
building and took complete possession of one
of the galleries, so that by the time the
remainder of the theatre was occupied this
portion of it represented a scene more like a
crowded tap-room than the gallery of what was
for the moment a place of worship.  Rows of
men sat smoking and spitting, others were
talking and laughing aloud, while many with
hats on were standing in the aisles and
passages, bandying to and fro jokes and criticisms
of the coarsest character.  All this continued
with little intermission during the opening
exercises, and the more timid among us had
practically given up hope about the meeting, when
Miss Booth rose, and standing in front of the
little table just before the footlights,
commenced to sing, with such feeling and unction
as it is impossible to describe with pen and ink,

   |  'The rocks and the mountains will all flee away.
   |  And you will need a hiding-place that day.'

There was instantaneous silence over the whole
house; after singing two or three stanzas, she
stopped and announced her text, 'Let me die
the death of the righteous and let my last end
be like His.'  While she did so nearly every
head in the gallery was uncovered, and within
fifteen minutes both she and every one of the
fifteen hundred people present were completely
absorbed in her subject, and for forty minutes
no one stirred or spoke among that unruly
crowd, until she made her concluding appeal,
and called for volunteers to begin the new life
of righteousness, when a great big navvy-looking
man rose up, and in the midst of the throng
in the gallery exclaimed, 'I'll make one!'  He
was followed by thirty others that night."

.. _`32`:

.. figure:: images/img-032.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: CATHERINE BOOTH (*From a portrait by Edward Clifford, exhibited at the Royal Academy and presented to Mrs. Booth*)

   CATHERINE BOOTH 
   (*From a portrait by Edward Clifford, exhibited at the Royal Academy 
   and presented to Mrs. Booth*)

Well might the General's hopes regarding
the young soul-winner be high and confident.
"Papa," wrote Mrs. Booth, "says he felt very
proud of her the other day as she walked by
his side at the head of a procession with an
immense crowd at their heels.  He turned to her
and said, 'Ah, my lass, you shall wear a crown
by-and-by.'"

With what desires and prayers the mother
of this *Wunderkind* followed such a career is
indicated by her letters.  "Oh, it seems to me
that if I were in your place—young—no cares
or anxieties—with such a start, such influence,
and such a prospect, I should not be able to
contain myself for joy.  I should indeed aspire
to be 'the bride of the Lamb,' and to follow
Him in conflict for the salvation of poor, lost
and miserable man....  I don't want you to
make any vows (unless, indeed, the Spirit
leads you to do so), but I want you to set your
mind and heart on winning souls, and to leave
everything else with the Lord.  When you
do this you will be happy—oh, so happy!  Your
soul will then find perfect rest.  The Lord
grant it you, my dear child....  I have been
'careful about many things.'  I want you to
care only for the *one* thing....  Look forward,
my child, into eternity—*on*, and ON, and ON.
You are to live *for ever*.  This is only the
infancy of existence—the school-days, the
time.  Then is the grand, great, glorious
eternal harvest."

Whatever gifts were the dower of the young
evangelist, she refused to regard herself as
different in God's sight from the poorest and
meanest of sinners.  If God loved her, He
loved all with an equal love.  That conviction
was the motive-power of all her evangelism.
A limited atonement was to her unthinkable.
How often she has made vast audiences sing
her father's great hymn, "O boundless
salvation, so full and so free!"  When she was
conducting a remarkable campaign in Portsmouth,
she found herself one day among a number of
the ministers of the town, one of whom in his
admiration of her and her work persisted in
calling her one of the elect.  This led to an
animated discussion on election.  Katie listened
for a while, but lost patience at last, and,
rising, delivered herself thus: "I am not one
of the elect, and I don't want to be.  I would
rather be with the poor devils outside than
with you inside."  Having discharged this
bombshell she flew upstairs to her mother.
"Oh!" she cried, "what have I done?"  When
she repeated what she had said, her mother,
whose laugh was always hearty, screamed with
delight.  Election as commonly taught was
rank poison to the Mother of the Army.  The
doctrine that God has out of His mere good
pleasure elected *some* to eternal life made her
wild with indignation.  When her son Bramwell
was staying for a time in Scotland, she
wrote him: "It seems a peculiarity of the
awful doctrine of Calvinism that it makes those
who hold it far more interested in and anxious
about its propagation than about the diminution
of sin and the salvation of souls....  It
may be God will bless your sling and stone to
deliver His servant out of the paw of this bear
of hell—Calvinism."

.. vspace:: 2

One naturally asks what became of Catherine's
education all this time.  On this subject
also Mrs. Booth held strong views.  When her
daughter was sixteen she wrote to her: "You
must not think that we do not rightly value
education, or that we are indifferent on the
subject.  We have denied ourselves the
common necessaries of life to give you the best in
our power, and I think this has proved that
we put a right value on it.  But we put God
and righteousness *first* and education second,
and if I had life to begin over again I should
be still more particular....  I would like you to
learn to put your thoughts together forcibly
and well, to think logically and clearly, to
speak powerfully, *i.e.* with good but simple
language, and to write legibly and well, which
will have more to do with your usefulness than
half the useful knowledge you would have to
spend your time over at College."  When the
principal of a Ladies' College, who had
attended Mrs. Booth's meetings and been blessed,
offered to receive Catherine and educate her
gratuitously, Mrs. Booth, after visiting the
College and breathing the atmosphere of the
place, declined the tempting offer with thanks.
Some will, of course, be disposed to question
the wisdom of the mother's decision.  It should
not be impossible to combine the noblest
learning with the most fervent faith.  Yet every
discipline must be judged by its fruits.  How
many Catherine Booths have hitherto been
produced by Newnham and Girton?

.. vspace:: 2

Long after Catherine the second had left
her home-land, she continued to receive letters
from her English converts, and when, after
many years, she resumed her evangelistic work
in England, people whom she had never seen
and never heard of before would come and tell
her that they had been saved through her mission
at this or that place.  All these testimonies
were like bells ringing in her soul.  One out of
many may be resounded.  Writing to Paris in
1896, Henry Howard, now the Chief of Staff
in the Army, said: "I have certainly never
forgotten your Ilkeston campaign of sixteen
years ago, when God made your soul a
messenger to my soul.  You led me towards an
open door which I am pleased to remember I
went in at, and during these many years your
own share in my life's transformation has
often been the subject of grateful praise."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SECRET OF EVANGELISM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SECRET OF EVANGELISM

.. vspace:: 2

After many victories at home, William and
Catherine Booth began to look abroad.  They
realised that "the field is the world," and they
longed to commence operations on the Continent.
In the summer of 1881, with high hopes
and some natural fears, they dedicated their
eldest daughter to France.  In giving her they
gave their best.  Delicate girl though she was,
she had become one of the greatest spiritual
forces in England.  She swayed vast
multitudes by something higher than mere
eloquence.  Wherever she went revivals broke
out and hundreds were converted.  There was
a pathos and a power in her appeals which
made them irresistible.

At the time of her departure she received
many letters from friends whom she had
spiritually helped, and who realised how much they
would miss her in England.  Nowhere had
she done more good, nowhere could her
absence create a greater blank, than in her own
home.  Her sister Eva wrote: "I cannot bear
the thought that you are gone.  You have
always understood me.  I hope one day to be
of some use to you, in return for all you have
done for me."  And her brother Herbert wrote
her: "You cannot know how much I felt your
leaving.  The blow came so suddenly.  You
were gone.  Only God and myself know how
much I had lost in you.  I can truthfully say
that you have been *everything* to me, and if it
had not been for you I should never have been
where and what I am spiritually at present.
God bless you a thousand thousand times.
Oh! how I long to be of some little service to you
after all you have been to me....  Thousands
upon thousands of true, loving hearts are
bearing you up at the Eternal throne, mine among
them.  You have a chance that men of the
past would have given their blood for, and
that the very angels in Heaven covet."

There was no *Entente Cordiale* in those
days, and at the thought of parting with Katie,
and letting her go to live in the slums of Paris,
Mrs. Booth confessed that she "felt unutterable
things."  In a letter to a friend she wrote:
"The papers I read on the state of Society in
Paris make me shudder, and I see all the
dangers to which our darling will be exposed!"  But
if her fears were great, her faith was
greater.  Asked by Lady Cairns how she dared
to send a girl so young and unprotected into
such surroundings, she answered, "Her
innocence is her strength, and Katie knows the
Lord."  And if Katie herself was asked to
define Christianity, she answered, "Christianity
is heroism!"  For a girl of this spirit, was
there, after all, anything so formidable in the
French people?  Was there not rather a
pre-established harmony between her and the
pleasant land of France, as her remarkable
predilection for the French language already
seemed to indicate?  Is any nation in the
world so chivalrous as the French? any nation
so sensitive to the charm of manner, the
magnetic power of personality? any nation—in
spite of all its hatred of clericalism—gifted
with so infallible a sense of the beauty of true
holiness?  *Courage, camarade!*

What were the ideas with which Catherine
began her work in Paris?  What was her plan
of campaign?  How did she hope to conquer?
On these points let us listen to herself.  "I
saw," she says, "that the bridge to France
was—making the French people believe in me.
That is what the Protestants do not
understand.  They preach the Bible, they write
books, they offer tracts.  But that does not
do the work.  'Curse your bibles, your books,
your tracts!' cry the French.  I have seen
thousands of testaments given away to very
little purpose.  I have seen them torn up to
light cigars.  And the conviction that took
shape in my mind was that, unless I could
inspire faith in me, there was no hope.  Only if
Jesus is lifted up in flesh and blood, will He
to-day draw all men to Him.  If I cannot *give
Him*, I shall fail.  France has not waited till
now for religion, for preaching, for eloquence.
Something more is needed.  'I that speak unto
thee am He'—there is a sense in which the
world is waiting for that to-day.  You may
say that this leads to fanaticism, to all sorts
of error; and yet I always come back to it.
Christ's primary idea, His means of saving the
world, is, after all, personality.  The face, the
character, the life of Jesus is to be seen in
men and women.  This is the bridge to the
seething masses who believe in nothing, who
hate religion, who cry 'Down with Jesus
Christ!'  What sympathy I felt with them as
I listened to their angry cries against
something which they had never really seen or
known.  They shout 'Jesuits,' but they have
never seen Jesus.  Could they but see Him,
they would still 'receive Him gladly.'  It is the
priests' religion that has made them bitter.
'Money to be baptised!  Money to be married!
Money to be buried!' was what I heard them
mutter.  Ah! they are quick to recognise the
comedian in religion, and equally quick to
recognise the real thing.  France is more sensitive
to disinterested love than any nation I have
ever known.  France will never accept a
religion without sacrifice.

"These were the convictions with which I
began the work in Paris, and, if I had to begin
it over again to-day, I would go on the same
lines.  When I knew what I had to do, my
mind was at rest.  I said, 'We will lay
ourselves out for them; they shall know where
we live, they can watch us day and night,
they shall see what we do and judge us.'  And
the wonderful thing in those first years of our
work in France and Switzerland was *the flame*.
We lighted it all along the line.  Wherever we
went we brought the fire with us, we fanned
it, we communicated it.  We could not help
doing so, because it was in us, and that was
what made us sufferers.  The fire had to be
burning in us day and night.  That is our
symbol—the fire, the fire!

   |  Seigneur, ce que mon coeur réclame,
   |      C'est le Feu ...
   |  Le seul secret de la Victoire,
   |      C'est le Feu.

We all know what the fire is.  It warms and it
burns; it scorches the Pharisees and makes the
cowards fly.  But the poor, tempted, unhappy
world knows by whom it is kindled, and says:
'I know Thee who Thou art—the Holy One
of God!'

"That was what filled the halls at Havre
and Rouen, Nîmes and Bordeaux, Brussels
and Liège.  We personified Some One, and
that was the attraction.  I have not the
insufferable conceit to suppose that it was
anything in *me* that drew them.  What am I?
Dust and ashes.  But if you have the fire, it
draws, it melts; it consumes all selfishness; it
makes you love as He loves; it gives you a
heart of steel to yourself, and the tenderest of
hearts to others; it gives you eyes to see what
no one else sees, to hear what others have
never given themselves the trouble to listen
to.  And men rush to you because you are
what you are; you are as He was in the world;
you have His sympathy, His Divine love, His
Divine patience.  Therefore He gives you the
victory over the world; and what is money,
what are houses, lands, anything, compared
with that?

"This was the one attraction.  When I went
to France I said to Christ: 'I in You and
You in me!' and many a time in confronting
a laughing, scoffing crowd, single-handed, I
have said, 'You and I are enough for them.
I won't fail You, and You won't fail
me.'  That is something of which we have only
touched the fringe.  That is a truth almost
hermetically sealed.  It would be sacrilege, it
would be desecration, it would be wrong,
unfair, unjust if Divine power were given on any
other terms than absolute self-abandonment.
When I went to France I said to Jesus, 'I
will suffer anything if You will give me the
keys.'  And if I am asked what was the secret
of our power in France, I answer: First,
love; second, love; third, love.  And if you
ask how to get it, I answer: First, by sacrifice;
second, by sacrifice; third, by sacrifice.
Christ loved us passionately, and loves to be
loved passionately.  He gives Himself to those
who love Him passionately.  And the world
has yet to see what can be done on these
lines."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHRIST IN PARIS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   CHRIST IN PARIS

.. vspace:: 2

In the early spring of 1881 Captain
Catherine Booth and her intrepid lieutenants,
Florence Soper, Adelaide Cox and Elizabeth
Clark, who enjoyed the privilege of her
example and training, began life in Paris.  Later
on they were joined by Ruth Patrick, Lucy
Johns and others.  Soon after they were joined
by the General's youngest son, Herbert Booth,
who is proud of having received his first black
eye in assisting his sister during those early
fights, and Arthur Sydney Clibborn, who lived
a life of unparalleled devotion and heroism,
and later became the Maréchale's husband.
Years before Canon Barnett and his band of
Oxford men were attracted to Whitechapel,
these fresh young English girls settled in a
similar quarter of the French capital.  What
quixotic impulses carried them thither?  They
had no social or political ideals to realise.  They
had not been persuaded that altruism is better
than egoism, that the enthusiasm of humanity
is nobler than the pursuit of pleasure or the
love of culture.  They were not weary of the
conventions of society and seeking a new
sensation in slumming.  They were not playing
at soldiers.  But they, too, had their dreams
and visions.  They loved Christ, and they
wished to see Christ victorious in Paris.
Coming into a wilderness of poverty, squalor and
vice, they dared to believe that they could make
the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.
They had the faith which laughs at impossibilities.

The first letter Catherine received from her
father after she set foot in France breathed
tender affection and ardent hope.  "Oh, my
heart does yearn over you!  How could you
fear for a single moment that you would be
any less near and dear to me on account of
your brave going forth to a land of strangers
to help me in the great purpose and struggle
of my life?  My darling, you are nearer and
dearer than ever....  France is hanging on
you to an extent fearful to contemplate, and
you must regard your health, seeing that we
cannot go on without you.  We shall
anxiously await information as to when you make
a start.  Everybody who has heard you and
knows you feels the fullest confidence in the
result.  Nevertheless I shall be glad for you
to get to work, seeing that I know you won't
be easy in your mind until you have seen a
few French sinners smashed up at the penitent
form."

With her own hand Catherine raised the
flag at Rue d'Angoulême 66, in Belleville.
Here was a hall for six hundred, situated in a
court approached by a narrow street.  The bulk
of the audience that gathered there night after
night were of the artisan class.  Some were
young men of a lower type, and from these
came what disturbance there was.  The French
sense of humour is keen, and there were many
lively sallies at the expense of the speakers and
singers on the platform.  Every false accent,
every wrong idiom, every unexpected utterance
or gesture was received with an outburst
of laughter.  But the mirth was superficial,
and the expression on the faces of the tired
men, harassed women, and pale children was
one of settled melancholy.  Catherine
instinctively felt that what they needed was a gospel
of joy; certainly not the preaching of hell, for
did they not live in hell?  These toiling sisters
and brothers were the multitudes on whom
Jesus had compassion.

Meetings were held night after night, and
for six months the Capitaine was never absent
except on Saturdays.  Those were days of
fight, and she fought, to use her own phrase,
like a tiger.  She had to fight first her own
heart.  She knew her capacity, and God had
done great things through her in England.
The change from an audience of five thousand
spellbound hearers in the circus of Leeds to a
handful of gibing *ouvriers* in the Belleville
quarter of Paris was indeed a clashing
antithesis.  A fortnight passed without a single
penitent, and Catherine was all the time so ill
that it was doubtful if she would be able to
remain in the field.  That fortnight was
probably one of the supreme trials of her faith.
The work appeared so hopeless!  There was
nothing to see.  But for the Capitaine faith
meant *going on*.  It meant saying to her heart,
"You may suffer, you may bleed, you may
break, but you shall go on."  She went on,
believing, praying, fighting, and at last the tide
of battle turned.

The beginning of what proved a memorable
meeting was more than usually unpromising.
One of the tormentors, a terrible woman,
known as "the devil's wife," excelled herself
that night.  She was of immense size, and used
to stand in the hall with arms akimbo and
sleeves rolled up above the elbows, and with
one wink of her eye would set everybody
screaming and yelling.  On this occasion there
was not a thing that she did not turn to
ridicule.  The fun grew fast and furious, and
some of the audience got up and began to
dance.  The meeting seemed to be lost; but by
a master-stroke the leader turned defeat into
victory.  Through the din she cried, "Mes
amis!  I will give you twenty minutes to dance,
if you will then give me twenty minutes to
speak.  Are you agreed?"  A tall, dark, handsome
*ouvrier*, in a blue blouse, who had been a
ringleader in the disturbances, jumped up and
said, "Citizens, it is only fair play;" and they
all agreed.  So they had their dance, and at
the end of the appointed time the *ouvrier*,
standing with watch in hand, cried, "Time up,
citizens; it is the Capitaine's turn!"  The
bargain was kept.  Everybody sat down, and an
extraordinary silence filled the place.  Not for
twenty, but for an hour and twenty minutes
the leader had the meeting in the hollow of her
hand.  When the audience filed out, the tall
*ouvrier* remained behind, and Catherine went
down to where he was sitting in the back of the
hall.  With his chiselled face and firm-set
mouth, he looked like a man who could have
seen one burned alive without moving a muscle.

"Thank you," said the Capitaine, "you have
helped me to-night.  Have you understood
what I have been saying?"

"I believe that you believe what you say."

"Oh! of course I believe."

"Well, I was not sure before."  With a sigh
he added, "Have you time to listen?"

"Yes, certainly."

It was midnight and they were alone.  As
he began in softest tones to tell the story of
his inner life, she felt the delicacy of the soul
that is hidden under the roughest exterior.  He
said, "I had the happiest home in all Paris.  I
married the woman I loved, and after twelve
months a little boy came to our home.  Three
weeks after, my wife lost her reason, and now
she is in an asylum.  But there was still my
little boy.  He was a beautiful child.  We ate
together, slept together, walked and talked
together.  He was all the world to me.  He
was the first to greet me in the morning, and
the first to welcome me in the evening when I
came home from work.  This went on till the
sixth year struck, and then...."  His lips
twitched, and he turned his face away.  His
hearer softly said, "He died."  He gave a
scarcely perceptible nod, and smothered a
groan.  "And then," he continued, "I went to
the devil.  Before the open grave in the Père
Lachaise cemetery, with hundreds of my comrades
about me, I lifted my hand to heaven and
cried, 'If there be a God, let Him strike me
dead!'"

"But He did not strike you dead?"

"No."

"He is very gentle and patient with us all.
And now you have come here to-night.  Does
it not seem to you a strange thing that you
out of all the millions of France, and I out of
all the millions of England should be all alone
together here at midnight?  How do you
account for it?  Isn't it because God thought of
you, and loves you? ... Do you ever pray?"

"I pray?  Oh, never!  Perhaps I prayed as
a child, but never now."

"But I pray," said the Capitaine, and,
kneeling down, she prayed a double prayer, for
herself as well as for him.  She wanted this
man's salvation for her own sake and the
work's sake.  For weeks she had been fighting
and praying for a break, and she felt as if on
the issue of this wrestling for a single soul
depended the whole future of the work in
France.  While she prayed for his salvation
from sin she was silently praying for her own
deliverance from doubt and fear and
discouragement.  And both prayers were heard.
When she opened her eyes, she saw his face
bathed in tears.  She knew that his heart was
melted, and she spoke to him of the love of God.

"But I have hated Him.  I have hated
religion; I have come here to mock you; I have
called you Jesuits."

"Yet God loves you."

"But why did He allow my wife to lose her
reason?  Why did He take my child if He
is love?"

"I cannot answer these questions.  You will
know why one day.  But I know He loves you."

"Is it possible that He can forgive a poor
sinner like me?"

"It is certain."

Émile was won.  Some nights afterward he
gave his testimony, and for seven years he
always stood by the Maréchale.  He was her
best helper.  When he used to get up to speak,
there was immediate attention.  "Citizens,"
he would say, "you all know me.  You have
heard me many times.  This God whom I
once hated I now love, and I want to speak to
you about Him."

After this, conversions became frequent.
The mercy-seat was rarely empty.  One of the
first French songs of Catherine's composition
contained the most curious idioms:

   |  Quand je suis souffrant,
   |  Entendez mon cri, etc.
   |                —Donnez moi Jesus.

But she sang it with such feeling that it was
the means of the conversion of a clever young
governess, who became one of her most
devoted officers.

Then another striking conquest was made.
One night a rough fellow, partly drunk,
approached the Capitaine and said a vile word to
her in the hearing of "the devil's wife," who
dealt him a blow that sent him reeling across
the hall crying, "You dare not touch her, she
is too pure for us!" (*Elle est trop pure pour
nous!*)  Catherine rushed between them and
stopped the fight.  Thus "la femme du diable"
was won, and from that time she got two or
three others to join her in forming Catherine's
bodyguard, who nightly escorted her and
her comrades through the Rue d'Allemagne,
which was a haunt of criminals, and saw her
safe at the door of her flat in the Avenue Parmentier.

When Baron Cederström was seeking local
colour for his painting "The Maréchale in the
Café,"[1] he drove down with his wife to a
meeting in the Rue d'Angoulême.  As they
approached the hall, the Baroness caught sight of
some of the faces and took fright.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[1] This painting is now in the picture gallery of Stockholm.
The artist, as is well known, afterwards married
Madame Patti.

.. vspace:: 2

"Go back, go back!" she shouted to the
coachman.

The Baron tried in vain to reassure her.

"Give me my salts!" she cried, feeling as if
she would faint.  "I never saw such faces in
my life.  They are all murderers and
brigands."  To Catherine, who came out to
welcome her, she exclaimed, "I am sure the good
God won't send *you* to Purgatory, for you
have it here!"

"You have nothing to fear," was the answer;
"I am here every night."  But as the
Baroness was led up to the front seats, she still
cast scared looks at the people she passed.

Some of the politically dangerous classes did
give trouble for a time.  Knives were
displayed and some blood was shed.  An excited
sergeant of police declared one night that half
the cut-throats of Paris were in that hall, and
by order of the authorities it was closed.  Soon,
however, the meetings were again in full swing,
and when Catherine's eldest brother Bramwell,
her comrade in many an English campaign,
paid her a flying visit three months after she
left home, he was delighted with all that he
saw.  "The meetings," he wrote, "are held
every night.  The congregations vary from
150 to 400....  On Sunday, at three, I attended
the testimony meeting, which is only for
converts and friends.  About seventy were
present.  Miss Booth took the centre, and gathered
round her a little company.  I cannot describe
that meeting.  When I heard those French
converts singing that first hymn, 'Nearer to
heaven, nearer to heaven,' I wept for joy, and
during the season of prayer which followed my
heart overflowed.  Here, using another tongue,
among a strange people, almost alone, this
little band have trusted the Lord and
triumphed....  Then testimonies were invited....
I wept and rejoiced, and wept again.  I
glorified God.  Had I not heard these
seventeen people speak in their own language of
God's saving power in Paris during those few
weeks!  I require all who read this to rejoice.
I believe they will.  Remember how great a
task it is to awaken the conscience before
Christ can be offered; to convince of sin as
well as of righteousness; to call to repentence
as well as faith....  On the following night 300
were present....  Miss Booth stepped off the
platform as she concluded her address, and
came down, as so many of us have seen her
come down at home, into the midst of the
people.  Her closing appeal seemed to go through
them.  Many were deeply moved.  Some of
those sitting at the back, who had evidently
come largely for fun, quailed before one's very
eyes, and seemed subdued and softened.  God
was working."

Later in the year the new headquarters on
the Quai de Valmy were opened.  Here there
was a hall for 1200.  No other form of religion
could draw such an assembly of the lowest class
of Parisians as nightly met in it.  The men
came in their blouses, kept their caps on their
heads, and—except that they abstained from
smoking, in obedience to a notice at the
door—behaved with the freedom and ease of a
music-hall audience.  But the earnest way in which
most of those present joined in the hymns
proved that they were not mere spectators, and
it was astonishing that many rough, unkempt,
and even brutal-looking men soon learned to
sing heartily without using the book.

There were a hundred converts in the first
year and another five hundred in the second.
Paris herself began to testify that a good work
had been begun in her midst.  On the way to
and from the hall in the Rue d'Angoulême
Catherine, who by this time had begun to be
endearingly known as the Maréchale, the highest
military title in France, used often to meet
a priest, to whom she always said "Bon jour,
mon père."  One day he paused and said,
"Madame la Maréchale, I want to tell you that
since you began your work in this quarter the
moral atmosphere of the whole place has
changed.  I meet the fruits everywhere, and I
can tell better than you what you are doing."  She
felt that God sent her that word of encouragement.

One of her letters of this time indicates
what kind of impression her work was making.
"There is a man," she wrote, "who has
attended our meetings most regularly.  He
listens with breathless attention, and sometimes
the tears flow down his cheeks.  He was visited,
and sent me 70 francs for our work, with a
message that he desired to see me.  I saw him,
and he gave me 80 more, with the words
'*Sauvez la jeunesse*'!  ('Save the young!')  I
found him very dark and hopeless about
himself....  The next week he again called me
aside in the hall, put 50 francs into my hand,
saying he hoped soon we should have a hall in
every quarter of Paris.  'Save the young
people!' he again said.  I said 'Yes, but I want to
see you saved.'  'That will come,' he said, and
left the hall.  Last Sunday afternoon, I
noticed him weeping in a corner of the hall, as
our young people were witnessing for Jesus,
and, after the services, he asked if he might
speak to me for two minutes; this time he
handed me 60 francs, telling me to go on
praying for him.  He has lived a bad life and is
troubled with the thought of the past."

It began to be commonly believed that the
Maréchale could work certain kinds of
miracles.  A woman who had attended the
meetings, and been blessed in her soul, became
convinced that the English lady had power to cast
out devils, and one day she brought a neighbour
to the physician of souls, introducing her
with the remark, "She has not only one but
seven devils."  The new-comer had a frightful
face.  She was so drunken, immoral and violent
that nobody could live with her.  Yet she, too,
had a soul.  The Maréchale made her get down
on her knees, put both her hands on her head,
and prayed that the devils might all be cast
out.  "She's now another woman," was the
testimony soon after borne by all her neighbours.

One of the surest indications of the success
of the work in Paris is found in the fact that,
before the end of the first year there was a
general demand for a newspaper corresponding
in some degree to the English *War Cry*.
That was a memorable day on which the Maréchale
and her officers sat in their Avenue
Parmentier flat, like a coterie of Fleet Street
journalists, gravely discussing their new
venture.  It was indicative of the holy simplicity
of the editor-in-chief that she thought at first
of changing *The War Cry* into *Amour*.  She
did not realise the sensation which the cry
"Amour, un sou!" would have created in the
Boulevards.  Her proposal was overruled, but
her second suggestion, to call the paper *En
Avant*, was received with acclamation.  This
was a real inspiration.  The paper duly
appeared in the beginning of 1882, and has gone
on successfully ever since.  The shouting of
its name in the streets set all the world and his
wife a-thinking and a-talking.  What if the
Man of Nazareth is after all far ahead of our
modern philosophers and statesmen, and if this
handful of English girls is come to lead us all
*forward* to true liberty, equality and fraternity?

The reports of the work in France were
received with feelings of gratitude at home.
To "My dear Kittens"—a family pet-name—her
brother Bramwell wrote: "We are more
than satisfied with your progress.  The General
says that so far as he can judge your rate
of advance in making people is greater than
his own was at the beginning.  I am sure you
ought to feel only the liveliest confidence and
greatest encouragement all the time."  And to
"My darling Blücher" the General himself
wrote, "I appreciate and admire and daily
thank God for your courage and love and
endurance.  God will and must bless you.  We
pray for you.  I feel I live over again in you.
We all send you our heartiest greetings and
our most tender affection.  Look up.  Don't
forget *my* sympathy.  Don't trouble to answer
my scrawls.  I never like to see your
handwriting because I know it means your
poor back.  Remember me to all your comrades."

"I feel I live over again in you."  The
thought was evidently habitual in the
General's mind.  "He bids me tell you," wrote
Emma, "that you are his second self."  The
resemblance was physical as well as spiritual.
With her tall figure, her chiselled face, her
aquiline nose, her penetrating blue eyes,
Catherine became, as time went on, more and more
strikingly like her father.  One of her sons,
who saw her stooping over the General the day
before he died, said that the two pallid faces
were like facsimiles in marble.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD

.. vspace:: 2

In the autumn of 1883 the Maréchale suddenly
leapt into fame as a latter-day Portia,
brilliantly and successfully pleading in a Swiss
law-court, before the eyes of Europe, the
sacred cause of civil and religious liberty.  The
land of Tell, the oldest of modern republics,
has always been regarded as a shrine of
freedom.  It has shown itself hospitable to all
kinds of ideas, even the newest, the strangest,
the most anti-Christian, the most anti-social.
There is a natural affinity between free
England and free Switzerland.

   |  "Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
   |  One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice:
   |  In both from age to age thou didst rejoice;
   |  They were thy chosen music, Liberty."
   |

In the "Treaty of Friendship" between
Great Britain and Switzerland, drawn up in
1855, it was agreed that "the subjects and
citizens of either of the two contracting parties
shall, provided they conform to the laws of the
country, be at liberty, with their families, to
enter, establish themselves, reside and remain
in any part of the territories of the other."  Yet
the presence of a few English evangelists
in Switzerland evoked a storm of persecution
in which the first principles of religious liberty
were as much violated as ever they had been
in the days of the Huguenots.

When the Maréchale and some comrades
accepted an urgent invitation to Switzerland,
she little thought that she would be the
heroine of an historical trial.  She went to
preach the gospel.  She observed the laws of
the land, and respected the religious
susceptibilities of its people.  When she entered
Geneva, she published only one poster, and that
after it had been duly *visé*; she allowed no
processions, banners or brass bands in the
streets.  Her only crime was that she sought
to gain the ears of those who never entered a
place of worship, and that she marvellously
succeeded.

If good order was not always maintained
at her meetings, it was not her fault, but that
of the authorities who refused to do their duty.
History repeats itself.  As in ancient Thessalonica
during the visit of St. Paul, so in modern
Geneva, some citizens, "moved with jealousy,
took unto themselves certain vile fellows
of the rabble, and gathering a crowd set the
city on an uproar."  The ringleaders of the
disturbance were paid by noted traffickers in
vice, who were themselves often seen in the
meetings inciting the audience to riot.  One
of the first converts, a student, confessed that
he had got twenty francs a night, and as much
whisky as he could drink, to make a row.

The Department of Justice and Police
chanced at that time to have as its president
a Councillor of State, M. Heridier, who
thought it right not to punish the offenders
but to banish their victims.  In a sitting of the
Grand Council he said, "We have been
petitioned to call out a company of gendarmerie
to protect these foreigners, and to prevent
brawls and rows.  I will not consent to take
such a step.  There are already eight police
agents in these places every evening who have
a very hard time of it....  These agents might
be doing more useful work elsewhere, and I
am just about to withdraw them."  That meant
handing over the strangers to the tender
mercies of the mob.  It was a gross breach of
the laws of hospitality and chivalry as well as
of the constitution of a free country.  The
city of Calvin did not know the day of its visitation.

The Maréchale and her comrades began their
meetings in the Casino on December 22, 1882.
The hall was crowded, and soon there was
raging a great battle between the powers of light
and darkness.  A disturbance had evidently
been organised.  A band of students in
coloured caps, who had come early and taken
possession of the front of the galleries and
other prominent positions, were on their worst
behaviour.  The first hymn was interrupted by
cries and ribald songs, and the prayer which
followed was almost drowned.  But the Maréchale
was never more calm and confident than
when facing such music.  At every slight lull
in the storm, she uttered, in clear, penetrating
tones, some pointed words which pierced many
a heart.  Within an hour she not only had
subdued her audience but was inviting those who
desired salvation to come forward to the
penitent form.  Scoffers of half an hour ago left
their places, trembling under the sense of guilt,
and as they knelt down the Maréchale sang, in
soft notes, the hymn:

   |  Reviens, reviens, pauvre pécheur,
   |    Ton Père encore t'attend;
   |  Veux-tu languir loin du bonheur,
   |    Et pécher plus longtemps?

   |  O! reviens à ton Sauveur,
   |    Reviens ce soir,
   |  Il veut te recevoir,
   |    Reviens à ton Sauveur!

A strange influence stole over the meeting,
hushing the crowd into profound silence, and
the Spirit did His work in many hearts.

The Maréchale conducted a similar service
the following night, and on Christmas Eve she
faced an audience of 3000 in the Salle de la
Reformation.  Its composition was entirely to
her mind, for she was never so inspired with
divine pity and power as when she was
confronting the worst elements of a town.  The
theatres, the cabarets, the dancing saloons,
the drinking dens, and the rendezvous of
prostitution had poured their contents into the hall.
Socialists who had found refuge in Geneva—men
of many nationalities—came *en masse*.  A
large part of the audience were so entirely
strangers to the idea of worship or of a Divine
Being, that the sound of prayer called forth
loud derisive laughter, with questions and cries
of surprise and scorn.

But the soldiers of Christ, clad in armour of
light, were more than a match for the powers
of darkness.  Many a winged word found its
mark, and the after-meeting in the smaller
hall, into which three hundred were crowded,
was pervaded by a death-like stillness, in which
many sought and found salvation.  Some of
the ringleaders of the disturbance had pushed
their way into this room; but they remained
perfectly quiet, evidently subdued and
over-awed, with an expression on their faces of
intense interest, which showed that they felt
they were in presence of a reality in religion
which they had not before encountered.  The
Maréchale sang her own hymn "Je viens à Toi,
dans ma misère," and many joined in the
chorus:

   |  Ote tous mes péchés!
   |  Agneau de Dieu, je viens a Toi,
   |  Ote tous mes péchés.

One of those who were melted by the words
wrote: "I was like the demoniac of Gadara.
I may say I was possessed; I was chained for
fifteen years to a frightful life....  It was
then that you came.  I was at first astonished;
then remorse seized me.  Then followed a
frightful torment in my soul—a real hell.  I
resolved to put an end to it one way or another.
Yet I thought I would go and hear you once
more.  I had been in darkness and anguish
since the day of the first meeting.  No word
had I been able to recall of that day's teaching,
except the words of the sacred song 'Ote tous
mes péchés' (Take all my sins away).  These
sounded in my heart and brain through the
day and the sleepless night—these and these
only.  Bowed down with grief and despair,
again I came to the Reformation Hall, and
to the after-meeting.  The first sounds which
fell on my ear were again those very words,
'Ote tous mes péchés,' and then you spoke
on the words, 'Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be white as snow'; you seemed to
speak to me alone, to regard me alone—and
I felt it was God who had sent me there to
hear those words."

Hundreds of such letters were written.
Evidence came from all sides of blessing received
in many homes, of wild sons reclaimed, of
drunkards and vicious men transformed by
the power of God, of light and joy brought
into families over which a cloud had hung.
Not only anarchists and prodigals, but students
of theology and the children of pastors had
their lives transformed.  In a meeting for
women only, at which 3000 were present, the
daughter of Pastor Napoleon Roussel began
the new life.  Her brother had been one of the
converts in the first meeting in the Reformation
Hall.  Mlle. Roussel was to be the Maréchale's
secretary for five years, and accompany
her in a great American tour.  A divinity
student who attended a "night with Jesus" on
New Year's Eve, wrote: "I passed a long
night of watch, which I shall never forget.
Since then I am ever happy, and can say
'Glory to God' every hour of the day."

But as the tide of Divine blessing rose, the
tide of human hatred also rose, and in the
beginning of February the "exercises" of the
Army were by Cantonal decree forbidden.  A
week later, the Maréchale, with a young
companion, Miss Maud Charlesworth, now
Mrs. Gen. Ballington Booth, was expelled from the
Canton of Geneva.  During her six weeks in
the city she had been used to bring about
probably the greatest revival which it had
witnessed since the days of the Reformers.

One of the most eminent lawyers of Geneva,
Edmond Pictet, who had himself been greatly
blessed during those stirring weeks, helped her
to draw up an Appeal (*Recours*) to the Grand
Council.  He found, however, that she needed
but little help, and often remarked that with
the warm heart of an evangelist she combined
the lucid intelligence of an advocate.  When
the Council of State had deputed two or three
of its members to hear her on the subject of
her Appeal, she came back to Geneva under
a safe-conduct to meet them.  In the course
of the interview, at which the British Consul
in the city was present, the leading Councillor
said, "You are a young woman; it is not in
accordance with our ideas and customs that
young women should appear in public.  We
are scandalised (*froissés*) by it."  The
rejoinder which he received was so remarkable a
defence of "the Prophesying of Women" that
we give it in full.

"Listen to me, I beg of you, sir.  It is
contrary, you tell me, to your sense of what is
right and becoming that young women should
preach the Gospel.  Now, if Miss Charlesworth
and I had come to Geneva to act in one
of your theatres, I have no doubt we should
have met with sympathy and approval from
your public.  We could have sung and danced
on your stage; we could have dressed in a
manner very different from, and much less modest
than, that in which you see us dressed; we
could have appeared before a miscellaneous
audience, men and women, young and old, and
of every class; members of the Grand Council,
M. Herdier himself and others, would have
come to see us act; we should have got money;
Geneva would have paid ungrudgingly in that
case; and you would all have sat and approved;
you would have clapped your hands and
cheered us; you would have brought your wives
and daughters to see us, and they also would
have applauded.  There would have been
nothing to *froisser* you, no immorality in all that,
according to your ideas and customs.  The
noise (*bruit*) we should have thus made would
not have caused our expulsion.  But when
women come to try and save some of the forty
or fifty thousand of your miserable, scoffing,
irreligious population who never enter any
place of worship, when they come with hearts
full of pity and love for the ignorant and
sinful, and stand up to tell the glad tidings of
salvation to these rebels, this mob, among
whom many accept the tidings with eager joy—then
you cry out that this is unseemly and
immodest.  You would not bring your wives
and daughters to hear us speak of Jesus,
though you would bring them to hear us if we
danced and sang upon the stage of your theatre.
Now you have expelled us; but still there
are those multitudes in Geneva who are dark,
lost, unsaved; and you know it.  There they
are; they exist.  What will you do with them?
Say—what will you do?  Are they not a danger?
Does not their lost condition cry out
against you?"

The Councillor was not only silenced, but
sank into his chair in a state of temporary
lapse.  For the moment, at least, the reality
of the picture presented to him had touched
his heart.

Nevertheless the Maréchale's Appeal was
rejected, and M. Pictet wrote to her: "The
wretched storm of anger and prejudice which
you witnessed and which your friends deplore
so much, has not blown over by any means.  I,
for one, despair of ever seeing my fellow-citizens
properly understand what religious liberty
and respect of other people's opinion
mean,—therefore the only course left to the
Army seems to be the one indicated in St. Matthew
x. 23!  *You* have done your duty, you
cannot be expected to do more than Paul and
Barnabas did (Acts xiii. 51)."

Meantime the enemies of righteousness
rejoiced.  The theatrical paper of Geneva
complimented the authorities upon the expulsion.
"Our theatre," it said, "has lost a formidable
rival, and the crowd is beginning to find its
way back to us."

At that critical time it was not only the civil
but the spiritual leaders who were weighed and
found wanting.  Injustice could scarcely have
been pushed so far had not the Churches
sanctioned it by their attitude of silence or open
hostility.  Many religious people took the side
of the persecuting government and the godless
populace.  The bitterest pamphlet against the
*Armée du Salut* was written by Madame la
Comtesse de Gasparin, whom the delighted
mob hailed as "a Christian if ever there was
one."  But the most strange and humiliating
fact of all was that the Swiss branch of the
Evangelical Alliance resolved, after due
deliberation, to refrain from uttering a single
word in defence of religious liberty.  No
wonder that a number of its most influential
members sorrowfully withdrew from its fellowship.

Banished from Geneva, the Evangelists
found refuge for a time in Neuchâtel.  Coming
on the scene just after the authorities had
forbidden evening meetings, the Maréchale
gave notice of a morning one to be held the
next day.  The hall was filled, and the
meetings went on every morning and afternoon, all
through the week.

At six o'clock on Sunday morning the roaring
of a crowd of roughs coming up the street
reached the ears of those who had already
gathered inside the hall.  While the noise grew
louder and louder, the Maréchale said to her
officers, "Wait here and pray; I will go and
meet them."  On stepping outside the door,
she was at once surrounded by rough fellows in
their shirt sleeves, armed with sticks and forks
and stones, who began to demand what she
wanted in their town, and poured upon her the
senseless accusations of the tap-rooms.

"Go away!" cried one, "we've got our pastors."

"My friend," was the reply, "you don't do
them much credit."

"Here is my god!" (*Voilà mon dieu!*), said
another, pulling out his pipe and brandishing
it in the Maréchale's face.

"You will need another when you come to die."

"You want our money!" shouted a third.

"What do you say?  You say that again!
Say it!  You dare not, you do not believe it,
you know that it is a lie."  And taking this
man by the shirt collar, the Maréchale led him
into the hall and up to the front seat, where he
sat listening most attentively for two hours.
Two rows of penitents sought pardon at the
close of the meeting.

In June the Grand Council of Nauchâtel
voted for the suppression of the *Armée du
Salut*; and Zurich and Canton du Vaud soon
followed suit.  It then became clear that the
only hope of getting these unconstitutional
decrees rescinded lay in disobeying them.  Jurists
who were consulted held that this was the best
way to compel the authorities to retrace their
steps.  Many Swiss converts were ready to
suffer for conscience' sake, but the Maréchale
resolved that she would herself, as a subject
of Queen Victoria, assert her right to worship
God on Swiss soil.  In a new form she would
raise the Apostle's question, "Is it lawful for
you to scourge a man that is a Roman and
uncondemned?"  The interest of the situation was
heightened by the fact that it was now a
woman's question.  All the spirit of the modern
world was in the Maréchale's bold declaration,
"I am a British citizen."

After working for some months in the south
of France, she returned to Nauchâtel and
deliberately infringed the Cantonal decree.  On
the afternoon of Sunday, September 9, she
conducted a meeting at Prise-Imer, in the Jura
forest, some five miles above the lake.  In a
letter to England she described the scene.  "It
was a day never to be forgotten.  Long before
the hour the people met, and we had upwards
of 500 who had come out of Nauchâtel to praise
God.  The weather was beautiful.  After so
much trouble, fatigue and a long journey, we
could meet to talk of the things of God.
Hearts and voices rose together, and it cheered
me much to look into the faces of our brave
soldiers.  There was no mistaking their zeal
and determination to go forward."

While the hymn "Come, Thou burning
Spirit, come" was being sung under the tall
pine trees, a sentinel who had been stationed
on the outskirts of the forest announced that
the Prefect in his carriage, attended by sixteen
policemen, was approaching.  The Maréchale
gave the news to the audience, and called on
everybody to be calm and confident.

"Take no notice.  We shall have a glorious
meeting all the same."

The gendarmes found the congregation
kneeling, and formed a ring round it, the
Prefect himself taking his stand close to the
Maréchale.  He and his followers were all
overawed.  For over two hours they listened
as men spellbound.  They heard the Maréchale
pray for the Government, for the nation of
Switzerland, for themselves.  They heard her
speak of the end and aim of the *Armée du
Salut*—"to save the lost, to make all thieves,
drunkards, outcasts, and plagues of society
peaceful and loyal citizens, through the power
of Jesus to lead the nations to God."  Then
they heard the testimonies of converted
criminals, one of whom told of his three years'
imprisonment.  Pointing to a plain-clothes
detective, he said, "That policeman over there
knows me; he took me to jail; but now I am a
changed man."  No wonder that the Prefect
of Police was profoundly impressed.  At the
end of the service, he took out his warrant with
trembling hands, and stammered—

"I have here ... I ought..."

"Yes, I know.  You have a decree for my
arrest.  Why didn't you give it me before?"

"Well, I could not."

"Yes, a higher Power than man was here
to restrain you."

He could not withhold his tribute of
admiration.  "This is a magnificent work, if it does
but last.  You do nothing but good.  I beseech
you not to hold me responsible for this
act.  I, like others, had judged you without
seeing or hearing you."

He had, however, to obey his orders.  The
Maréchale and Captain Becquet, one of her
officers, were put under arrest.  As they were
leaving that pleasant place, she exclaimed,
"How strange that we are not to be allowed
to worship God in these beautiful woods!
What a pity to see them standing silent and
unused!"  To some of those who heard her
voice that Sunday evening, the spot was for
ever holy ground.  In the audience was a
young Switzer, Constant Jeanmonod, one of
nature's gentlemen, who found salvation on
that day, gave himself body and soul to God,
and afterwards became one of the Maréchale's
most devoted friends and comrades in many a
hard campaign.  He is now at the head of the
work in Belgium.

The Maréchale and Captain Becquet were
brought down to Nauchâtel and conducted to
the house of M. Comtesse, President of the
Council of State, who said to them, "You are
my prisoners, and it is my duty to have you
locked up this night."  The Maréchale,
however, had just received a telegram begging her
to attend the funeral of a brave young Geneva
convert, who had breathed a dying request that
she should speak at his grave-side.  She asked
permission to fulfil this sacred duty, and was
liberated on bail of 6000 francs.

Next morning a service was held in the
garden of the farmhouse near Geneva where
Charles Wyssa had died, and there the Maréchale
found a lifelong friend.  Mrs. Josephine
Butler was present, and gave a brief address
which lived long in the memory of those who
heard it.  Having spoken of her profound
sympathy with the work of the *Armée du Salut*
in Switzerland, she made a moving reference
to the fact that she had lost her only and
dearly-loved daughter, whom she had named Evangeline
in the hope that her life would be dedicated
to evangelisation.  One fatal evening, when,
the mother returned home after a long
journey, her little daughter came running
downstairs to meet and welcome her.  In her
extreme eagerness to see her mother again, the
child forgot all danger, slipped over the
staircase balustrade, and was taken up crushed and
unconscious.  In less than an hour her gentle
spirit had fled.

"At the coffin of that child," said Mrs. Butler,
"I consecrated my life to the relief of my
suffering and oppressed brothers and sisters.
My great desire was that she should become a
preacher of the Word of God.  And now,"
added the mother, throwing her arms round the
Maréchale, "by another new coffin I have found
my long-lost daughter, an Evangelist chosen
and blessed of God."  When the Maréchale
had daughters of her own, she called the eldest
Catherine Evangeline and the youngest Josephine.

From that garden the company moved to
the churchyard, where the Maréchale spoke on
the beautiful words, "Who are these which are
arrayed in white robes, and whence came they?"  Just
as John Wyssa, the younger brother of
Charles, was throwing a handful of earth on
the coffin, and murmuring the words "*Au
revoir, mon frère*," the Mayor of the Commune
approached in order to arrest Miss Booth.  At
this juncture Col. Clibborn interposed, saying,
"Sir! this is a funeral."  He was a coarse,
brutal fellow, very different from the Prefect of
Police in Neuchâtel.  The mayor not heeding
was putting his hand upon Miss Booth's arm,
when she turned upon him with flashing eyes,
and said, "Hands off! this is holy ground!
Don't you see that we are in the presence of
the dead?  I finish this service, and then will
speak with you."

When the funeral rites were ended, the
Mayor thought his turn was at last come.  He
was about to proceed with the arrest, when the
Maréchale still objected.

"You can't arrest me!"

The Mayor stared in bewilderment.

"I say you can't arrest me!"

"May I ask why?"

"Because with the best will in the world I
can't go to two prisons in two Cantons at the
same time.  I am due in Nauchâtel."

The Mayor saw that she was right, and retired
crestfallen.

The Maréchale returned to Nauchâtel and
surrendered to her bail.  The iron gates of the
grim jail closed upon her.  The imprisonment
was shared by her faithful lieutenant, Kate
Patrick, who refused to leave her.

It was twelve days before the trial came on.
The Maréchale was in delicate health, and
frequently became sick.  The hunger-striking and
forcible feeding of these latter days would
soon have killed her.  She tried to eat, but had
little appetite, and what little she had was
destroyed by the garlic in the food.  Mice
disturbed her nights and in the early morning the
odours which came from the passages were
insupportable.  The only way in which she could
get any relief was by putting her face between
the iron bars of the window and breathing the
air which came up from the lake.  She was
always thankful that her face was thin and
just went through the cold bars.

One morning at five or six o'clock she was
awakened by happy voices singing dear familiar
choruses outside the prison walls.  She
was very ill, but she dragged herself from her
hard bed to the window, waved her hand, and
cried "Amen!"  Then she attached her handkerchief
to a bar, and let it flutter like a flag.
The signal was received with shouts of "Amen,
Maréchale—be of good cheer—hold on—hallelujah!"

As the time passed, she was thrown in upon
herself, and went through a great soul-struggle.
She had lately been the victim of a stinging
article, grossly ignorant and cruelly unjust,
which had appeared in a religious paper,
written, rumour said, by the wife of a Swiss
pastor.  It had accused her of unwomanliness,
immodesty, and vanity.  She made the painful
discovery that she could not yet say, "None of
these things move me."  The poisoned arrows
had gone deep, forcing tears from her eyes and
attacking her peace of mind.  Chancing to
notice a little slate hanging on the wall of her
cell, she took it down and began to write on it
all the accusations which her enemies might
bring against her, asking herself as she did so,
"Could you write your name and say you
accept that, and that?"  Her conscience
compelled her to answer "No, there are some things
which I could not endure."  She was appalled
as she thought of more and greater trials which
God might ask her to undergo.  He might
deprive her of health.  He might send her to
Japan.  He might take away her reputation
and make it impossible for her to defend
herself.  Could she bear such things?  No, she
could not yet sign her name under the terrible
words she wrote.  With sorrow she put the
slate back in its place, and for two days it
hung against the wall with its list of cruel
things which she could not accept.  But during
those days she pondered and prayed.  She
rebuked her doubts and fears.  How could she
ever distrust her Lord, who had led her with
such infinite tenderness?  How imagine that
He would ever lay upon her more than He
would give her power to bear?  She soon crept
up close to His arms, and realised that nothing
was really unbearable except doubt.  Taking
her slate down, she read over again all that
she might be called upon to suffer, and signed
"Catherine Booth."  Then the Angels of God
filled the prison cell; the peace and joy of
heaven flooded her soul; and from that hour
her communion with her Lord was so sweet
that she kissed the walls of her dungeon before
she was led forth to her trial.

On that day (September 19) she wrote her
exquisite prison song, "Best beloved of my
soul," and sent it to her father.  It was sung,
while she was still in prison, at a great meeting
for prayer, in Exeter Hall, at which Mrs. Butler
spoke.  It was first written in French, the
language in which she now habitually thought,
and translated by herself into English.  The
latter is well-known, and many readers will be
glad to have the French.

   |  O Toi que mon âme adore,
   |  Je ne suis pas seule ici,
   |  Car je T'y retrouve encore,
   |  Et je suis au ciel ainsi,

   |  Ma vie est à Ton service,
   |  Je T'appartiens sans retour;
   |  Corps et âme en sacrifice,
   |  Je Te suivrai nuit et jour.

   |  Combattons dans la souffrance,
   |  Et les yeux baignés de pleurs;
   |  Bien près est la délivrance,
   |  Voici l'Homme de douleurs!

   |  Sa voix chasse ma tristesse,
   |  Mon chagrin s'est dissipé;
   |  Je chante avec allégresse,
   |  Mon cachot est transformé!

   |  Au milieu de la tempête
   |  Rien ne peut troubler ma paix;
   |  Son amour que rien n'arrête
   |  Peut me garder à jamais.

   |  Le combat est dur, terrible,
   |  L'enfer rugit contre nous;
   |  Mais l'Armée est invincible:
   |  Avec Dieu nous vaincrons tout.
   |

During the twelve days of her imprisonment
the Maréchale received many letters of
sympathy and good cheer from Swiss friends,
whose words proved to her how deep and real
had been the work of the *Armée du Salut* in
the country.  One of the most interesting was
signed by seventy-two mothers, who bore glad
testimony to the conversion of their sons and
daughters, and two more were signed by a
number of wives praising God for the conversion
of their husbands.

More intimate letters came to Catherine
from home, all breathing warm love, tender
solicitude, and ardent hope that good would
come out of evil.  "I quite see with you,"
wrote her mother, "as to God's hand being in
all this, and it appears that when communities
or nations get sodden in sin and darkness, there
is no way of arousing them but by such a flashing
of the truth in their midst as will provoke
persecution.  God wants the attention of the
people, and this is the best way to secure it,
no doubt....  Perhaps you are right about
pleading your own cause, only you should have
some one at your elbow who knows the law.
You will not be up on points of law, I fear,
otherwise I have no doubt that God will give
you what you should say.  I feel it a great
thing to have a child in prison for Jesus' sake;
there could be only one greater, namely to be
there myself; but one would hardly have
thought it possible in this age.  How true that
the devil hates real saints as much as ever he
did, and that the spirit of persecution only
needs the real presence of the Spirit of God
to call it forth....  That the Lord comfort
and keep you and reveal *Himself* to you more
and more and make you a mother of nations,
prays your loving and sympathising mother.

.. vspace:: 1

"Catherine Booth."

The next letter admirably reveals both the
father's and the General's heart.  With the
deepest concern for his beloved daughter there
is combined a lively sense of the fact that his
enemies are overreaching themselves and doing
him and his cause the greatest possible service.
He wrote: "My darling, no one can tell the
anxieties we have all gone through concerning
you during this week....  We were awakened
by telegraph messenger with a wire from
Geneva to say 'Blücher detained till trial.
Patrick with her—cared for.'  The last sentence
fills us with relief.  We interpret it to mean
Patrick is with you as your secretary or maid,
and you have all your wants supplied and no
*hardships*....  Enclosed is this morning's
*Times*.  All the papers have notices of it, so
that it is flying all over the world.  *If you do
not suffer in your health, I don't care*.  It will
all work for good.  But your health is of more
importance to me in my estimation than all
Switzerland.  If you can only get assurance
of this!  I am all uncertain whether this will
reach you.  There will be a storm directly and
no mistake if these Swiss go on at this rate.
We all send you *all* our heart's love and heaps
of prayers and sympathy.  God bless and keep
you!  Remember me to Lieut. Patrick.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "Your affectionate father,
       "William Booth."


Mrs. Bramwell Booth, who as Miss Florence
Soper had been one of the Maréchale's first
comrades in Paris, wrote her: "I feel as if
you had mounted away to a land where I can
call you 'Katie' no more.  But I will say, and
I do say in my heart of innermost hearts, my
Saint Catherine, counted worthy to suffer....
If only I could beseech you to remember
that your health is everything.  This is the
dawning of a glorious morning in your work—the
forerunner of a glorious victory.  Will
you send some word through Patrick of the
whole *truth*—just let me know—-just your
Flo—if it is as bad as a prison cell, and is it
doing your body the *least* bit of harm? ... I
wish you could know, in your solitude, how
we all love you—I wish the breezes over the
lake could bring you some whispers of what
we have said of you.  The glorious God is
our God for ever and ever, and His chariots
of fire are with you—His invisible army is
around you.  Your own Flo. 20. 9. '83."

Her sister Emma, who was now at the head
of the Training School at the Congress Hall,
wrote: "What can be said at such times
compared with what is felt?  I will not attempt
to write.  I am praying.  All hearts here hold
you up ceaselessly—your example is before
us!  In the night and the day I am with you—in
your sorrow I find your joy in what is to
come out of all.  'They know not what they
do,' and out of their very efforts to hinder
and stop God's work shall it spread beyond
restraint.  The loss is great, my precious
sister, but the reward will be infinitely greater,
and in both you will have been allowed to
share.  It would have been easier to be with
you, but I'll fight harder than ever in my
corner here.  Filled with deepest sympathy and
yearning desire for His kingdom to come in
Switzerland!  Devotedly, Emma.  PS.  It
is your back I most tremble for—your poor
back!  I wonder if you have pillows.  Bless
your dear little Pattie [Miss Patrick].  Oh,
each moment I am with you!  JESUS is—He
does love and choose and will honour you!"

Among those who wrote to the prisoner was
George Railton,[1] whom she regarded almost as
an elder brother.  He had lived with the family
during her childhood, and when she was a girl
of twelve and onwards she used to get up at
six in the morning—slipping downstairs on her
bare feet in order not to awaken mother—to
have a Bible lesson with him.  She always
regarded the talks in those morning hours as
among the great formative influences in her
life.  Railton, who became the General's first
commissioner, watched her career with
profound and affectionate interest.  He wrote on
September 25: "Dear Maréchale Prisoner, I
have just come from that tremendous prayer
meeting [in Exeter Hall, held as a protest
against her imprisonment], one of the biggest
and best this world has ever seen....  The
way the volleys burst out at the right time
and went ringing all round the Hall sounded
splendid.  And the sight of thousands standing
up to give themselves to God, hundreds and
hundreds for foreign service, and all for
service somewhere, was magnificent....  My
impression is that as they [the Swiss] have
outraged law all along they may very likely do it
when it comes to sentence....  God only
knows what is coming next, but anyhow we shall win."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[1] Since these pages were written, this remarkable man
has died—as he wished—with his armour on, and been
"promoted to glory."

.. vspace:: 2

Towards the end of her imprisonment
Catherine wrote: "God will open the door for
us through this storm.  My will is God's.  All
I want is to accomplish His desire for the
world.  Do not worry at all.  Jesus is here.
There is such wonderful victory ahead that all
my cry is, Lord, make us *equal to it*!—ready
in every way!  Ever fighting, in jail as well
as on the field, following on to know Him.
I have been looking at that wonderful
sight—Calvary.  I must ever live in sight of it."

The trial took place at Boudry on Saturday
the 25th and Monday the 27th September.
It excited the greatest interest in Switzerland
and far beyond it.  The *Journal de Genève*
said: "This prosecution at Boudry has an
immense political significance in the highest sense
of that word, and the decision, whatever it may
be, will take its place in the history of
Republican rights."  Even the most sanguine scarcely
hoped for the acquittal of the accused.  But
the unexpected happened, and the triumph of
righteousness was a woman's triumph.

The Public Prosecutor spent much time in
proving that Salvationists were mountebanks
and fanatics.  A young Englishwoman had
flung an insult in the face of the Grand
Council, accusing them of violating the
constitution.  Her contempt for the law was the more
surprising as the English never rebel against
the law, however unjust it may be (!).  If the
*Armée du Salut* was not suppressed they would
have to enlarge their asylums.  Christ, who
was, perhaps, the most religious man who ever
lived, favoured private rather than public
prayer.  Silent communion with God was better
than getting up and shouting "I am saved!"  While
the accused placed herself above the law,
the Queen of England was obliged to submit
to Acts of Parliament.  Having not only
ignored, but deliberately violated the decree,
the *Salutistes* must bear the consequences, and
no doubt they would be happy to receive the
crown of martyrdom!

On the second day of the trial, after a
speech in the defence by M. Monnier, the
Maréchale rose to plead her own cause.  Though
she had passed twelve days in prison, and sat
many hours in the suffocating atmosphere of
a crowded court-house, she overcame her
exhaustion, her spirit subduing the frail body.
She had been accustomed to face great crowds
since she was sixteen, and she was never more
completely master of herself or her audience
than she was in that critical hour.  Her voice
was never clearer, nor her manner more
commanding.  Her brother Herbert, who was in
the court, said he was amazed at her power.
As she pleaded the cause of religious liberty,
her hearers felt that she had not come to be
judged but for judgment upon them all.  Some
extracts will serve to indicate the quality of
her speech.

"What is the need of the *Armée du Salut*?
Allow me to read a passage from one of your
own journals: 'Cantonal Governments will
see with alarm the flood of demoralisation
rising menacingly higher and higher; and
instead of seeking to destroy the causes of this
deluge, they only take away the remaining
dams.'  It is needless to enlarge on the necessity
for an *Armée du Salut* in the face of these facts.

"The Prosecutor has said, in speaking of
the work, that it moved the entire population,
and that there must be a cause for this.  He
has reason to say so.  I agree with him; there
must be a cause, far deeper than any that has
been mentioned here to-day.  It is at this cause
that we strike—which exists in the heart of man.

"As to our aim, we are trying to bring these
people who outrage your laws, who fight
against God, to the feet of Him who alone
can change them, to the only hope that exists
for them, the Saviour of the world.  We work,
we live, we suffer to do this.  This is our one
hope and object—to bring the world to the
great Deliverer, Jesus Christ.

"Ah!  The question of all questions, the
question which every intelligent man ought to
face, is—What are we to do with the masses?
If they are not reached by the power of the
Gospel, a day will come when they will turn
round against you, occasioning terrible trouble
and disorder, and awful will be the consequences.
Then, gentlemen, you will have reason
to regret your action in this matter.  If
these disturbers are capable of manifesting
such hatred, such rage against citizens who
pray to God, they will also be capable of
manifesting the same rebellious spirit against any
other opinions, or any other law, which may
not please them.

"We have not made the people like this.
Bear in mind that we have not created this
terrible state of barbarism, which was let loose
around that hall, and which has made my heart
bleed many times in witnessing.  Who is
responsible for this?  We cannot be, for we have
only been in your town a few months.

"Although we have suffered terribly through
misrepresentations that have been wilfully
circulated about us, we are not discouraged!  We
know that truth and justice will soon triumph.
I love Switzerland all the more for what we
have endured (*Applause*).  A little while and
Switzerland will love us.  We shall win
thousands to righteousness, peace and heaven.

"The Prosecutor referred to the Queen saying
that even she was subject to the decrees of
Parliament, but that I placed myself above
her in refusing to become subject to the decrees
of the Grand Council.  There is no parallel
between Her Majesty and myself.  No act
has been passed to forbid her praying in a
wood, or I think Her Majesty would have
something to say on that subject (*Sensation*).

"One word in conclusion.  You may punish
us; you may imprison us; you may prosecute
us as long as you are permitted; but what you
cannot do is to stop this work—to suppress it.
Beware what you do for your country's sake,
for Jesus Christ's sake.  Take care that in
banishing us you do not banish the light, that
you do not banish Jesus Christ, and in that
great day when you are called to give an
account you be found guilty of fighting against
God."

Such pleading was irresistible.  The jury had
not the courage to enforce the law.  To their
honour, they let themselves be swayed by
considerations of equity.  They found that while
the accused had violated the decree she had
not acted with "culpable intention."  In
consequence of this verdict she was acquitted.  The
sentence was received by her friends in the
court with a burst of fervent "Amens."  And
the Maréchale deserved the thanks of every
Swiss patriot.  By her bold and successful
claim of right she had made history.  At a
time when the old Republic was forgetful of
its noblest traditions, untrue to itself, she
restored its ideal.  She vindicated for every man
and woman freedom to worship God according
to their conscience.  She brought back to the
hills and valleys of Switzerland the crown
rights of the Redeemer.

No one appreciates or speaks more enthusiastically
to-day than the Maréchale of the devotion
and bravery of her comrades, Colonel
Clibborn first and foremost, and spiritual
children at this time.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SOUL OF FRANCE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SOUL OF FRANCE

.. vspace:: 2

It is not easy to reach the ideal and spiritual
elements of character which are masked by
the light laughter or the polite scorn of the
typical Frenchman, who believes, or pretends
to believe, that religion is only for priests and
women.  At the opening of a new hall in the
Rue Oberkamff, a big fellow shook his fist in
the Maréchale's face and said, "An Englishman
may accept religion—a German—or a
heathen, but a Frenchman—never!"  "O God,
if You exist, save my soul, if I have one!"
was the prayer of another man, who had
attended the meetings for some time, and who
indicated with a strange pathos the bewildered
state of mind into which many of the educated,
as well as the ignorant, had sunk.  "Let there
be no mistake," said a French writer, Louise
de Croisilles; "it is by no means unnatural
that the Army should have taken root in India,
or even under Africa's burning sun, but that
it should be accepted in Paris, the centre of
free-thought and unbelief, that is a thing incredible."

Nevertheless the Frenchman suffers from
"the malady of the ideal," even as other men.
His heart is restless until it rests in God, and
it is sheer faithlessness to say that he cannot
be won by the grace of God.  If he is sceptical,
it is because he has no conception of the
fascinating loveliness of Christianity; if he is a
scoffer, it is because he has never come in
contact with human lives which suggest to him
the infinite goodness of God.

After the Maréchale's great legal victory,
which was really a triumph of the Gospel over
its enemies, she returned to Paris and quietly
resumed her tasks.  She was in nowise changed,
though public opinion regarding her was
undoubtedly changed.  She had become a person
of note.  Editors of newspapers and magazines
sent reporters to her meetings at the Quai
de Valmy, or at the new headquarters in the
Rue Auber, and found piquant accounts of
her sayings and doings to be excellent copy.
Visitors to the city came to hear her.  Artists
begged for the honour of painting her portrait
for the Salon, an honour which she steadily
refused.  The son of Garibaldi invited her to
visit Italy, where, he said, she would be
welcomed and not treated as she had been in
Switzerland.  None of these things, however,
moved her.  As she had promised God in her
prison that she would never be depressed by
the calumnies of men, so now she prayed that
she might never be elated by their praises.
With a stronger faith and a more ardent hope,
she plunged again into absorbing work.  One
sees that she worked with her imagination; that
she obeyed her intuitions; that she proved the
originality and inventiveness of love; and her
efforts were so rewarded that 1884 was her
*annus mirabilis*, at the end of which she wrote:
"Can you imagine the bewilderment that comes
over me when I sit down to convey some idea
of the wonderful way in which God has led
and helped us during the year? ... It is not
too much to say that during the past twelve
months we have passed from the position of a
small and almost unknown mission to that of
a great spiritual power, recognised and felt
throughout France and Switzerland."

A series of fresh inspirations contributed to
this result.  The first of these was the
visitation of the cafés of Paris.  One winter night
the Maréchale and two young comrades,
Blanche Young and Kate Patrick, went out
with shawls on their heads, and made their way
to one of the boulevard cafés.  The leader
passed the door, and passed it again.  She
turned to her lieutenants and said, "You have
never known your Maréchale till now; you see
what a coward she is!"

.. _`114`:

.. figure:: images/img-114.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: THE MARÉCHALE IN THE CAFÉ (From the painting of Baron Cederström, now in the Picture Gallery of Stockholm)

   THE MARÉCHALE IN THE CAFÉ 
   (From the painting of Baron Cederström, 
   now in the Picture Gallery of Stockholm)

"No, no, no!" they both protested.

At last she put her hand on the door, pushed
it open, and went in.  A man in a white apron
was selling drink.  Going up to him, she said,
"May I sing something?"

He stared open-mouthed.

Trembling from head to foot, she repeated,
"I should like to sing something."

"Very well!"

She began:

   |  "Le ciel est ma belle patrie,
   |    Les anges y font leur séjour;
   |  Le soldat qui lutte et qui prie
   |    Y sera bientôt à son tour."
   |

While she sang, Blanche chimed in with her
guitar and her second voice.  As they
proceeded, the smoking, drinking, and card-playing
ceased, and every face was turned towards
them.  They sang on:

   |  "En marche, en marche,
   |  Soldats, vers la patrie!
   |  En marche, en marche,
   |  Soldats, vers la patrie!"
   |

When they had finished the hymn, the Maréchale
thanked her audience, adding that they
could hear her again at Rue Auber Hall; and
that she knew a Friend, of whom she wished
to tell them.  As she and her comrades turned
to walk out, the man in the white apron bowed,
as if they had done him a service.

"May I come another time?" said the Maréchale.

"Certainly, Mademoiselle!"

They visited sixteen cafés that night, and
when she got home she felt she had never been
happier in her life, never nearer to Jesus.  She
had tried in her own way to obey His
command, "Let your light shine before men."  Since
then, thousands and thousands of cafés
have been visited, and much good has thus been
done.  Let one case stand for many.

There used to be a well-known resort in
Paris called the Café de l'Enfer, the windows
and walls of which were painted with lurid
scenes representing hell.  There rouged and
powdered singing girls entertained people of
the dare-devil type, who sat drinking and
smoking at little tables.  From an open coffin a
grim skeleton stared at everybody, and prizes
were given for the most audacious witticisms
about death.  The more outrageous the
blasphemies were, the louder were the roars of
applause with which they were received.

But the Maréchale and her young lieutenants,
"armed in complete steel"—the panoply
of God—were not afraid of the gates of hell.
Having obtained permission to sing, they
mounted the *estrade*, and rendered some of
their most attractive part-songs.  The café
orchestra at once took up the airs as if it had
been paid to do so.  The songs of Paradise
were well received even in those regions, and
then the Maréchale, stepping forward, made
a little speech:

"You are very clever here.  You *play* very
well.  But it is a rôle that you play.  Your
laughter is not real; I can tell you the source
of true laughter and true joy.  This is not life,
it is death; I can tell you what real life is.
This is not peace, it is an effort to drown care
and forget trouble; I can tell you the secret
of peace.  Let me give you my address, where
you can hear us sing again."

It required as much moral courage to deliver
that speech as to face all the jurists of
Helvetia.

When the Maréchale was leaving, she passed
a lovely girl, in whose ear she whispered,
"What are you doing here? you ought to be in bed."

"Who will give *me* a supper or a bed?" the
girl plaintively asked.

"*I* will!" exclaimed the Maréchale; "come
with me, quick!"

She hailed a cab, put the girl in, and drove
away.  The poor child, eighteen years of age,
had a sad tale to tell.  She had noble blood in
her veins, and her mother and she had both
been cruelly wronged.  The Maréchale led her
to Christ and ultimately secured for her a
position in one of the best colleges of America,
where she was universally respected.  Not long
after she was installed there, she sent the
Maréchale 500 francs, with the pathetic message,
"Save another, as you saved me."

The Maréchale's methods naturally gave
offence to those who had not the courage to
adopt them.  Late one night she and some
comrades were standing at the door of a theatre
while it was emptying.  One of her young
officers cried in clear, penetrating tones,
"Prepare to meet thy God!"  The words seemed
to send an electric shock through the gay
crowd.  Thereupon a gentleman came forward
to the Maréchale and said:

"Mademoiselle, you are evidently young
girls of good family, and I am scandalised to
see you here at this hour.  I, too, occupy
myself with preaching, but I am shocked at your
behaviour."

"Really?" she replied, "and I am scandalised
that you are scandalised.  You profess to
believe the Gospel.  How are you to get these
indifferent tens of thousands to hear of the
Saviour?  They won't come to listen to you.
What more natural and more in accord with
the principles of Jesus, than to go to them and
compel them to hear?"

Ten minutes after, the gentleman returned
and slid a five-franc piece into her hand, saying:

"It is you who are right!"

It was impossible for young girls to be in
the boulevards towards midnight without
being sometimes molested.  But the leader would
instruct her soldiers thus: "If they say the
vilest things in the world to you, remember that
is only the outside.  Think of their souls which
cost so dear to Christ.  Say one or two sentences
that will remain with them, and pass on."

More than once she proved this method of
dealing to be very effective.  In a corner of
one of the boulevards a "gentleman" approached
her and asked for a rendezvous.  She
looked at him in silence, which he took for consent.

"Where?" he asked, taking out his pencil
and note-book.

"*Devant le Trône de Dieu!*" (Before the
Throne of God!)

The man took to his heels, and ran.

That went all over France.  One day the
same sword will pierce the conscience of every
roué in the universe.

The Maréchale's second original idea was to
begin a series of *Conférences* (Meetings) in
the fashionable Lecture Hall of the Boulevard
des Capucines.  Her increasing popularity
only deepened her sense of duty to the city of
her adoption, and suggested to her the possibility
of bringing Christ to the Boulevards as
well as to the Villette.  She could not live in gay
Paris without profoundly pitying the thoughtless,
infidel Rich, for whom it is proverbially
so hard to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Her idea of attacking the central stronghold
of the world's fashion and pleasure was a
daring one for a woman, especially for a woman
of the Maréchale's youthful years.  About this
time she read the *Life of Napoleon*, and found
in his astonishing career many lessons for an
evangelist.  She was especially struck by his
faith in his star, and his contempt for "*ce bête
de mot, impossible*."  She knew that she had
something better to trust than a star, and
stronger reason for holding that all things are
possible.

Her new plan of campaign was great alike
in its conception and its execution.  From the
very first the Conférences for men were
astonishingly successful, and they were renewed
year after year.  The audiences were very
different from a Keswick or Northfield congregation,
in which the preaching is mostly to the
converted.  Perhaps the best parallel to the
Maréchale's Conférences is to be found in
Professor Drummond's Sunday evening meetings
for students (men only) in the Oddfellows
Hall, Edinburgh, which, by a strange coincidence,
began in the same year.  Having
enjoyed the friendship of both these evangelists,
and listened to them many scores of times,
I have often been forcibly struck by their
likeness to each other, and for power to rivet the
attention and inspire the confidence of
cultivated men of the world I have met nobody to
compare with them.

When the Maréchale came to hold her first
Conférence, the proprietor of the hall entered
her ante-room and advised her to deliver a sort
of ethical lecture, rather than speak of
salvation, as it was the worldly fashionable public
who would assemble, and he was afraid they
would not be pleased if they heard too much of
religion.  But they listened with rapt attention
while she spoke on the text "Without God and
without hope in the world."  Of the second
Conférence Galignani's Messenger said, "The
subject, 'The Greatest Sin,' was treated with
a force of religious arguments which made a
visible impression on many persons in the
audience.  The attention was deep and respectful.
The Hall was crowded, and the doors were
vainly besieged by a numerous crowd, the
greater part of whom remained outside the
open windows to hear the address."  Another
leading journal said, "She has profoundly
astonished the citizen sceptic, who has been out
of the habit of being astonished for a long time."

Her brother Ballington was present at a
later meeting, and described the impression
made on himself as one who did not know
French.  "I had to cover my face more than
once while our Maréchale spoke.  Her words,
though in a foreign language, yet seemed
understandable.  The Spirit does not confine
Himself to words alone.  He speaks through
the countenance, and eyes, and hands—He fills
the Temples of His children.  Three things
struck me in that meeting: first, the rapt
attention and interest of the audience, and there
seemed few who were not impressed at the
close; second, the manner in which the people
remained in the after-meeting on to the end;
third, the utter amazement, and yet perfect
solemnity of the congregation, when some
sinner came up through the aisles to seek peace,
even rising as though to make sure that what
they saw was a fact."  Then he adds—and one
notes the beautiful transition—"I was also
present and took part in meetings at Paris in
which the very poorest were attending by
hundreds, and at which I saw men of the vilest
caste and life getting saved."  No small part of
the Maréchale's charm lay in her flexibility and
adaptability—her Pauline habit of becoming
all things to all men—to the rich and to the
poor, to the wise and to the unwise—that she
might win some.

At a later time the Maréchale delivered somewhat
similar addresses in other cities of France
such as Nîmes, Marseilles, Havre, Rouen,
Lyons—and she was everywhere astonished to
find that the French, who seem the most
thoughtless, are yet among the most thoughtful
people in the world.  The result of such
Conférences as these cannot be tabulated.  For
one thing, they made the Maréchale more than
ever a mother-confessor and spiritual director.
The thoughts of many hearts were revealed to
her at private interviews of which no record
was kept, and in letters, one of which may be
given as containing the secret of the Maréchale's
power—her possession of Christ's Spirit—a
second as showing the abyss of doubt from
which many of her hearers had to be rescued,
and some others as indicating the wonderful
success which often attended her efforts.

The first runs as follows: "I am glad you
accept my request to visit my home.  You will
consider the intention in asking you to come
under my roof, like One before you, who had
the noblest Heart which ever beat for mankind.
It is because this Great Heart has possessed
yours to the degree of rendering you
like Himself, that you have profoundly moved
me and made me better.  Certainly I will speak
with you on these vital subjects, but I need
more and more the moral and spiritual
atmosphere of the meetings: this opens the heart
and at the same time deadens the opposition
of the mind.  Oh, if the latter could hold its
peace! ... I have lived much in solitude, and
naturally these problems have been always with
me.  I may say that the Infinite has tortured
me for twenty years: lately I have arrived at
the conclusion that one can know nothing.  So
I shall be glad to speak with you and at length."

A second correspondent wrote: "Your
marvellous faith, your simple and powerful
eloquence so deeply moved me that I cannot but
thank you.  I thank you as an artist, as a
sincere admirer of beautiful work, of great
characters; I thank you as a man blasé,
sceptical, benumbed and deadened.  As a child I
adored Jesus, and now, after having thought
much and suffered infinite pains which you
cannot understand, I have said adieu to faith
and also adieu to hope!  I have become one of
those you call sceptics.  Ah! do not say
'terrible' sceptic, but unfortunate, pitiable,
unhappy sceptic.  You are, Madame, a great,
beautiful, generous heart, and if ever earnest
good wishes have been worth anything, I have
cherished them for you, your work, and those
who fight by your side.  You will believe me,
an unbeliever, who envies you, admires you,
and ideally loves you."

A third of her hearers wrote succinctly:
"Two of your meetings have sufficed to destroy
infidel convictions of twenty years' standing."

A fourth, after testifying to his respect and
confidence, said: "What your soul yearns for
is conversion.  You would like me to add, I
am converted.  I cannot say that I am.  But
you have made an incredible impression on me,
and you have made me love the Christ I never
loved."  He evidently could not rest there, and
soon he sent a second letter, describing with
thankfulness how one night, in prayer and
agonising mental controversy, he had received
a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, which had
finally slain his doubt and made him a believer
in God.

The twofold purpose of the Conférences was
to conquer the feelings and tastes, the etiquette
and conventionality, of people of the world,
and to awaken faith in unbelievers.  One day
a very bad man thrust some bank-notes into
the Maréchale's hand, saying while he did so:

"I believe in nothing."

"You believe in nothing, and yet you give
me these bank-notes!"

He replied, "I believe in you, and I wish you
had a hall in every town and hamlet and
village in my country."

"Pull out your watch," she said.  "I believe
in your watch, I believe that it keeps time, but
I do not believe in its maker! ... I am naturally
just as great a lover of ease and comfort as
you are.  The motive power—*la force motrice*—of
my life, the spring upon which everything
turns, is the love of Christ.  You believe in me;
believe in Him who has made me what I am."

.. vspace:: 2

The Maréchale's third new departure was
perhaps the most important of all—the founding
of an École Militaire, or school for cadets,
somewhat similar to the Military School at
Clapton, over which her sister Emma at that
time presided.  When Catherine first went to
France, a very noted Protestant pastor said
to her, "You will never get three Frenchwomen
to live together in peace."  But at the Training
Home, Avenue Lumière 3, in the Villette,
where the Maréchale lived all the year round
with her officers, there were as many as forty
or fifty young women—among whom, at one
time, a Princess's daughters were side by side
with scullery maids—and the harmony, the
love, the spirit of "never mind me," which
prevailed was one of the miracles of the work in
France.

To the training of company after company
of young cadets—French, Swiss, English,
Belgian, German, Italian and Russian—the
Maréchale gave a great deal of her time and
strength, her pattern being ever our Lord's
own training of the Twelve.  All obeyed her
joyfully and without question.  She realised
intuitively that the highest thing in training is
not discipline, but something which discipline
follows as light follows the sun.  That
something is the spirit, the atmosphere, which men
and women are brought into and which transforms
them.  In the École Militaire it was the
selflessness of people who did not care what
became of them.  Where that spirit takes
possession of any one, there is no need to say to
him, "You shall do this or that."  The law of
the spirit of life makes him obedient without
constraint.

The spirit of the Maréchale's leadership is
somewhat expressed in Garibaldi's call to
arms often quoted by her.  His followers
understood his motives, realised his
disinterestedness, saw that rewards and honours were
nothing to the man who was seeking the
Liberty of Italy.  Therefore they loved him so
much that they would have died for him.  There
was no marked difference between the Staff
and the Field, and yet there was discipline,
obedience, devotion such as the world has
scarcely ever seen equalled.

That was the spirit which the Maréchale
sought to impart to the École Militaire.
Everything else—how to study the Bible, how
to conduct meetings, how to use the voice, how
to deal with souls—was subordinated by her
to the one thing needful—the spirit of
sacrifice.  "We are sometimes told," she once wrote,
"that our uniforms, our young women speaking
in public, our tambourines and our processions
bring contempt upon religion.  It is a
mistake.  That which is the laughing-stock of
the world and of hell is a religion without
sacrifice.  People will never believe in Christians
who, while professing to be disciples of Him
who had not where to lay His head, live in
luxury, seek first the comfort of their family, the
health and position of their children, and let
their souls perish for lack of that Gospel which
they profess to believe.  *There* is the secret of
the unbelief of France; that is what makes the
young who are in search of the truth cry
'Comedy!'  On the other hand, those faces which
radiate the light from on high, those young
people who rise up to give themselves to God
instead of the world, those men and women
who declare, with a sincerity which leaves no
room for doubt, that they consecrate their life
to God for the saving of souls, are more
eloquent than the most beautiful discourses."

The faces of officers and cadets who
surrounded the Maréchale on her platform
undoubtedly constituted a large element of her
power.  Renée Gange, the Socialist, wrote a
fine appreciation of her and her comrades, in
which she confesses that what she finds
"remarkable among these young girls, pretty as
well as plain, is the complete absence of the
ordinary feminine expression....  In looking
with searching, scrutinising eye at the faces
enveloped in this ugly bonnet, we have not
deciphered the least vestige of this expression,
neither timidity, nor awkwardness, nor restlessness,
nor the consciousness that people are
thinking of them.  Nothing.  These faces are
the free faces of free creatures."

One day a French Baron, who had received
a great blessing at the Maréchale's Conférences,
said to her in the great hall at the Rue
Auber, "What you lack here is pictures; for
instance, the saints.  Those beautiful faces,
with their sweet celestial expressions, diffuse
a sentiment of reverence and quietness, and
they would form such a beautiful background
to you.  You should have the Virgin, and Saint
Francis, and many others.  That is what you
lack in all your halls: could we not do something?"

"Baron," said the Maréchale, "will you come
here next Sunday evening?"

"Yes, certainly.  Are you going to speak?"  He
never lost a chance of hearing her.

"Yes; be sure you do not miss it."

Next Sunday evening she marshalled her
little group of officers.  She filed them in, men
on one side, women on the other.  She stood
in the midst of them and spoke.  At the end
of the meeting the Baron came forward.

"Maréchale," he said, "you have no need of
pictures.  Those figures! those faces! *they* are
your pictures."

Her friend Frank Crossley was greatly
struck by this incident.  He wrote: "I was
specially interested in the remark upon inspired
faces.  I once heard Rendel Harris say of the
biblical critics, that they might tear the volume
into shreds, but never could rub off the light
of God from the faces of His people."

One of the cadets of the École Militaire was
Constance Monod, daughter of the great
Protestant preacher whose hymn, "Oh, the bitter
shame and sorrow," is known everywhere.
Having received salvation and rich spiritual
blessings from attending the Maréchale's
meetings, she became one of her most devoted
officers and warmest friends.  She was one day
put up to speak to a very rough audience of
lewd, low men, and one of the roughest and
lewdest of them said, with tears in his eyes:

"Oh, what extraordinary purity in that face!"

That was the expression which gave so many
of the cadets their power in the cafés and in
the slums.  It was what they were, far more
than what they said, that did the work.

Among the new cadets there was always a
great heart-searching.  Were they sure of their
vocation?  Had they a due sense of the
seriousness, the sacredness, the responsibility, the
opportunity of the call to work and fight for
God?  If they were not right there, everything
was wrong.  But if they had really left the
world, and come to learn to know GOD, He
revealed Himself to them, and it was marvellous
how rapidly they grew in that heart-knowledge
which is always so much deeper than head-knowledge.

Whenever troubles and difficulties arose, the
Maréchale's method was not to evade them,
but to grip things at the bottom.  An
invitation to "come and have a cup of tea" would
lead to earnest talk and prayer, by which she
nipped many an evil in the bud.  These
"personals," as such interviews were called, were
remembered ever afterwards with gratitude.

The conquest of self, the triumph of the
spirit of love, was illustrated in small matters
as well as in great.  One day a Frenchman,
François, refused to clean the boots of another
cadet, who was a German.

"I clean a German's boots?  Never! never!"
The Maréchale quietly said:

"The boots will be cleaned."

"Never by me!"

"By you."

"Well, not now, let them wait!"

The whole day passed, and the boots were
not cleaned.  The Maréchale knew what François
suffered inwardly, and got him alone in the
evening.

"Jesus died for the Germans," she said.

His lips remained tightly pressed.  He
suffered, and she suffered with him.  After a
moment's silence he burst into a torrent.

"We have endured too much!  Think of the
siege of Paris.  That beast of a Bismarck!
Oh! our country has suffered.  Clean a
German's boots?  Never!"

He raved.  The Maréchale was quiet and
listened for a time.  Then she said:

"All that may be true; but you are going
to have a greater victory over the Germans
than ever the Germans won over you.  The
triumph which they had over France was a
flea-bite in comparison."

She got his ear, and talked to him of the
highest things.  The victory which Jesus won
on Calvary over Pilate and the Priests and
Judas, this must be François' victory.

"Go back to your trade unless you can win
this victory.  This makes an apostle of
François, and nothing else.  These boots are only
a detail, but they have brought to light
something in you that is hindering the great victory."

And so they talked.  She would not force
him.  Next morning she gave a lecture, at the
end of which he came into her room and sat
down.  There was a moment's silence, and then
he collapsed, falling all of a heap and sobbing
like a child.

"Maréchale," he said, "I will clean the boots!"

Such training inside the École made the
cadets ready for any conflict outside, and the
triumph of the spirit of love was in some
instances a preparation for death.  The first of
the Maréchale's cadets to win the martyr's
crown was Louis Jeanmonod.

He was a Swiss youth, finely built, nearly
six foot, and twenty-one years of age; a true
soldier, devoted, courageous, tender-hearted.
His months of training were almost over, and
in the last three weeks he developed wonderfully.
He visited the cafés with great success,
singing and speaking, holding his auditors in
breathless silence.  He had great power in
convicting people, and often his opponents would
become his friends and ask him to continue to
speak to them.

On a January night in 1885 he was guarding
the door of the Hall at the Quai de Valmey,
when one of the roughs ran at him head
foremost and butted him violently in the stomach.
Louis managed to shut the door, and next day
went on bravely with his work, even selling the
*En Avant* in the evening, till the pain became
very severe.  The doctor found that a quantity
of blood had already settled in his lungs,
and soon after pronounced his case beyond all
human skill.

Louis was for a time delirious, but he had
never in his past life played the fool, and he
uttered no word that his mother would not
have wished to hear.  He always seemed to
be starting on a campaign.  Were the caps,
the bags, and everything else ready?
Oh! what glorious times were coming!

When the delirium passed, and his mind
became calm, his pallid face shone with a
strange light.  As soon as the Maréchale came
to his bedside, he saluted and said—

"Amen, Maréchale, amen!"

What were his thoughts of the ruffian who
had dealt the deadly blow?  He had only a
single thought—"One day he will be
saved."  Detectives came to receive the dying man's
description of the assailant.  A message from
them to this effect was conveyed to Louis, who
answered it in a single word:

"*Jamais!*" (Never!)

But he described the guilty man to the
Maréchale, that she might know him and pray
for him.

Seeking her hand when the end drew near,
he said—

"Oh, I love so much to hold your fingers."

"Jesus will take your hands, Louis, and
guide you into the port."

"I will—let myself—be guided—by Him."

The Maréchale prayed, and with the spirit
of Saint Stephen in his breast and the words
"It is too beautiful!" on his lips, he went to be
with Christ.  Belleville and the Villette were
stirred to the depths by a martyr's funeral,
and at the grave Théodore Monod spoke words
which moved the hearts of all.

The young Maréchale who gathered round
her men and women of this stamp—a willing
people in the day of the Lord's power, ready
for everything, faithful unto death—evidently
possessed high qualities of leadership, and ere
long the spirit of the École Militaire was to be
found in every station of the Army throughout
France and Switzerland.  Speaking at one of
the General's great meetings in Scotland,
Professor Henry Drummond said that after
travelling all over the South of Europe, visiting
many cathedrals and hearing famous orators,
he had landed at Marseilles, and felt more of
the presence and power of Christ in the
Salvation Army meeting-place of that town than
he had experienced in all his wanderings.  The
General repeated this to the Maréchale, and
she found that the meeting which had so
profoundly impressed the Professor had been
conducted by a young officer, Mlle. Dormois,
who had recently left the Training School in Paris.

That the authorities at home praised God
for the Maréchale's work scarcely needs saying.
Her father's appreciation found expression
in every letter.  Here are brief extracts
from three of them.

"My dear girl, my very precious girl, I
know you are after my own heart.  I place
boundless confidence in your judgment and
resolutions.  Do not be afraid of anything or
any one."

"You are a true heroine, a Joan of Arc, indeed."

"You must have a fearful strain upon you.
Still a great part of your business is to keep
yourself quiet and free from wearing care.
To be cool and steady under fire is the quality
of the very best soldiers.  I fear I have not
excelled in this direction, and it is a very
difficult property in our family, seeing how full
of sympathy and feeling our hearts and lives
are, but God can do much for us."

Every letter from her eldest brother Bramwell,
who was the Chief of Staff, was a "Well
done!" from over the sea.  Writing in
1885—the year of his and Stead's heroic crusade
against vice—he said: "I get more and more
dissatisfied with things human every day.  The
world is all gone mad.  If it was only bad, and
not mad, we could mend it, but being both I
get less and less hope instead of more!  We
will now attend to quality more.  If we could
get *better* people surely we should go faster.
I solemnly believe you are ahead of us on the
Continent in this direction."

In the following year he wrote: "Do not
think you will ever be less dear to me than you
have been.  You cannot be.  I love and admire
you, and if you were my general to-morrow
I should follow you to the last gasp and stick
while there was one limb of me left."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WOMAN'S VOCATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   WOMAN'S VOCATION

.. vspace:: 2

"There can be neither Jew nor Greek;
there can be neither bond nor free; there can
be no male and female: for ye are all one in
Christ Jesus."  After the lapse of many
centuries this great apostolic saying is beginning
to yield up its meaning and its blessing.  The
Mother of the Army was one of the first to
assert woman's liberty, and her daughters
entered into a sacred heritage.  Having become
a public speaker at fourteen, and seen the work
of faith rewarded with countless signs following,
the Maréchale could never harbour any
secret fear that her ministry might be grieving
the Spirit of God.  It was impossible, however,
that she should work for years without
encountering many who had strong prejudices.
Our Lord's disciples "marvelled that He spake
with a woman," and there are still disciples who
marvel when a woman speaks for Him.

In the summer of her third year in France,
the Maréchale attacked the old city of Nîmes,
in the largely Protestant Gard—the first of a
series of campaigns which were the means of
bringing a blessing to a number of the provinces
of France.  On her arrival she found that
M. Peyron, an eminent judge, who had greatly
benefited from hearing her before, had
arranged a preliminary meeting of the orthodox
of Nîmes—pastors and their wives and other
Protestant workers—to the number of about
120.  He was anxious that they should be
won before her campaign began, but he had
no idea that he had prepared for her one of
the battles royal of her life.

The meeting being thrown open, the
doctrine of holiness—God's power to keep His
children from sinning—first came up, and was
violently attacked by several pastors who
confounded it with perfectionism.  Their remarks
were loudly applauded, and one lady screamed
above the rest—

"Let him that is without sin get up and
testify."

Greatly daring, the Maréchale whispered to
a comrade who sat beside her, "Rise, Bisson,"
which he did, and in a few simple words testified,
not indeed to his own perfection, but to
God's power to sanctify and keep as well as
justify.

After a momentary lull, the storm became
fiercer than ever, and the ministry of women
was now the cause of war.  The Maréchale
alluded to her mother's manifesto on the subject.

"We have read it," said a lady, "and we do
not agree with it.  Women are meant for the
home.  They are commanded to be silent in the
churches."

"Besides," cried another, "you are not old
enough."

The Maréchale quoted the words, "Let no
man despise thy youth."

"But that," retorted a pastor's wife, "was
said to a man."

Thereupon the babel of voices became deafening.

"Pretty and prepossessing girls," a matron
was heard to say, "should not show themselves
in public."

"If you do speak," said a pastor, skilled in
distinctions, "you should speak to women only,
and not before men."

All through the storm the central figure was
quiet and self-possessed.  But she was thinking
hard.  The idea of a distinction in sex had
never come before her as a speaker; it was new
and strange to her.  When she at length spoke
again, she put the result of her thinking into
a simple, memorable, unanswerable dictum:

"But there is no sex in soul."

Perhaps somebody had said the same thing
before, but it was none the less original on her
part.  Then she expanded the truth:

"The needs of a man's soul are the same as
a woman's, and vice versa.  You do not get up
and say there are so many men and so many
women in a meeting.  They all need salvation,
pardon, purity, peace; all the gifts and graces
of the Spirit are for men and women alike.  Of
course," she continued, "if any woman is so
light and frivolous that she makes such a
distinction, that certainly proves that she has no
vocation to be an evangelist, and I should send
her home by the next train."

She felt that the atmosphere of the room
was horrible.  Religious controversies, like
religious wars, create a more frightful spirit
than any other quarrels.  Instead of prolonging
the discussion, the Maréchale sank on her
knees and began to pray.  She had won by
prayer many victories which were remembered
after long years.  When she was a child of
fourteen, she attended a meeting of her mother's
at Ryde in the Isle of Wight.  She sat far
back beside the door, listening till the address
was ended, and then she heard her mother ask
if some brother or sister would pray.  As
nobody responded, and the silence became too
oppressive to bear, Katie rose and poured out
her heart to God in tones of passionate
earnestness, seeking for a victory ere the meeting
ended.  When she got home, she was folded
in her mother's arms and covered with kisses;
and forty years after, when she was herself
conducting a mission at Ryde, a saintly lady
of ninety-two told her that no prayer lived in
her memory like that child's prayer.

It was such a prayer—long, intense,
passionate—that the Maréchale prayed among the
orthodox of Nîmes.  That night the eldest
daughter of M. Peyron, a beautiful, worldly
girl, was won for Christ.  At seven o'clock
on the following morning two pastors,
MM. Challand and Babut, along with M. Peyron,
awoke the Maréchale.  They had come to say,
for themselves and others, how they deplored
the scene of the preceding night, and to beg
forgiveness.

On Sunday morning the campaign proper
was begun in the Alcasar, which was packed,
and the wives of several pastors were among
those who came in tears to the penitent form.
Albin Peyron, junior, who is to-day the leader
of the Army in Switzerland, began the new
life at a "Night with Jesus" which was held
after that meeting.  In his youth he was the
founder of *La Petite Armée*, which did much
good work among the children of Nîmes and
other towns of Southern France.

.. vspace:: 2

While the Maréchale was always at home in
crowds, she loved quiet interviews with
individuals if possible still more.  In many of
these talks the subject was the victory of faith.
During one of her *tournées*, she was conducting
meetings in a theatre at Cannes.  On a
lovely September evening she was walking
towards the sea, lost in admiration of the
sunset.  Fatigued with her Sunday morning's
work, she was seeking a little repose.  She
observed a priest slowly proceeding towards the
hill on which stood a little Catholic church.  His
appearance struck her; he looked at once so
distinguished and so sad.  An inner voice said
to her, "Speak to that priest."  "I cannot,"
she said, "he would think me mad."  But the
voice said the same words a second time, and
then she instantly obeyed.  Hurrying towards
the priest, she said—

"Good-evening, *mon père*.  I presume you
are going to the church on the hill.  May I
accompany you, for I would speak with you on
spiritual subjects?"

Uncovering his head, and bowing with great
respect, he answered, "Certainly, madame."

They walked on for a little in silence.  Then
she said—

"What must I do to be saved, my father?"

"Keep the ten commandments," he answered at once.

"But the rich young man who came to Jesus
could say with his hand on his heart that he had
kept them all, and yet had no assurance of
salvation.  He was in great trouble.  *He* said,
'What must I do to be saved?'"

"Oh, then you must take the holy Eucharist
very often."

"But those who take it, my father, are they
saved from sinning?  Are they not the victims
of the power of evil, the same as others?"

"Oh! yes, madame, but then there is the
Confessional."

"But does not the same thing apply to the
Confessional, my father?  You must know that
there are tens of thousands in France who
confess, but fall again the next day.  They have
not found rest.  Is not Christ ready to save
us if we are ready to be saved?"

"Alas! madame, we shall sin always, always,
to the very end of our lives."

"But, my father, were not St. Augustine,
St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena,
Fénelon and many others, delivered from the
slavery of sin and self?  They attained to
something definite—to holiness."

He turned with vehemence and said, raising
his voice—

"Ah! madame, but those were extraordinary
lives.  Those people were saints."

"No, my father, they were men and women
like you and me.  What God did for St. Augustine
or St. Catherine of Siena, can He not
do it for me if I am ready to fulfil the conditions
which He lays down?  What does religion
do, what is it worth, if it cannot deliver us from
sin?"

He did not answer.  He was silently thinking.

She went on, "Is Christ a Saviour, yes or no?"

"Oh, yes, yes, yes, He is!"

"Has He saved *you*, my father?"

They stood still for a moment, and he turned
his face away, with a look of poignant sadness.
Then followed a confession—one of the deepest,
most heartfelt cries she had ever listened
to—ending with the words, "Alas, alas! all the
days of my life I sin, and I expect to sin to my
latest breath."

The Maréchale was profoundly moved, and
felt that she stood upon holy ground.  At last
she spoke—

"Then Calvary is the greatest fiasco the
world has ever seen."

Stretching out his hand, he said, "Oh,
madame, do not say that; it is blasphemy."

"But, my father, we are in the presence of
facts, not fancies.  You have left what men
prize most.  You have lived up to your light.
And what do I find?  Torment instead of rest,
conflict instead of assurance, bondage instead
of deliverance.  Surely, my father, Jesus did
not come to increase our burdens, but to relieve
them.  You remember His word, 'Come unto
me and I will give you rest.'  He said, 'My
yoke is easy and my burden is light.'  Are
these theories to be preached in pulpits, or are
they realities?"

By this time they stood on the summit of
the hill, and she said—

"You are going to preach to-night, *mon père*?"

"Yes."

"Would you like that we should go down
the hill together and resume our conversation?"

"It would be a great pleasure, madame."

He preached one of the best sermons she
had ever heard, partly inspired, she could not
help thinking, by their intimate talk.  As the
congregation moved out, she stepped into a
Confessional box to wait for him.  She saw
him turning this way and that with a look of
disappointment, and, stepping out, said to
him—

"I am here, *mon père*."

They began to descend the hill together.
"My father," she said, "I greatly enjoyed your
sermon.  But how can you show others the
way of deliverance if you have not found it
yourself?  How can you unbind if you are not
unbound?  How can you heal if you are not
healed?  How, my father?  Do you not see
that all this is only from the head, not from
the life, the heart?"

"It is true!  But I try, oh, my God, I try!"

"But it does not come in that way—by our
struggles."

"Then how?" he exclaimed in a tone of despair.

"Does He not say, 'Abide in me, and ask
what you will, and it shall be done unto you'?
Does not St. Paul testify, 'I can do all things
through Christ which strengthened me.'  How
many have given praise to Him who is 'able
to save to the uttermost' and 'able to present
us faultless'!  Put Him to the proof.  If any
one has the right to salvation, surely you have."

They paused under a tree in the stillness of
evening, and, while he stood with bowed head,
she knelt beside him and prayed.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE RENUNCIATION OF HOME`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE RENUNCIATION OF HOME

.. vspace:: 2

Early in 1887 the Maréchale became the
wife of Mr. Arthur Sydney Clibborn, an Irish
gentleman of Quaker extraction, lineally
descended from Barclay of Ury, the hero of one
of Whittier's finest poems.  Brought up in
Bessbrook, which was called the model town
from the fact that there was no public-house,
police barracks or pawnshop in it, he renounced
excellent business prospects in answer to a
call which first came to him through a simple,
earnest Quaker minister, "Sydney, will thee
not come with us?"  The visit of some
representatives of Salvationism to Bessbrook turned
the current of his thoughts in a new direction,
making him exclaim, "Here is primitive
Quakerism, primitive Wesleyanism, primitive
Christianity!"  As he had spent some years at school
in Switzerland, and become proficient in
French and German, he was sent by General
Booth to assist the Maréchale in France, and
acted as her chief of staff until their marriage.

He was a man of great courage, and
received a medal from the French President
for saving life from drowning.  As a
servant of God he would, one cannot but think,
have made a splendid Huguenot or Covenanter.
His heroic ideal was the persecuted
Quaker whose blood he had in his veins.  In
the Salvation Army's early days of conflict he
was the bravest of the brave.  He was stoned
and covered with mud in the streets of Geneva.
He was pursued by a Parisian mob that howled
"Down with Jesus Christ!"  His life was
attempted many times, and he was condemned
to death by the Nihilists under the seal of the
Paris headquarters; but he never went out of
his way to avoid death or use carnal weapons.

Mr. Booth-Clibborn has been specially used
of God in removing the difficulties of those
troubled with intellectual doubt and in
opening the eyes of a large number who were in
spiritual darkness.

The Maréchale was now obliged to leave the
Training Home, where her *vie apostolique*
among her beloved officers and cadets, whose
every conflict and danger she shared, had often
seemed to her like life in an earthly paradise.
But whatever new duties and cares came to
her in her little home in the Rue d'Allemagne,
she never allowed them to interfere with her
vocation.  In the course of fourteen years God
gave her five sons and five daughters, among
whom life was infinitely sweet to her, yet all
her public activities were maintained, while
her passion for souls burned with a clear and
steady flame.

Loyalty to Christ now assumed a new aspect,
and the conditions of discipleship an added
stringency.  A great sentence in the
Gospel—"Verily I say unto you, there is no man that
hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands,
for my sake, and the Gospel's, but he shall
receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses
and brethren and sisters and mothers and
children and lands, with persecutions, and in the
world to come eternal life"—burned itself into
the Maréchale's soul, and she never doubted
that she received her *centuple* just because she
paid the price.

When she went to any of the towns of
France to undertake a difficult campaign, it
was impossible for her to do her duty unless
she fixed her whole mind and heart upon the
work.  Having to deal with the mass of sin
concentrated in a large mixed audience such
as she had to face in these towns, and knowing,
as she used to say, that every person had a
skeleton in the cupboard, she felt that she must
become, as it were, the scapegoat to bear the
sins of these people.  There was a sense in
which she had to be like Christ in this respect,
and so co-operate and suffer with Him
(Col. i. 24).  She must go and set herself apart to
lift up hands to God in favour of the city.  She
must say to every preoccupation, every earthly
tie, "Stand thou there while I go yonder to
pray."  She must *live* for that town and that
people for six weeks, or two or three months.
She might do a certain kind of work without
giving her *life*, but it would not be of the
apostolic kind.  To get the hundredfold of
which Christ spoke she must leave father and
mother, home and child.  In some very real
way she must sacrifice and suffer.  She had
felt this from her childhood, and she now saw
it more clearly than ever; there was always a
price to pay.  The secret of success in such
cases was the consciousness of a vocation and a
passionate love too, and the personal dealing
with the Christ of Calvary.

.. _`160`:

.. figure:: images/img-160.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: THE MARÉCHALE (From a photograph by Fred. Boissonnas, Paris, circa 1880)

   THE MARÉCHALE 
   (From a photograph by Fred. Boissonnas, Paris, circa 1880)

How hard it became for the Maréchale to
accept this cross may be indicated by a
touching scene depicted by her secretary, Miss
Gugelman, who is now one of the bravest
soldiers of salvation in India.

"'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.'  How
clearly this was illustrated when, at a late hour
one evening, just at the close of her month's
meetings in Paris, the Maréchale bent over her
little ones' cots to bid them good-bye before
starting on her three-months' tour through
France and Switzerland.  Evangeline, the
eldest, had kept awake, for she knew that her
mamma was going away.  The little arms were
flung round the warrior-mother's neck, when,
raising her sweet tear-stained face, little
Evangeline stammered, '*Maman*, stay with me, or
take me with you on your *tournées*.'  Our
leader's all too human tears filled her eyes; she
kissed the little pleader, and then wrapped her
up in a blanket, and brought her into the study
to see us off.  It was painfully clear to us who
were watching her, that the leaving of her little
ones for the war's sake was a heavy cross to
the Maréchale.  Thank God, she shirks it not.
Suppressing her feelings, she went out into the
cold and damp, and started her long all-night
journey."

That was in February 1894, and later in the
same year she had two of the finest campaigns
of her life—at Havre and Rouen.  The
turbulent beginning at Havre was graphically
described by her friend the Princess Malzoff,
who accompanied the Maréchale in order to
have a taste of the *vie apostolique*.  "There
was a great tumult in the 'Lyre Havraise.'  The
Maréchale had come to publish the word
of love and salvation.  An immense crowd
forced itself into the hall, and who would have
dared believe that they had all come simply to
present the world with the most scandalous,
the most vulgar and odious spectacle that one
can imagine?  When the Maréchale rose with
great dignity and calm ... she could not make
herself heard.  Every word was interrupted;
one could see that it was a prepared stroke.
One might imagine oneself to be in an asylum.
But she did not let herself be discouraged; she
persevered; she walked straight into the midst
of the infuriated crowd.  She did not tame
these wild beasts, but she came out victorious
all the same.  Tall, beautiful, calm, sustained
by her divine conviction and with the strength
of a great heart, she came back again and
again—our admirable Maréchale! ... In the
midst of this infernal and ridiculous tumult a
few *élite* souls felt a noble enthusiasm for this
young woman who battled alone against a
hostile and wicked crowd.  They came to grasp
her hand, to express their admiration for her
and their shame for those who had broken the
simplest laws of hospitality, politeness and
civilisation.  Blessed be our Maréchale; in her the
whole *Armée du Salut* was personified that
night in its strength, its faith, its persevering
love."

Tributes to "the Maréchale under fire" were
extorted from all the reporters.  After two or
three meetings the atmosphere was changing
and the tide of battle turning, when tidings
came from Paris, that Augustine, the Maréchale's
little son of two summers, was alarmingly
ill.  Then came an indescribable mental
conflict, which ended in her deciding to remain
at least another night and hope for better news
in the morning.  She called her officers for
prayer, and that night spoke with a power and
tenderness which held the vast audience as with
a spell; after which she had Havre for six
weeks in the hollow of her hand.

Next morning she received a reassuring wire
from home, and, sitting alone on the beach, she
wrote a hymn that gives perfect expression to
the thought of the *Greater Love*—a hymn that
has endeared itself in France as much to
Catholics as to Protestants.  It begins:

   |  Qui quitte famille et terre
   |  Pour mon Nom, pour suivre mes pas;
   |  Qui quitte enfants, père ou mère,
   |  Reçoit le centuple ici-bas.
   |

When this hymn was sung in the "Lyre
Havraise" a night or two afterwards by one of
the Maréchale's young comrades, Mme. Jeanmonod,
who had a beautiful soprano voice, it
was received with a burst of sympathetic
applause, and had to be sung over and over again,
till the audience knew it.

Then there was a great harvest of souls to
reap.  A letter written at the time gives an
idea of the intensity of spirit with which the
leader threw herself into the work.

"Meeting superb!  Nothing of its kind since
the days of Geneva and Nîmes, and even better
in a sense than that, as the infidels rush to
hear me.  Perfect order and people pleading
to get in.  In these first audiences it has been
too risky and excitable to allow any to speak
but me.  They applaud everything, that is,
when I have finished speaking, and I never felt
more free and regardless of man's opinion.  I
am stronger with the rough element alone in
my weakness, so much stronger as I throw
myself on them.  Yes, I am filled with the life
and power of God for this town.  This hour
may never come again.  My soul is on the full
stretch....  Do you know what the 'Centuple'
is for me?  That my children shall become
apostles!  Oh, I claim that of God, and do you
know there is an assurance in my heart."

In addition to the nightly crowds at the
Casino, the Maréchale held afternoon meetings
for women only, at which she spoke on such
subjects as "The Role of Woman," "The
Mother of Jesus," "The White Robe."  Nothing
impressed Havre more than the midnight
suppers she gave to the *filles perdues* of the
town, not a few of whom were constrained to
abandon the life of sin.  And so generous were
the rich citizens in their offerings that at the
close of the campaign the Maréchale was at
length able to realise one of her cherished
ideas—the foundation of a Rescue Home in Paris.

.. vspace:: 2

After Havre, the Maréchale had a short
breathing-space at home, and then Rouen had
to be faced.  Again the shadow of the Cross
fell upon little hearts and lives.  Victoire, who
was nearly five, pleaded with upstretched arms,
"Don't go, mother! stay with us!" (*Ne pars
pas, Maman!  Reste avec nous!*)  Evangeline,
who had just turned six, had learned the
lesson of separation, and, throwing her arms
around her mother, said, "Maman, if you do go
to Rouen, will some souls be saved that would
not be saved if you did not go?"

"Yes; most likely so."

"Then go, Maman!"

And Maman went.

While the good Catholic of Rouen was
shocked, the man in the street was amused, at
the idea of worshipping God in the *Théâtre
Français* instead of the stately cathedral, and
between them they contrived to make the thing
impossible.  What, they asked, could be more
grotesque than preaching and singing hymns
on the stage?  At the opening meeting the
Maréchale herself obtained a fairly good
hearing, but a hostile element was present which
every now and then convulsed the audience
with laughter by some comical exclamation;
and when one of her comrades attempted to
close the meeting with prayer, the rout was
complete.  Prayer in a theatre was the limit,
and next day the Maréchale was informed by
the Mayor that he must pacify the public by
terminating these proceedings.

The great Casino, at the corner of the square
in which Joan of Arc was burned, was then
secured, and the Maréchale began to deliver
a series of addresses on "The Holy Mother
of Jesus," "Nineteenth Century Miracles,"
"Confession," "Restitution," "The Saints,"
"The Pater Noster," "My Credo," "The Altar."  The
crowds that filled the hall to overflowing
were amazed to find that these subjects
were all dealt with quite unecclesiastically, and
with such an exclusive application to the
individual heart and life that sacerdotalism
became, as it were, non-existent, while the sinner
and the Saviour were made manifest and left
face to face.  The people who came with minds
alert left with hearts melted and consciences
aroused.  Soon there were great numbers of
souls seeking spiritual help, and the Maréchale
announced that she would meet the convicted
and anxious in one of the rooms of the Casino.
No fewer than four hundred sought private
interviews in that place, which thus became a
confessional of the simple, primitive order.
Not by priestly absolution, but through
personal contact with the one High Priest and
Mediator, was sin remitted and salvation won.

So many Catholics were converted that the
head of one of the seminaries thought it
necessary to preach against the *Armée du Salut*.
An influential abbé, on the other hand, said:
"I cannot, of course, agree with the Salvationists,
but I am absolutely convinced of their
sincerity, and I am certain they are far nearer
salvation than the majority of Catholics."  The
*curé* of the largest *paroisse* attended one day
in his *soutane*, gave an offering for the
mission, and bought the publications at the door.
When the Maréchale was about to speak to
women alone on the Holy Mother, two priests
expressed their desire to be present, and she
had them concealed behind a curtain.  At the
end they were deeply moved, and assured her
they had not heard a single word with which
they were not in heartiest agreement.  Such
was the deep spiritual impression made upon
the town that a newspaper was published
containing nothing but accounts of her meetings
and the work going on in the Casino.

During all her years in France the Maréchale
never posed as a Protestant and never
attacked Catholicism.  Creeds, ceremonies,
penances, pilgrimages—these things were to
her neither here nor there.  She always went
for the real, and she found in Christ not only
true divinity but perfect humanity.  Her
sermon on the Virgin melted thousands of Catholic
hearts, and her fundamental doctrine of
sacrifice never failed to evoke a response from
the Latin races.  She was an eager student—so
far as the "apostolic life" permitted—of the
writings of Catherine of Siena, Thomas à
Kempis, Madame Guyon and Fénelon,
claiming kinship with all who loved the Lord Jesus
Christ in sincerity and truth.

Thus she had great power over Catholics
as well as Protestants and infidels.  One of
her most devoted officers, M. le Roux, had,
after a brilliant career as a Catholic student,
completed his preparation for the priesthood
and received the tonsure, when he came under
her influence and found his life completely
changed.  And the following letter received
from a lady-professor in Rouen indicates the
kind of impression which was made on many
Catholic minds.

"Dear Maréchale, I wish to do what I have
not yet dared to do when face to face with
you—that is, to express the pleasure which
I have found in your charming Conférences.
They have moved and troubled me to such an
extent, have thrown such light in my heart and
mind, that I ask myself what is going on
within me.  Your addresses, so simple and yet
so high, so suited to your hearers, so consecutive,
have influenced me more than all the beautiful
sermons of the monks.  You have made
me understand that God asks something else
from us than outward practices and empty
ceremonial, and I feel that you have renewed
a faith in me that had nearly disappeared.  You
have made me taste, thanks to your deep
convictions and the warmth of your speech, one
of the purest joys I have ever known....  Be
blessed a thousand times, Maréchale, for
having revealed my religion to be under a new
light, for having shaken this apathy which
rendered me incapable of every generous impulse,
for having made me more sensitive to the
sufferings of others.  Be blessed in your children,
who one day I hope will reward you nobly for
all your sacrifices.  Be blessed in humanity, the
great family which you have elected to live for
and which is the object of your care."

.. vspace:: 2

Does such a revival as this leave solid and
lasting results?  Let one case out of many be
presented as evidence that it does.  M. Matter
was a distinguished engineer and an officer in
the French army.  Extracts from two of his
letters tell what the Rouen campaign did for him.

"Beloved Maréchale, Three years ago tonight
a poor man entered the Casino through
what appeared mere chance.  He was burdened
with sorrow, keenly conscious of his sins, but
never dreaming of asking the *Armée du Salut*—which
did not even excite his curiosity—to
help him, hardly believing any more in the
possibility of salvation for him.  God inspired
you; the Holy Spirit made your words
penetrate even underneath the breastplate of sin
which covered my poor heart.  Two days after
I was born to a new life.  From that moment
God has strengthened, protected and directed
me.  I seek to love Him with all my heart, and
I treasure a deep and loving gratitude to you."

And six years later: "I have made a pilgrimage
at night in the deserted streets to the
Casino where God found me and where you
were His ambassador."

This gentleman is now well known all over
France for his work among criminals and
drunkards, and his services have been
recognised by the French government.  He gets into
personal touch with hundreds of convicts in
order to speak to them of the love of God, and
down in the Ardèche he has a Home for four
hundred little waifs, mostly the children of
criminals, whom he calls the Maréchale's
grandchildren, he himself being her spiritual son.

The last time she visited him in Paris, they
were engaged in eager and intimate talk, when
he said, "Do you see that ivory pipe?  I have
engraved on it the day of my conversion at
Rouen; but since that time I have never had
any inclination to smoke it.  And do you see
that pile of letters?  These are from my boys
in prison.  Let me read one of them to you."  Then
he read the words of a convict who spoke
of prison walls lighted up with the glory of
Christ's presence.  And he added, "Do you
remember you said to me when I was in
despair over my past life, 'These hands, which
have done so much evil, will bring blessing and
salvation where I can never go.'  Your words
have literally come true."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FRIENDSHIP OF CHRIST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FRIENDSHIP OF CHRIST

.. vspace:: 2

One night a little card was placed on the
*table d'hôte* of the Hôtel Meurice, in the Rue
de Rivoli, intimating to the guests that the
Maréchale would speak at an informal meeting
in the salon after dinner.  Among those who
came to see and hear her was a little Russian
lady with deep and thoughtful hazel eyes.  She
was the celebrated Princess Nancy (properly
Anastasia) Malzoff of the Russian court.  One
of the Czarinas died in her arms.  She was a
friend of King Edward VII, and her brilliant
wit made her a welcome figure in every court
of Europe.  She spoke eight languages.

She was now well advanced in life, and
thought she had known everybody worth
knowing and seen everything worth seeing in
the world.  But that evening was the beginning
of a new life of peace and joy such as
she had never dreamed of.  From the moment
the Maréchale opened her lips, she was
fascinated, first by the speaker, and then still more
by the message.  Next morning she came in
her carriage to the Villette.  The Maréchale
was scarcely well enough to receive her, but she
would not take a "No."  When she entered
the Maréchale's room, she threw herself by the
bedside and exclaimed, "Oh! tell me, how did
you get to know Him?"

This was the commencement of a seven
years' friendship, and during all that time she
was never out of reach without writing the
Maréchale every second day.

The Princess was a member of the orthodox
Greek Church.  Her mother had married her
off at sixteen, and she had eleven children by
the time she was twenty-eight.  When she
found that her husband had become unfaithful,
she dismissed him with an emphatic "C'est
fini!" and for more than a quarter of a century
she had never seen him.

The Maréchale listened with deep sympathy
to the story of her life, and then said, "You
must forgive him, if you would be forgiven."

"Never, never!"

"Yes, if you want Christ, forgive him.
Never mind what he has done, you must
forgive him."

The Princess could not.  A struggle went
on in her mind for six weeks.  She began to
come to the meetings at the Rue Auber, but
she had no peace.  The Maréchale opened the
question again.

"Come now, I want you to write and invite
him to meet you at your hotel, to dine with
him, and to forgive him."

A terrible inner controversy ensued, and the
Princess became ill over it.  One can scarcely
imagine what it all meant to her, and yet
thousands have to go through the same.

Calling one day, the Maréchale found her
in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

"Princess, how dare you smoke like this?"

"Well, I am surrounded by a thousand
devils, blue, black and yellow.  You have been
neglecting me."

A ceaseless conflict was raging in her breast,
and ere they parted that day she wrote a letter
and said she would send it.

The Maréchale called again, and found that
the letter had not been sent.  Then the crisis
came.

"Princess, you are lost.  If you do not forgive,
your heavenly Father will not forgive you."

"I cannot, I cannot."

She was in agony of soul.

"Princess," said the Maréchale, "are you
perfect?  From the little I know of you I
should think you have a very bad temper."

"It is true, it is true."

"Your sins have not been his, but they are
sins before God, and have caused suffering to
others.  If you want God to forgive your bad
temper, you must forgive him."

The Maréchale prayed, and bade her look
to the Cross and see how Christ forgave.  Then
she told her again what to do.

"Darling, you are to invite him to your
apartments; you are to have a sweet little
dinner for him and flowers on the table, and when
he comes you are to kiss him."

"But I cannot!"

"Yes, you will; and remember it is no
forgiveness unless you kiss him.  Forgiveness
means kissing.  Forgive him, and I know peace
will come."

"Very well, I will, I will!"

The Maréchale chanced to be leaving Paris
for a time, and said—

"You will send me a wire when you have
done it."

The Princess invited her husband.  He made
a long night journey.  She kissed him and
forgave him.  Next day the Maréchale received
a wire which made her dance for joy.  It ran:
"*Tout s'est passé comme vous l'avez dit, et la
paix du Christ m'inonde: Malzoff*" (All is
done as you said, and the peace of Christ floods
my soul.)

Her husband died after a few months, and
her thankfulness for what she had done was
profound.

The last years of her own life were beautiful.
In a letter which she wrote to General
Booth in regard to her friend's health she said:
"I owe a great deal to the Maréchale.  She has
given me a treasure greater than all the treasures
of this world—she has given me a living
Christ; she has put Him not near me, but in
me, in my soul, and the gratitude I feel for
that blessing is great."  An article from her
pen on the Army's work in Paris contains these
words: "The Salle Auber is to me now a holy
place.  I feel the presence of Christ
there—Christ who has personally become a living
Saviour to me since the Maréchale brought me
to Him and committed me to His Divine arms."

Hundreds of letters, the last of which was
written in St. Petersburg on the day before
her death, reveal an intensely ardent nature,
and prove that the heart which truly loves
never grows old.  We translate a few extracts.

"I will use all my moral forces to prove to
you that our mutual affection has advanced
me in the path of holiness which you opened
to me the very first moments I heard you
speak.  God had pity upon me and sent you
on my *via dolorosa* to open to me a new
horizon, a new heaven.  He carried my heart to
you with an intensity of which I did not think
myself capable."

"I have found in you two beings equally
precious to me—the first is a friend I love like
a dearly beloved daughter; the second the
Maréchale of my Salvation, whose work,
vocation and power I admire—that moral power
which you only in the whole world exercise
over me.  If I had known you earlier, you
would have made a saint of me."

"Not any affection in the world, not even
my children's, can replace yours for me.  What
does it matter though everybody loves me if
you do not?"

"I know that it is because I have not yet
renounced my 'self,' my '*moi*,' that your
absence makes me suffer, but I cannot help
it—it is beyond my power.  I know also that the
day my 'self' will be chased away—which is
doubtful—I shall love no one, for to love one
must be a self, one must have one's *own* heart."

"I doubt if there are any others who bear
you such a deep, complete, living, warm and
luminous affection.  Not that you do not
deserve it, but all natures are not alike, and you
know the fault of mine.  I cannot love by
halves."

"'Love wisely,' some one advises.  That
word 'wise' hurts me.  I do not want to be wise
in my love for you.  I prefer to love madly,
and that is what I do, and you feel it, don't
you?  Wisdom to the devil when it is a
question of the heart."

"I cannot believe that He must detach us
from everything to attach us to Himself—that
would make me very sad.  On the contrary I
feel that it is only human love, disinterested
love, but deep and living, which can make us
understand Divine love.  It is only through
human experience that we can appreciate His
great, His mighty, His eternal love for us.
All the life of Jesus is filled with that palpable
love for His creatures, and that is why He is
so near to us.  Let me therefore love you
without detachment, and the more I love you the
more I will love Him."

.. vspace:: 2

One of her letters is peculiarly interesting:
"I will see the Emperor in these days, and I
will seek strength to speak to him.  You see,
my darling, speaking is not enough, one must
in such a case pour out one's soul and feel that
a superior force guides one and speaks for one."

It turned out as she hoped.  One night she
was at the Palace in St. Petersburg.  After
dinner the Czar came and seated himself
beside her.  Soon they were deep in intimate
conversation.  She began telling him what her
new-found friend in Paris had done for her.
She talked wisely as he listened attentively.
At length he said—

"But, Nancy, *you* have always been good,
always right."

"No," she answered; "till now I have never
known the Christ.  She has made Him real to
me, brought Him near to me, and He has
become what He never was before—my personal
Friend."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BURNING QUESTION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BURNING QUESTION

.. vspace:: 2

It was the often expressed wish of
Mrs. Josephine Butler that the Maréchale might be
able to join her crusade against the infamous
White Slave Traffic.  In one of her earliest
letters to her friend she said: "Dearest
Catherine, the wicked party, as you know, have
triumphed in the elections in Switzerland, and
the Geneva government has passed that evil
Law which our friends were trying to stop....
How nice it would be if you and I could
*stand up together* in Geneva, and denounce
their wickedness and proclaim the Saviour.
I should love to do so."  At a later time she
wrote of her young friend, "Oh, I sometimes
think if she were in the work of our Federation,
what a harvest she might bring us in, or
rather bring in for God!"

The Maréchale regarded the wish of that
saintly and chivalrous woman as involving a
kind of sacred trust.  Her own heart was
early and deeply troubled by the darker
aspects of our modern civilisation.  When she
and her two brave comrades, Florence Soper
and Adelaide Cox, took their first flat in Paris,
they were shocked to learn that they had as
their nearest neighbours—above and beneath,
to the right and to the left—families
unconsecrated by any marriage tie; and in the course
of their ordinary work they found themselves
hourly confronted by all the devils of vice.
The lurid facts, of which most Christians,
happily for their own peace of mind, know little
or nothing, were burned into the souls of these
noble women, each of whom dedicated herself
to a battle *à outrance* against this most
appalling form of evil.  And have they not
faithfully kept their vow?  Are there any living
Englishwomen who have done so much to protect
our innocent children and raise our fallen
sisters as these three, who first toiled and
suffered and prayed together thirty years ago in
the Villette of Paris?

In redeeming her pledge, the Maréchale not
only gave midnight suppers to the *filles
déchues* of the great cities in which she
conducted her campaigns, not only founded
Rescue Homes in Paris, Nîmes, Lyons and
Brussels, but endeavoured to make the problem of
purity a national question, to be dealt with
in a statesmanlike manner by every patriotic
citizen.

She frequently addressed great meetings of
the men of Paris and other cities on this
subject, making irresistible appeals to the heart
and conscience.  It was astonishing how she
carried the most critical audiences along with
her, though now and then an indignant hearer
would leap to his feet and dash out of the hall
or theatre in which her meeting was held.

She steadily refused to believe that nothing
could be done for the *morale* of Frenchmen,
and her faith in the innate chivalry of the
people was amply justified.  The respect with
which she was heard was a tribute not only to
the personal magnetism of a consecrated life,
but to the Christian ideal of chastity.  She was
often told by journalists that any one else, man
or woman, daring to utter half the home truths
to which she gave expression would have been
hissed out of the town.  Explain it as one
will, when she pleaded the sacred cause of
womanhood, men applauded to their own hurt.
"Gentlemen," she would exclaim, "I am not
French, but I love your nation.  I have made
your country mine, and I realise what France
might be but for the worm which gnaws at the
root of your national life.  It makes me
shudder to think—it makes me literally sick to
see—how many thousands of my sisters, and your
sisters, in your beautiful city are ministers of
vice.  So many, your policemen tell me, under
twenty, so many under seventeen, so many
under fifteen, and there are even those known
to the police who are not in their teens.
Gentlemen, they do not sin alone, for we are all
*solidaires*.  They are like your own girls, your
wives, your sweet little daughters.  They have
hearts, they have brains, they are intelligent,
they would make beautiful mothers, our comrades
in life's journey, helping us and sharing
our burdens.  And, alas, what have you made
of them?  Any nation which can look at *that*
going on in its cities day by day and night by
night, without a word, without a protest—which
can see this splendid asset, woman, who
should bear its sons and daughters, sacrificed
and sold to vice, disease, and early death,—that
nation is on the decline.  Do not tell me
that a man worthy of the name can be silent
in face of these stupendous facts.  Such a man
is not a Frenchman.

"I am told that things have always been so,
and will always be so.  I hear it said on every
hand that this vice is a necessity.  That some
women—that the daughters of the poor—should
be sacrificed is regarded as inevitable.
Well, then, gentlemen, as you say it is for the
public utility, follow your reasoning to its own
logical conclusion, be just to these poor
creatures; do not despise them, do not call them
lost, fallen, prostitutes; be honest and
acknowledge them; allow them to stand at least on the
same level as our soldiers who sacrifice
themselves for their country.  Far from being
ashamed of them, honour them for their
service to our sons and our nation.

"But you say 'it is only *une fille*,' and one of
your senators has publicly said that 'we are
come to a fine pass if *an honest man* cannot
buy himself *une bonne fortune*.'  Only a *fille*!
Your mothers were once only *filles*, your wives
were only *filles*, and what are your own
daughters?  Wherein lies the difference?

"An honest *man*!  I am not a nun; I am not
a man-hater stalking through the world.  I
revere man.  He is half a god.  Look at his
works in every domain—the king of creation,
given that wonderful command to subdue and
rule, having everything under his feet.  When
he rises to his destiny, and becomes a co-worker
with God, and puts his life and example—that
wonderful miracle called influence—on the side
of righteousness, he rises to the sublime.  The
sum of happiness, of pure joy and peace, that
one good man can bring to the little group at
home, and then to the community, to the city,
to the world, cannot be estimated.  And the
sum of misery, the curse, the blight that one
man can bring to a woman, to children, to
every one he touches—that, too, cannot be
estimated.  An *honest man*!  He does not even
stop where the cows and horses do.  He goes
a thousand miles beneath them!  And yet the
indulgence of the passions is no more a necessity
than the drinking of alcohol is a necessity
for an infant of a year old.  It is society that
awakens those evil desires, and they unfold
themselves under the influence of a baneful
education.

"Gentlemen, you say that a bad woman is
worse than a bad man.  Have you ever
reflected that the wrongs done to her are far
deeper?  Have you realised that her make-up
is a thousand times more delicate and complex
than yours, and that as a consequence this sin
makes shorter work of her?  Her despair is
blacker and she is reckless.  You take from
her the hope of ever having a little home of
her own, of ever having a real husband, of
ever hearing herself called mother.  You have
done that before she can realise what you have
done.  She does not wait, does not estimate.
The realisation comes to her later on in life.
And when it comes, is it any wonder that she
flies to drink and becomes a demon?  Would
not I?  Would not you?

"Say all that you please against woman.
Reckon up the sins on your side and on hers.
Still your page is black as ink compared with
hers.  Think of the generous, the absolute, the
totally blind ways she loves.

   |  'Woman's heart runs down to love
   |  As rivers run to seas.'
   |

"You have your life, your work, your amusements;
but love is her whole existence.  She is
created in that way.  That makes your sin in
deceiving a trusting heart infinitely greater.

"You may go and have a good marriage
afterwards, and be proud of your charming
wife's sweet looks, but does not the vision of
another, a pale face sometimes flit across your
mind?  And when you look at your little cot,
do you not see another baby face—another
little life you have never owned, of which you
are the author, and which is equally yours
before God?  A woman's heart has been broken,
and there will be retribution."

While the Maréchale stood alone, pleading
as a woman the cause of woman, her audiences
of educated Frenchmen were sometimes so
deeply stirred and convicted that they would
rock and sob under the power of emotion;
and when they rose at the end to sing a hymn
that she wrote as a young girl—a hymn which
has been translated into many languages—

   |  Ote tous mes péchés!
   |  Ote tous mes péchés!
   |  Agneau de Dieu, je viens à toi,
   |  Ote tous mes péchés,

the words and music would sweep over the
audience like a wave, sending many away with
consciences tortured and faces bathed in tears.

One morning, after such a meeting, there
was a ring at the Maréchale's door, and a lady
was ushered into her presence.  Coming forward
without a word, she took the Maréchale's
face between her hands, and warmly embraced
her in the French fashion by kissing both her
cheeks.  The Maréchale inquired what was the
meaning of this sweet affection.

"Oh!" said the stranger, "you have restored
to me my husband.  He was listening to you
last night, and when he came home he fell at
my feet and begged me to pardon him, vowing
that he would never again be untrue to me."

That was but one of the many fruits of these
addresses.

.. vspace:: 2

Sometimes the Maréchale would read to *élite*
audiences a letter which a man of high social
standing wrote to a charming young girl whom
he ought to have made his wife.  Having met
her at Carnival, he awoke in her heart an
adoring love, deceived her with a promise of
marriage, put a ring on her finger, and after three
years abandoned her and her baby boy.  The
Maréchale took the letter to an eminent jurist
and senator, who confessed that for
cold-blooded cruelty he had never seen anything to
equal it; but he sorrowfully added—such are
the laws of Christian lands—that nothing
could be done to right the wrong.  The letter
ran as follows—

.. vspace:: 2

"LITTLE MARIE,

.. vspace:: 1

"Once again I must ask pardon for all the
harm I have done you.  I hope, however, that
you will be strong in trouble, stronger than you
have been up to the present.  This will be a
very great consolation to me.  I owe many
thanks for the resolutions that the good little
Marie made yesterday, in spite of her heart
and all her feelings.  Believe that I shall never
forget it, and that it cost me much before
deciding to break your ideal—but, as I told you, I
prefer to be sincere.  As long as my heart was
free from other passion I always considered
you as the best friend I possessed.  If I was
not completely happy, it was that living
without love was not to live—but you, poor little
Marie, you suffered!

"You are worth a hundred times more than
I, and precisely on account of that we could
not understand each other.  You who are so
good—too good—permeated with the most
delicate sentiments, you could not conquer an
ambitious man, for I am very ambitious.

"Whilst you dreamed of a simple, quiet life
with me, you must understand that violent
passions, riches, and a luxurious life are for me
essential.  In a word, our ideals are completely
different, and it is a divorce of souls which I
have accomplished in leaving you.  Fate made
us meet, and fate separates us.  Don't have
any ill-feeling towards me.  My dream now is
to create for myself quite a new life made up
of goodness, of love, and above all faithfulness
in a serious affection.

"I sacrifice you, it is true, but if it were
otherwise, think of the torture you would have
inflicted on me.  Is it not better to separate,
each of us keeping a good memory of what
made our union?  Think also how my life is
insupportable in this muddle now that I love
truly.

"You are good, Marie; be courageous now.
The sacrifice that I ask of you is enormous, I
know, but do it for love of me, and I will be
eternally obliged to you.

"You will put all your tenderness in the
little Gustave, whom I shall never forget, and
above all remember that he who loves well
chastises well.  Au revoir—au revoir!

"Once again pardon me, and don't suffer
too much by your exile.  My only hope is that
Gustave will recompense you largely for all
the suffering you have endured, so little
merited during these long years.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "I remain,
       "Your devoted——."

.. vspace:: 2

Marie was human, and when the marriage
day drew near there was a fierce flaming-up of
resentment in her young heart.  She thought
of making a scene at the church and spoiling
the bridegroom's joy.  Her brother fanned her
burning sense of wrong, and promised to back
her up if she would seek revenge.  But the
Maréchale pleaded with her, the love of the
Crucified constrained her, and on the morning
of the wedding she wrote the following pathetic
little note: "He is to be married to-day.
The wedding bells are ringing....  It is all
over, dear Maréchale, and I am on my knees
in my little room.  All is well; the peace of
Christ is in my heart, and I have the victory."  This
is no romance, but a bit of real life.
Which of us would have done as little Marie
did?  She did not know it, but she was worthy
that morning of the ministry of angels—the
shining ones who have never sinned and never
suffered.

.. vspace:: 2

Sometimes the Maréchale would tell her
audience a story to prove what wells of love
there still are in the hearts of the most
abandoned.  During a three months' campaign at
Lyons, resulting in one of the most remarkable
revivals in which she ever took part, she
was giving a midnight supper.  Her officers
had gone to the most notorious houses and left
a card containing the words: "A lady who is
devoted to the cause of women desires to speak
to them on subjects which deeply interest them,
in —— Hall, at twelve to-night.  Supper,
music and singing."

The city had been moved, and the rich
demonstrated their sympathy with this effort.
Having had frequent experiences of the risks
attending midnight gatherings, the Maréchale
enlisted the interest of the police, who on this
occasion gave her all possible assistance.

Late in the evening the table was covered
with damask cloths and adorned with flowers.
A supper of roast beef, vegetables, fruit and
black coffee was prepared.  Towards midnight
the piano began to be played, that those who
entered the hall might be welcomed with
cheerful music.

Some girls came in laughing, and quickly
went out again, evidently thinking there must
be some deception.  They did not believe that
banquets were spread for nothing.  Sometimes
it was very difficult to convince them that the
thing was not a farce.

Presently a horrible old hag appeared—it
would be difficult to imagine a more ugly,
repulsive woman.  Coming up to the Maréchale
she said—

"You are the Holy Virgin.  I know it.  *Oui,
vous êtes la Sainte Vierge, je le sais*."

The Maréchale did not know what to say, so
much was she taken aback.

"You are the Holy Virgin," the old woman
repeated.

"Come along and have a talk with me," said
the Maréchale, "and take supper.  I am
delighted to see you."

The woman laughed.  "No, no, no, it isn't
me that you want—*Ce n'est pas moi qu'il vous
faut*."

"Yes, it is you.  I am happy, believe me I
am so happy, to see you.  It is you whom I
want.  Do sit down."

At last, with great difficulty, she was
persuaded to be seated.  But she stayed only a
minute.  The Maréchale turned to speak to
somebody, and the old woman darted out of
the hall.  She was gone like a flash.

"We won't see *her* again, Maréchale," said
one of the officers.

The Maréchale began to blame herself.
Why did she not inspire the poor creature with
confidence?  Why could one not make her feel
at rest?  Why had she run away?  She had
seemed to suspect something.  It was a sore
disappointment.

After some waiting, the girls began to come,
and the tables filled up, but every time the
door opened the Maréchale turned her eye
towards it in the hope of seeing her old woman
return.  A gloom had been cast over her spirit
because that woman had gone out, not believing
that she was welcome, thinking she was
too old and too ugly.

The beautiful grace, "Nous Te benissons,"
was sung, prayer was offered, and sweet music
filled the air while the plates were handed
round.  Some of the guests were pretty and
some ugly, some young and some old, some
clad in rags and some dressed in the height
of fashion.  Some poor famished creatures
asked for a plate of meat four or five times,
while others, having already supped, merely
touched a little fruit with their dainty fingers
and sipped a cup of black coffee.

The supper was nearly ended, and the Maréchale
was preparing to speak, when the door
burst open, and in came our old woman, with
a pretty young girl, fair as a lily, on one arm,
and a dark one, equally young and beautiful,
on the other.  Up she came to the "Holy
Virgin," with her dear old face radiant.

"*Voilà*!  I have gone and found them.  It's
*these* that you want!  For me it is too late, but
show them *the other side of the medal*."

The Maréchale could not speak.  Her eyes
filled with tears.  The words cut her through.
The woman did not know what an act she had
done, nor what an unforgettable phrase—*le
revers de la médaille*—she had used.

"I have spent a long time in seeking them,"
she said.  "I *am* pleased—*Je suis contente*."

"And I, too, am happy," said the Maréchale,
"but especially because you have come."

"*Moi!*! for me it is finished.  For me it is
too late.  But these—they are young, they are
pretty, they have life before them.  It is these
that you want!"

The three sat down, the Maréchale taking
the old woman next to her.  And she never
served a cup of coffee with such pleasure in
her life.

In after years she would sometimes tell the
story of that old woman on a Sunday morning
to an English congregation, and then ask the
searching question, "Which of you has ever
spent two hours day or night seeking for a
lost soul as she did?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PRODIGAL SON`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE PRODIGAL SON

.. vspace:: 2

Baron X, the eldest son of the Baron of
that name, was born at Bordeaux, and brought
up in a family of strict Catholic traditions.
He studied at the Collêge de Tivoli and the
Lycée, but he cared for little except sport and
pleasure.  After he had wasted much of his
father's substance in riotous living, he was
informed that his allowance would be entirely cut
off unless he went abroad for a time.  Leaving
home in disgrace, he sailed for New York, and
was beginning to taste the bitterness of exile,
when, chancing one day to enter a big restaurant,
he was astonished to meet his cousin, the
Viscount of X., who, having inherited a fortune
of two million francs, was making haste
to squander it.  Falling upon each other's
necks, they at once became companions in
pleasure.  Giving themselves up to all kinds
of insanity, they spent immense sums in a few
months.

Baron X was afraid to give himself a single
moment of reflection on the enormity of his
errors.  He was inwardly miserable, and found
that everybody else who was pursuing pleasure
was as unhappy as himself.  One night, at a
dance in Montreal, he said to the queen of the
ball, admired by everybody for her beauty and
charm—

"Would that I could find out how to enjoy
myself again!"

She answered, "If *I* seem to be gay, I have
no reason for being so.  Oh, how I suffer!"

The young man felt that existence became
more and more mechanical, the days succeeding
one another in an endless monotony of
unsatisfying amusements.  He seemed to be
living in a bad dream.

After a while he returned to France, and
one evening he was sitting, sad at heart, on
the balcony of the *Café de la Paix*, wondering
to what place of pleasure he should turn his
steps, when some Salvationist girls came to
offer their journal to the customers.  They
were greeted with the usual pleasantries.
Baron X asked the waiter if he knew who these
people were.

"Oh, yes, Monsieur, they are the *Salutistes*,
and if you want to have a good laugh, you have
only to go to the Rue Auber, which is quite near
by; they have a hall there where you could
spend a good evening."

His curiosity awakened, Baron X went to
the place indicated, taking a *fille de joie* with
him.  The fair-haired young man and his
companion sat at the bottom of the hall laughing.
That evening there were "testimonies," which
somehow arrested Baron X's attention.  He
could not help asking himself how these young
people seemed so happy.  Then a young officer
read the words, "The wages of sin is death, but
the free gift of God is eternal life through
Christ Jesus our Lord," and delivered an
address which was not correct in language, but
extremely incisive.  Baron X said to himself,
"He knows my history, and speaks to me."  As
he went out, he bought some publications which
were exposed for sale at the door, and spent the
night in reading them.  He came next evening
alone, and a great spiritual conflict began.  He
continued to come, and one night remained
behind, being in an agony of soul.  Sobbing
aloud, he confessed that he had led a wild and
wicked life, dishonoured his name, and broken
his mother's heart.  At one o'clock in the
morning he gave himself to God.

The Maréchale saw that he was afraid of
himself in Paris, and opened her doors to him.
For six months he lived partly at her house and
partly at the headquarters in the Rue Auber.
She soon came to know him through and
through, and was struck by his simplicity and
absolute sincerity.  He had broken completely
with the past, and never had one *arrière pensée*.
He was ready for any sacrifice and for the
humblest service.

One day a police agent came to tell the
Maréchale that she had somebody living in her
house and wearing the uniform of the *Armée
de Salut*, who was passing himself off as the
son of Baron X.  She called Baron X, and,
while the two men stared at each other, said,
"This is the son of Baron X."  The official
apologised and withdrew.

Baron X had written to tell his parents of
his conversion, but received no answer.  After
six months the Maréchale had to begin a
*tournée* at Bordeaux, and told Baron X that
she would seize the opportunity to go and visit
his parents.  He was overjoyed.  He hoped
for much, and said he would pray.

When the Maréchale, clad in uniform, drew
near to the gates of the Baron's château, a
complete stranger stopped her and exclaimed,
"My poor child, what are you going to do in
that house?"  She only smiled and walked on,
but the question came back to her mind afterwards.

Ringing the bell, she was shown into a
luxurious room, and presently the Baron, the
Baroness, and their daughter appeared.  She was
received as stiffly as if she had been the
representative of the Queen, and found it hard to
begin.  Making an effort, she said they had
probably learned from their son that a
wonderful change had taken place in his life.  She
was happy to be able to confirm it.  For six
months she and her officers had witnessed his
life, and had noticed nothing in word or look or
act inconsistent with this marvellous change.

There was no answer.  The parents and
daughter simply stared at their visitor.  She continued—

"I know that his life has been bad, but I
thought that you would be glad to hear of his
conversion."

Then the Baroness could no longer contain
herself.  A torrent of words fell from her lips.
She depicted the scandalous life of her son,
who had been a real prodigal in every sense of
the word, gambling away their wealth, bringing
his mistress into their house, and disgracing
their name.

"But," said the Maréchale, "that was before
his change.  Do not bring up what he once
was.  Think of what he is now.  He has been
living among my children, and I can trust him
to go in and out with them.  I know something
of real conversions, and I think I can
judge.  I assure you that he has become a new
man, with new desires, new aspirations, a new
nature."

These assurances only led to another realistic
description of his sins.

"But," pleaded the Maréchale, "that was
when he was Saul; now he is Paul."

They stared and did not comprehend the
meaning of her words.

"Let him come back to the Catholic Church,"
said the Baron.  That his son should profess
to have been saved outside the holy Mother
Church was evidently a last blow to his pride.

"That is surely a secondary matter," said
the Maréchale.  "Considering what a sinner
he has been, you should not mind by whom the
change has come.  He has been converted in
the *Armée du Salut*, but there is only one God
and one Saviour.  Catholic and Protestant are
alike if they have no life."

But the Baroness drew herself up in her
beautiful robe, and said—

"Let him come back to the Catholic Church,
or he will never receive another sou from us."

The Maréchale saw that it was time to end
the interview.

"Very well, Baroness," she said, rising, "I
will be your son's mother.  I will buy your son
clothes and boots."

With that she left their house disappointed
and weary, having spent hours under their
roof pleading their son's cause, but they had
never offered her so much as a cup of tea.

On her return to Paris, she called Baron X.
His face fell when she began to speak.  She
bade him be brave, described to him her interview
with his people, and ended by saying, "I
will be a mother to you, and you shall never
lack for anything."

He worked on with her in Paris for some
months, and then he received a telegram,
"Come quickly, father dying."  The Maréchale
rushed him off, and he afterwards gave
her an account of his eventful journey.

When he got home, he found the house
silent, every sound muffled without and within.

"Am I too late?" he asked.

"No, hush!  He has been asking for you all
the time.  Come quickly."

Upstairs he went to his father's room.
Entering, he saw two thin white hands on the
coverlet, and heard a voice—

"Is it my son?"

"Yes, father!"

With one bound he was at the bed-side, and
fell on his knees.  With breath coming thick
and fast, his father said faintly—

"Oh, my son, your religion is better than
mine.  Forgive your old father for not
forgiving you."

Holding his hand, his son spoke to him of
the Saviour, and sang to him some of the
choruses he had learned in the Army.  Father
and son were a thousand miles away from
Catholicism and Protestantism.  They were
simply in the presence of the Saviour.  With
words of salvation in his ears, and filial arms
around him, the old Baron passed away.

Himself now Baron X, he came into his fortune.
However bad an eldest son has been, he
cannot, by French law, be disinherited.

For the next four years Baron X was an
officer in the *Armée du Salut*.  In Paris and
Nîmes, England and Belgium he worked with
ardour for the salvation of souls.  He was with
the Maréchale in her Brussels campaign.[1]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[1] Described in chap. xiii.

.. vspace:: 2

He married Mlle. Babut, the daughter of
the well-known pastor in Nîmes.  As a girl she
had been brilliantly clever, but very wilful,
closing her heart to all who sought to influence
her for good.  When the Maréchale came to
Nîmes she went, like everybody else, to the
meetings, taking with her girl friends whom
she excited to mock and laugh.  But a strange
power seized her.  In vain she tried to escape
by ridiculing what she heard.  "One evening,"
to use her own words, "the Maréchale—directed
by God—turned her eyes full on me and
said, 'Young woman, you have not the right
to waste your life.'  Clear, pointed, cutting
like a sword, this truth penetrated me, and
with it the conviction, 'I ought to yield to God
here and now.'"  Three months later she was
in the Training Home in Paris.

The Baron X and his wife afterwards became
missionaries in Madagascar.  They gave
themselves heart and soul to the work.  When
Baron X's health began to fail, they returned
home, and he continued to labour for Christ
as long as he had any strength left.  His end
came in 1911.  Pastor Babut said he had been
attending death-beds for fifty years, but had
never seen anything so beautiful as the Baron's
latter end.

"Courage," said some one to the dying man.

"Courage?  I do not need it when heaven is
open to me."

"Do you see the Lord Jesus near you?"

"But I am with Him!"

"God has used you to work for Him."

"All I have done counts for nothing, only
the immense grace and love of God remain."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SO GREAT FAITH`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   SO GREAT FAITH

.. vspace:: 2

It was mid-winter, and the ground was
covered with snow.  There was no little anxiety
at the Villette.  Forty hungry mouths had to
be filled at the École Militaire, and there was
nothing for dinner.  The simple fact was that
the cash-box was empty, and it was difficult
not to have a heavy heart.  But the maxim of
a *Salutiste* is "Keep believing!"  God had
never forsaken the Maréchale when she trusted
in Him.  Depression and melancholy she regarded
as lack of faith.  She bade her secretary
call a *fiacre*.  When they got in, the officer said—

"You have the fare, Maréchale?"

"No!"

"But——-"

"The Lord have mercy upon you!  Where
is your faith?  Get down on your knees and
pray!"

The officer instantly obeyed.  They both
prayed—it was real prayer—and their hearts
became lighter.

The *fiacre* drew up at the gate of a beautiful
house in the Champs Elysées.  It had to be
kept waiting, for there was no money to pay
the *cocher*.

The Maréchale was ushered into a luxurious
apartment, and was soon talking with a Russian
Countess about her soul.  They had never
met before, but they found common ground.

"I too," said the Countess, "adore the Christ!
Come and see....  Look, the Christ!"

They stood before a beautiful picture of the
thorn-crowned Redeemer.

"I adore Him!" she repeated.

"But it is one thing," said the Maréchale,
"to adore Him here in these charming
surroundings, and another thing to adore Him
amidst the filth, the immorality and the misery
of the Villette, where I live night and day
among the poor and the dying, and where I
have devoted young comrades who have left
comfortable homes and bright prospects, and
are now labouring for Christ and receiving
nothing for it.  What is your adoring Christ
compared with theirs?"

The Countess was silent, and evidently felt
bad.  She had suddenly received a new ray
of light upon the adoration of Jesus, and,
realising that deeds are better than words, she
left the room for a minute, to return with an
offering of 500 francs.

It was by such gifts that the Army was
maintained on the Continent.  The Maréchale,
it is somewhat strange to discover, was not
only the apostle but the financier of the *Armée
du Salut* in France.  Others, of course, could
administer the funds, but on her fell the
burden of replenishing the exchequer.  As years
passed and the work extended, the task became
more and more heavy.  Officers had to be
supported, the rent of houses and halls paid, the
Training Home, the Rescue Homes, the
Orphanages, the Homes of Rest maintained, and
to meet all this outlay the Maréchale toiled,
travelled, and wrote countless letters.  Those
who adored the Christ sent her their gifts from
many lands.

While there were many generous supporters
of the Army in France and Switzerland,
the largest contributions came from the
home-country.  We have noted that the General did
not like to see Catherine's hand-writing,
because he thought of her weak spine.  Yet in
one day she and her secretary would sometimes
write over a hundred letters with their
own hands, which at the end were too cramped
to go on with more.  Experience had taught
her the value of a personal application.  Many
a well-wisher who would have given £5 in
response to a typewritten letter, did much better
on receiving a warm appeal in the leader's own
handwriting.  She even made it a rule to write
receipts herself.

Lean months tested the spirit of the
Training Home.  Though there was nothing to eat
but a plate of cabbage-soup and a potato, the
cadets never murmured.  "*C'est la vie
apostolique*," they cheerfully said one to another.
And it was easy to bear any hardship when
their leader shared it with them.  One who was
an officer with her for years wrote: "In all
things she was our example.  If you wished
to incur her displeasure, you had but to give
her something to eat which the workers did
not have.  As she was in delicate health,
sometimes those around her would try to get a
little luxury to tempt her appetite or strengthen
her.  They would be met with the answer:
'Whatever is this?  It is not for me, I hope,
because, though it is very good of you, I did
not want it, and will not have anything of the
sort.'  Then she would share it all round."

Whenever it became known that the
exchequer was almost empty, the officers and
cadets knew that this was a call to prayer.
On one occasion the rents of the Rue Auber
and Quai de Valmy halls were due; there was
nothing to meet them; and there were but three
days of grace.  These were days of agony.
All the officers who had anything to spare
gave it.  The children in the orphanage gave
three francs and ten centimes.  But when the
best had been done, not a tithe of the necessary
3000 francs was in hand.

Everybody met for prayer.  The Maréchale
spoke on the words, "Though the fig-tree shall
not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines
... the flock shall be cut off from the fold,
and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet
will I rejoice in the Lord."  She rang the
changes on that "rejoice," asking, "Are we
*there*?"  Yes, they were all there—anxious for
nothing, but in everything by prayer with
thanksgiving telling God their needs.

At such times the leader of the little band
felt that God had to take care of His name,
His honour; He *had* to send what was required.
Who will call such a faith in question?  Did
not the German people say of Luther, "Look,
there is the man who gets from God whatever
he asks?"  When the Maréchale was travelling
with her secretary in a third-class carriage
in the West of France, the poor people got in
with their baskets of vegetables, and one of
them said in a loud whisper, "Take care what
you say; these people when they pray get from
God all they want."

To return.  On the morning of the last day
of grace the Maréchale received a letter from
Scotland containing a draft for £100, a "God
bless you," and nothing more.  She never knew
what kind human heart had been moved to send
the letter.  But she never doubted that God
had sent it.

Such occurrences were not solitary.  Here is
the testimony of M. Grandjean, who was for
years one of the Maréchale's best officers.  "I
think with gratitude to God of the difficult
days in which our faith was severely tested,
when I was cashier in Quai de Valmy, and I
had not a shilling, and we had to pay the 6000
francs for rents and other expenses.  I shall
never forget my overwhelming joy when one
night I appealed to the cadets who could pray
with faith, and when five or six of us prayed
with me in the little kitchen of the Quai de
Valmy.  The next day the Maréchale received
by the first post a cheque of 6000 francs from
some one who did not know that we were in
need."

In one of her *tournées* the Maréchale was
labouring down in the South of France.
Though she was in the greatest need and had
a heavy heart, she went on with her meetings,
when a lady who had been wonderfully blessed,
and two of whose children had been saved
through her ministry, was moved to give her
a thankoffering of 5000 francs.  Having to
travel all night on the way back to Paris, and
finding herself alone among a lot of working-men
the Maréchale put the money in her
bosom and prayed, "Now keep Thy little one,"
but did not dare to sleep.

Among the Army's unfailing supporters in
France were the Maréchale's personal friends.
One of the dearest of these was Madame de
Bunsen, née Waddington, who wrote *In Three
Legations*.  They first met in Cannes, where
the Maréchale was conducting a campaign in
the theatre; and a great bundle of letters,
partly in French and partly in English, testifies
to the warmth of their friendship.  Madame
de Bunsen once persuaded the Maréchale to
rest for some weeks in her castle on the Rhine;
and another time she tried to induce her to
visit Florence, but the Maréchale could never
quite get over the feeling that taking holidays
was backsliding.

Another of her constant supporters was
Mr. Frank Crossley, that high-souled man of
business whose *Life* has been admirably
written by Rendel Harris.  Soon after the
Maréchale went to France he wrote to express his
"ardent sympathy" with her work.  "I have,"
he said, "met and known well several Christian
workers—D. L. Moody, Miss Ellice Hopkins,
Miss Mittendorff, and others—but I will tell
you that perhaps none of these have created
the same impression that you have done."

In one of her last letters she wrote "Tell me,
how is it that what seems so far off to us is
near to you."  She was a beautiful soul and
found peace in Christ.

he received hundreds of letters from him,
and they are very interesting reading.  What
chiefly attracted him to the Maréchale was her
intimacy with Christ, which was the reward,
as he saw, of self-sacrifice.  His words on this
theme go very deep.

"It is a struggle hard and long, but it is
only the struggling, who spend their life-blood
in the cause, that can claim *blood*-relationship
with the Lord Jesus.  The rest are second-cousins
or not even as near as that.  They
don't know Him very intimately or feel much
at home with Him when they pay Him a
morning call....  He makes the entrance
high and the gate strait that it may be prized
when gained—I believe that is the key to the
mystery of life, or at least to a large part of it.
To let us up to the top for the prayer of a
moment and the sacrifice of nothing would in
many cases at any rate be impossible and
useless.  Tell me soon more of how to climb.  I
am a slow learner."

Mr. Crossley's nature had a pensive strain
which the Maréchale's friendship helped to
modify.  Regarding such a matter he felt that
"speech should not go near the length of
feeling," but ere long we find him writing, "Das
hallelujah Vögelein singt in meinem Herzen."

His donations to the work of the Army both
at home and in France were very generous.
He gave the Maréchale many thousand pounds
a year.  His liberality was part of his
worship of Christ.  Nothing could be finer than
the following: "I know you will be thinking
it is a serious slice off my capital.  Well, it
is a branch off the tree.  'They broke off
branches from the palm trees and strewed them
in the way and shouted Hosanna,' and so do I."  And
again: "You are very grateful to me
for what I have been able to give you, but if
you knew how indebted and grateful I also felt
to you, you would see how God makes us
unequal that we may teach ourselves by the
aid and necessary services He enables us to
render."  Mr. Crossley wished the Maréchale
to accept a gift of £10,000 for the maintenance
of her family, that she might be personally
free from financial care, and also
offered to build her a home outside Paris, but
she declined both these offers, not wishing to
be in a different position from the other officers
of the Army.

In 1891 the Maréchale went to America to
raise funds for the work in France.
Accompanied by her secretary, Mme. Peyron—who
was her Geneva convert Mlle. Roussel—she
sailed in October by the *Columbia* for New
York, and visited twenty-eight of the principal
cities of the States and Canada, holding
sixty meetings, travelling sometimes for thirty
or forty hours at a stretch, and once with the
added experience of being snowed up for
twelve hours.  She was everywhere very
cordially received, and all the buildings in which
she spoke were densely crowded.  Ministers
offered her churches in which a woman had
never spoken before.  After one meeting she
received invitations from a Bishop and seventeen
pastors to address congregations on her work.

The reporters everywhere found her and her
utterances good copy.  "She was not able to
see representatives of the press in New York,
although they came by dozens," as one learns
from the Boston man who claimed to be "her
first American interviewer."  He found that
"her life in France has given a Gallic twist to
this Englishwoman's tongue.  She is quite as
French in manner as her staff-captain,
Madame Peyron, the dark-eyed Frenchwoman
who travels with her."

One morning she got a great reception from
the divinity students of Yale, to whom she
spoke at length on the qualifications necessary
for "saving souls," namely, the possession of
a pure heart and the baptism of the Holy
Spirit.  "When she had finished her address
she said she was willing to answer any
questions they might have to ask, and for half an
hour the students and several of the professors
poured a host of questions upon her that
would have embarrassed and muddled the
clearest-brained ministers of the country under
similar circumstances.  She, however, showed
that she had answered questions before, and
gave answers that brought both laughter and
applause, for her wit is keenly cultivated."

It is interesting to see her through Yale eyes.
"Her face is a study the like of which an
artist or a sculptor might seek for years without
finding.  In repose it reminds one of the
pictures of the Madonnas of Michael Angelo,
but when she speaks its earnestness is so
intense that it is almost stern.  Her voice is one
that any actress might well covet for its depth
and strength.  It is the equal of the great
Bernhardt's, and yet it is sweet and soft, and
has none of the harshness of the masculine tone.
Her accent is something charming, for it has
all the attractiveness of the English tongue
made even more sweet by long familiarity with
the French language.  From her long acquaintance
with the lower classes, the socialists
and all free-thinkers of France, she has
acquired that fiery directness and ease and
attractiveness in her speaking which is so
characteristic of French oratory and so fascinating to
Americans.  It is no injustice to this remarkable
woman to say that, had she chosen the
stage for her rôle in life, her name would have
certainly been as famous in that profession as
it is to-day as the Maréchale of the French
Salvation Army."

In America she had the immense happiness
of being reunited with her brother Ballington,
who, being a year older than herself, had been
her chum in childhood, and his wife, *née* Maud
Charlesworth, who had been her brave
girl-comrade in the first days of persecution in
Switzerland.

In the end of January, 1892, the Maréchale
returned to France, after an absence of three
months and a half.  America had given her
$60,000 for her work, and memories of
unlimited kindness.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BEAUTY FOR ASHES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BEAUTY FOR ASHES

.. vspace:: 2

"You have added a new word to the French
language," said M. Sarcey, the famous critic,
to the Maréchale; "I mean the word 'Salutiste.'"  In
1881 there was not a single Salvationist
in France or Switzerland.  After fifteen
years there were 220 stations and outposts,
over 400 officers, headquarters in five cities,
and four weekly papers.

But these bare facts only feebly indicate
what the Maréchale did for France.  In a
moment of depression at the thought of French
infidelity, the Princess Malzoff once remarked
to her—

"The French have no soul."

"How dare you," asked the Maréchale, "say
such a thing?"

Her friend replied with charming inconsistency,
"But you have found the soul of France!"

That was perhaps the highest tribute ever
paid to her.

If one asks some Frenchman who knew the
Maréchale in those days how she won the heart
of France, one gets the answer, "But it is
natural—she has the French temperament;
and, besides, *elle aime la France*."  If one asks
some convert of hers how she found the soul
of France, the reply is, "Ah! she brought us
the Christ, who is victorious everywhere."  Both
questions were answered together by one who,
speaking for many, said, "She bought us at
the price of tears and sacrifice."

When she was at the zenith of her power in
France, an admirable appreciation of her was
written[1] by one of the saints of the modern
calendar, Miss Frances E. Willard.  We extract
a few sentences.  "She inherits, it is said,
beyond any other of the endowed and consecrated
eight children of the General and Mrs. Booth,
their special gifts, graces, and grace....
The Maréchale's career already fulfils
her father's prophecy that women will, if once
left free in their action, develop administrative
powers fully equal and oftentimes superior
to those of men....  'I love France,' she
said to me, with sparkling eyes: 'it is a great
and wonderful country, and I love its people
every bit as much as ever I loved my own.
I have become familiar with its peasants in the
provinces; have sat down with the French
women who clatter about in sabots; have shared
their chestnuts with them, heard of their
sorrows as well as their joys, and, believe me, the
human heart is just the same in France as it
is everywhere; and if you classify the saints
whose histories have come down to us, France
would occupy the front rank.  The nation that
has produced a Lacodaire, a Pascal, a Fénelon,
and a Madame Guyon, does not lack the germs
of spiritual life.'"

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[1] *The Review of the Churches*, Feb. 1894.

.. vspace:: 2

In 1896, however, her career in France
came to an end.  She received the
command to go and devote herself to the work
of the Army in Holland, and loyally prepared
to obey.

Catholics and Protestants alike were
dismayed at the news.  One of her dearest
friends, the Catholic scholar M. Lassaire,
whose exquisite translation of the four Gospels
had the honour of being put upon the Index
Expurgatorius, came to her and said—

"You ought not to leave us.  God has given
you the ear of the nation as it is given only
once in a hundred years."

"But I am commanded."

"If the angel Gabriel descended from
heaven and bade you go, you ought not to leave
France!"

Théodore Monod, whose own family had
been greatly blessed through the Maréchale,
deeply sympathised with her, and grieved over
her departure almost as if she had been his own
daughter, but tried to comfort her by saying,
"You leave us your hymns!"

The day on which the Maréchale left France
was one of the two or three dark days of her
life.  She felt somewhat like the young
Scottish Queen who said as she gazed at the
receding shores of Calais—

   |  "Adieu! mon charmant pays de France,
   |  Adieu! te quitter c'est mourir."

And yet she believed in her heart that God
would work out His gracious purpose, which
no circumstances can ever alter.

That she loved France with a deep, pure,
passionate love does not need to be said.  How
France appreciated her in return may be
indicated not only by M. Sarcey's emphatic
dictum, "The devil take the country where she
was born! she is French in her soul," but by
any letter taken at random from hundreds
which she received from men and women of
France.

The following extract, faithfully translated,
shows the calibre of the people whom the
Maréchale was able to reach, as well as the
warm, generous style in which the Latin races
habitually express themselves.

"The evening in which you spoke of the
scene on Calvary and the words of the
penitent thief, 'Remember me,' that simple story,
told by a believing soul, had more effect upon
me than all the theses, quotations and theological
arguments of all the doctors I have ever
heard.  That expression, that attitude, that
conviction, that certitude, that assurance, that
*living faith* which affirmed itself before me in
an apostle, a new disciple of Christ, and that
melodious voice, completed my transformation.
I believed that I was the penitent thief and you
the Christ who said to me, 'When I am in
Heaven I will remember thee,' and that
affirmation transported me....

"I marvel at the courage with which you
endure fatigue, mockery, journeys, labours of
all kinds to conquer for truth and light the
millions of *savages* who are still in France,
plunged in the darkness of error and
superstition.  Permit me to express once again my
sincere admiration, and to offer you in the
name of my country (I am perhaps a little
presumptuous to speak in the name of France,
but I have the right, as much as the other ten
millions of citizens)—in the name of my
country, and in the name of civilisation, my warm
gratitude.  Deign to accept the homage ... of
a very humble soldier and disciple of
Christ."

Swiss love, too, was now deep and strong, as
will be sufficiently proved by a single letter,
which enclosed a thankoffering.

"Dear Maréchale—(How much that word
contains of affection, admiration, and
veneration, I cannot express),—These thousand
francs fulfil their end where they do the most
good and give you the greatest pleasure.  You
always think of yourself last, if you think of
yourself at all; that is why others must think
of you.  I would have liked to relieve you,
dear Maréchale, you particularly and personally.
But you are devoured by the zeal of
your divine work, and all goes that way.  Be
it so!  God will relieve you directly by His
hand.  He will, but do not forget yourself
entirely, I beg of you.  Care for yourself, for
the sake of those who love you, and who need
your help, and who find so much happiness in
your heavenly affection....  In the love of
Christ, your devoted, A.S."

In the end of that year the Maréchale needed
words of good cheer, and they were not
lacking.  Her sister Eva was one of her
comforters, sending many tender messages across the
Atlantic.  Just after Christmas Day—Eva's
own birthday—she wrote: "I cannot say how
much you have been in my thoughts.  I wished
I could have popped in and had a sister's
birthday kiss and a good talk, but the Lord came
very near to me, and I was cheered that His
birthday found me very busy on mine seeking
the poor lost souls of men.  The years pass,
but then what matters?  Every day brings
us nearer our Eternal home, does it not, and
then we will live and love together for ever
and ever, all of us.  Dear, darling Katie, I
don't like to hear you say the year has been a
sad one.  You are treasured by us all, by
God and the world, and how much you have
done for the Kingdom as well....  There are
some fond memories I treasure which have to
do with you and me, when I made you laugh
and gave you baked potatoes!  I will write
again soon.  Till then and for ever after
always the same, Eva."

Commissioners E.D. and Lucy Booth-Hellberg—the
General's youngest daughter—who
took over the command of the Army in France
and Switzerland, wrote in their first Annual
Report (1896): "One of the last links in the
long chain of desperate efforts for the
salvation of France, put forth with undiminished
love and faith by the Maréchale, was the Lyons
campaign, which lasted for six weeks during
the months of January and February.
Supported by a number of believing and hard-working
officers, she conducted a series of truly
remarkable meetings in the *Salle Philharmonique*,
which was filled on every occasion
with an attentive and largely sympathetic
audience.  The results of the campaign were most
encouraging and of a decidedly permanent
nature.  The local corps, which up till then had
led a very struggling existence, received a
powerful lift and is now in a healthy condition.
Furthermore a considerable amount of
prejudice against our work was removed and a
number of friends and sympathisers were made,
the immediate result of which was the
establishment of a Rescue Home for women in that
city."  Later on Lucy wrote to the Maréchale,
"Darling, your love for France is wonderful;
you cannot understand it."

Had the Maréchale been sent to another of
the Latin races—for example, the Italians or
the Spaniards—her gifts might still have been
used to the highest advantage.  She once
conducted a brief campaign in a great hall at
Turin.  At the beginning she encountered a
storm of opposition.  While she dedicated the
child of one of her former officers, her voice
was drowned in an uproar which turned the
solemn service into a fiasco.  The audience got
completely out of hand, and, as a final stroke
of devilry, a troop of students, headed by a
big fellow with an evil, cynical face, came
marching up the aisle, shouting, yelling and
brandishing sticks.  The ringleader had made
a bet that he would kiss the Maréchale.  Her
officers began to think it was high time to
close the meeting.  But she was not near the
end of her resources.  Giving her familiar
order, "Leave them to me, and pray!" she
stepped to the edge of the platform, and, when
the leader was within a foot of her, fixed her
eyes on his face, raised her finger, and sang—[2]

   |  Si tu savais comme Il t'aime,
   |  Sans tarder tu viendrais à Lui,
   |  Tu viendrais à l'heure même,
   |  Tu viendrais dès aujourd'hui.

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[2] This hymn was composed by one of her officers,
M. Grandjean.  The tune was one of the sweetest operatic
airs of the day.

.. vspace:: 2

The clear, sweet notes went vibrating through
the great hall, and Italy knows the power of
song.  The ringleader stood staring as if he
had been petrified, and his followers did not
advance another step.  While the Maréchale
sang on, she was heard in breathless silence.
Then she spoke for an hour.  The after-meeting
lasted till midnight, and the leader of the
students, completely broken down and sobbing
like a child, said, "Oh, stay with us, you will
make angels of us all!"

In Holland, where the Maréchale laboured
six years, she was heavily handicapped by the
fact that most of her speaking had to be done
through an interpreter.  She had not that Open
Sesame to the heart of a people—the mastery
of its language.  She learned, however, to
sing beautifully in Dutch, and the translation
of her addresses was admirably done by her
secretary.  If she could not deny that her
heart was still in the Rue Auber of Paris, she
repressed her tears and took her new task—a
very tangled one—resolutely in hand, doing
some deep and lasting spiritual work in
Amsterdam and other towns, where she sometimes
had as many as forty or fifty penitents in one
night.

She was lacking in what a statesman called
"Batavian grace," being cast in a very
different mould, yet she came ere long to feel
quite at home among the warm-hearted Dutch
people.  She had taught Paris to sing her
hymn, "*Aimez toujours, et malgrez tout aimez
toujours*," and now she put the lesson into
practice in Holland.  Preaching and living
the gospel of love, she had many tokens of
success among all classes.  Best of all, she awoke
in others the wistful desire to imitate her
example.  One of Queen Wilhelmina's cabinet
ministers brought his daughter, a thoughtful
young girl, to a meeting conducted by the
Maréchale, and when those who were willing to
give themselves to Christ and His service were
invited to show it in some way, up went the
hand of this eager girl.  Her father at once
whisked her out of the meeting.  But the deed
was done, and now there is no one who is
doing a nobler work among the poor and
sunken classes of Holland than Miss Rose
Pierson.  Of that happy day in her life she
wrote long afterwards: "When I first heard the
Maréchale speak I was a girl of seventeen.
I remember still every word she spoke.  I know
it was a revelation to me what a reality Christ
could be to a soul.  I believe that was what
impressed me—her perfect assurance of Christ's
presence and her own ardent love of souls."

Holland gave the Maréchale two of her most
efficient secretaries, Miss Van der Werken and
Miss de Zwaan, who ideally fulfilled all the
requirements of the office—ability and willingness
to nurse a babe, make a cup of tea, write
a letter, cook a decent dinner, talk in two or
three languages, keep the door of a hall, preach
a sermon, and generally make the best of
everything!

.. vspace:: 2

It is possible that the Maréchale's exile from
France deepened and enriched her nature,
drawing out stops not so often used before,
especially the *vox humana*—the voice of
sympathy with all human pain and sorrow.  At
the same time she began to have a more tragic
sense of the world's sin, which prompted one
of her strangest and yet most characteristic
impulses, and issued in what was in some ways
the most remarkable of all her campaigns.

One midnight, while she lay awake in Amsterdam,
she heard a clear inner voice saying to
her, "Go to Brussels; go in sackcloth and ashes;
go and tell of sin; let everything in your
person speak of sin and awaken conscience; then
proclaim, Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh
away the sin of the world."

Without waiting to take counsel with flesh
and blood, she went with her nurse-secretary
Swaan and her babe Frida, the child of peace,
to Brussels, and hired for three weeks the most
beautiful hall in the city, the Salle de la Grande
Harmonic—the same in which fair women and
brave men danced on the eve of Waterloo.

When she at length divulged to one of her
comrades the fact that she was to appear in
sackcloth and ashes, he answered—

"You cannot! never!"

"I must, it is so commanded."

So a *robe de bure* was made for her—a
single-seamed garment of the coarse brown
stuff worn by monks, with a hole cut out for
the neck and two for the arms, and a hempen
rope for the waist.

Before the opening meeting she had intimate
dealings with her officers.  "It is necessary,"
she said, "that one die for the people.  I want
to bring that thoughtless, frivolous city into
touch with God.  I wish your faces to speak
of another world.  It is your minds and hearts
that I seek.  If you are going to think of
your own people and your own concerns, if
you are going to be preoccupied with a
hundred and one things, go back at once.  I am
going to live these three weeks as if they were
the last on earth.  I have left home and little
ones and am going to exist for this town.  If
Christ laid down His life for us, we have got
to lay down our lives for the salvation of
Brussels."  There were heart-searchings and
confessions and tears among the officers; fresh
alliances were made with God; and the Maréchale
believed that this was one of the secrets
of the wonderful success of that campaign.

On the evening of the first meeting, she
clothed herself in the *robe de bure*, and put real
ashes on her head.  But if ever the devil in
person attacked any poor soul, the Maréchale
felt herself so assailed in those moments when
the great hall was filling and she was waiting.
What shafts of ridicule were hurled at her as
by a spiritual foe!  Could any dress he more
ridiculous, any realism more contemptible?
How comical was that assumption of the rôle
of prophet!  What a miserable fiasco the whole
performance would prove!  She was seized
with a paralysing fear, and when Antomarchi—her
"St. Francis"—came to announce that
the audience was ready, he found her white as
a sheet and shaking from head to foot.

"Have I made a mistake?" she asked.

"No!  Maréchale, go on! go on! it is all
right!"

"Tell them to sing and pray, and then I
will come."

Her soul gathered strength from the strains
of her own hymn, "*O toi! bien-aimé fils de
l'homme*," with the chorus—

   |  Viens, Jésus t'appelle;
   |  Ne sois plus rebelle.
   |  Viens au bien-aimé Fils de Dieu,
   |  Crois en sa tendresse éternelle—

as well as from the succeeding silence in which
she knew that faithful hearts were praying
for her.  The clouds vanished, the fear of men
was gone, and only the awe of the unseen
world remained upon her spirit.

Slowly she walked onto the platform, not
raising her eyes from the ground.  The audience
seemed petrified by the strange apparition.
After a moment of deathly silence, her
clear, penetrating voice sounded through the
hall.

"'He was despised and rejected of men, a
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief
... and we esteemed Him not.  *Nous n'en
avons fait aucun cas*.'

"If I wear mourning to-night, it is the
better to express the feelings which are in the
depths of my heart.  Your people, who are
capable of great things, are going to their
ruin.  On all hands there are nameless
miseries, despairing cries of women and children
without defence and exposed to shame and the
most frightful misery, and why?  Because you
have made Him—Christ—of no account.  I
mourn your sins, the sins of your country;
the drunkenness, the debauchery, the selfishness,
the wrongs which are seen everywhere;
your rejection of the Christ of God, the
Saviour of the world.  This fills me with sorrow,
and this, unless it is forsaken, will bring upon
you the judgments of God."

Thus she unburdened her soul, and thus
began not a three weeks' but a two months'
campaign, which from the first moment—in so
strange contrast to the tumultuous openings at
Havre and Rouen—was marked by a beautiful
reverence and solemnity.  The services of the
police were never required during the whole
time.  Four or five evening meetings were held
every week, besides afternoon gatherings,
*salon* meetings, and midnight suppers.  All
Brussels was moved.  An eminent statesman said
to the Maréchale, "Everybody has been
ridiculed here except you.  Ridicule kills
everything; you have killed ridicule."

In the full tide of the mission she wrote to
her father: "Most marvellously is God working
here in Brussels.  Last night I had the
concert-hall crowded and a great number were
turned back at the door.  The silence, the
attention is unbroken, and there is conviction
among all kind of persons.  Worldly and
Catholic papers speak beautifully of us.  Four
journals have given leading articles to me.
Praise God, it is all His work!  This morning
I had a conversation with a senator who is at
the head of the party of progress here, and he
says that the movement is the most remarkable
"the city has seen for a hundred years and that
the effects are profound and astonishing."  Another
senator has sent me £20.  I feel more
than ever now I ought to continue and push
the battle.  We shall be able to do something
extraordinary and put Belgium on a new footing."

The first senator referred to in the letter
was M. le Jeune, who said to the Maréchale—

"The bar, the artist world, society, Catholic
and Protestant—they have all come to hear
you.  You are universal, Madame."

"Yes," she answered, "the Christ is universal."

During these two months she had daily
interviews with men and women crushed under
the burden of all kinds of sin—a burden that
weighed so heavily on her own spirit that
sometimes, instead of delivering an address, she
could only fall on her knees and cry to God
to forgive all the sins that come from the heart
of man—murders, adulteries, thefts, uncleanness,
lies, blasphemies—all of which had been confessed to her.

It was a time of wonderful spiritual blessing
for all her comrades, who, like her, literally
"lived for the people."  One of them said, "We
have grown as much with you in these weeks as
in twenty years."

To a thousand men of the *élite* of Brussels
she delivered an address—which was afterwards
published—on "The Greatest Injustice
of the Century."  It was a woman's mournful,
tender, passionate protest against man's sins in
a city which had its twelve thousand so-called
*filles de joie*, many of them of the tenderest
years.  One of her audience, a typical Brussels
man of the world, covering his face with a
hand on which flashed a diamond ring, and
shaking with great sobs of anguish, cried, "I
am a leper—damned already!"  "Madame," said
an editor, "they would hiss anybody else who
said these things to them.  They bear them
from you, because they feel you love them."

One day she received an invitation to dine
with a dozen anarchists.  Her comrades told
her of the danger of bombs, etc., but she went,
and, many years after when asked by an English
Divine, "How did you get into such society?"
she answered, "Extremes meet."

"So you are come to talk to us," said Elisée
Recluse[3] with a smile, "of justification by
faith and sanctification by faith," etc.

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.. class:: noindent small

[3] Exiled from France as an anarchist, he had become
a Professor in Brussels.  He had been trained as a
Protestant Pastor.  He was the greatest geographer of
modern times, the writer of *Une nouvelle géographie
universelle* (19 vols.).

.. vspace:: 2

"Oh, no, no!  I do not talk of doctrines.
They never troubled me in my life.  I care only
for realities.  You have suffered; I too have
suffered.  Let us begin there, and compare
notes.  Some of you have been in prison; I
have been in prison.  You have been exiled;
so have I.  You have wept over the injustice
and cruelties of the world; so have I wept, so
do I weep."

And thus they found common ground,
agreeing in their diagnosis of the diseases of
society; differing only as to the remedy.  "You
believe in anarchy," said the Maréchale.  "One
of your number said at one of my meetings
that anarchy is the most beautiful of all
religions.  I know a more excellent way—a
shorter cut to making the world better.  You
fling your bombs to destroy life; how can
people be converted when their heads are gone?
Christ said 'Follow me to Calvary!'  He shed
His *own* blood.  No one else's.  He bids us
save the world by denying ourselves and taking
up the Cross."

That evening Elisée Recluse drove her in his
carriage to her meeting at the *Salle Harmonie*,
and in her little ante-room they prayed together.

A Brussels sculptor begged the Maréchale
to pose for him in her *robe de bure*, but she
declined.  Renée Gange, the heroine of the
Belgian socialists, after passionately
embracing her before a thousand eyes, published a
charming pen-and-ink portrait of "this
enigmatic woman," comparing her to a serene, calm
statue that *almost* smiles.  "The fine and
slender figure of the Maréchale will long remain
one of the most curious, the most strange
apparitions in the midst of our society of
money-makers and machine-constructors."

The prophet, the mystic, the saint will always
be a mystery to the art and science, not to
speak of the sin and selfishness, of the world.
This truth was finely expressed by a writer
in *L'Art moderne* of Brussels.  "The Maréchale
does not seek to 'demonstrate' anything.
I have seen her shrug her shoulders a little and
smile when some one wished to reason or
discuss with her.  She could do it, for she is
intelligent and *merveilleusement intuitive*.  But
her faith does not 'demonstrate' itself.  It lives
and expands itself.  It affirms itself.  And
those who, now numerous, have some psychological
tact have felt that this woman obeyed
something more powerful than herself.  Perhaps
she is the happy and unconscious instrument
of an expansive force too much ignored,
too little recognised and obeyed, as necessary
for our preservation as the law of self-preservation
itself....  Her addresses are neither
weighed nor balanced.  But they have the
colour, the life, the strong suggestiveness, the
moving sincerity of an inspiration come from
one knows not where, from above us, from
outside us—mysterious impulses of things eternal."





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.. _`TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE`:

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   CHAPTER XIV


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   TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

.. vspace:: 2

In the year 1902 the Maréchale and her
husband severed their connection with the
Salvation Army.  Concerning the causes that led
to this, it is their united wish that nothing
should be said that would interrupt the good
feeling that has always existed, and still exists
between them and thousands of their old and
dearly loved comrades in that organization.

There are those who have misjudged the
Maréchale in this matter, as having taken this
step for personal advantage, and without due
regard to its effect on her father and his work.
How little do they know the truth.  To one
who has read the correspondence of those days,
and all other days since, who has watched
within the inner circle of the home, overhearing the
most confidential conversations, nothing could
be so shocking a contravention of the truth as
to accuse this devoted daughter either of
parental disregard, or self-willed unconcern for
the welfare of the Kingdom of Christ.  This
step cost heart's blood to the Maréchale.

"Katie," said the General in Victoria Station,
when she was starting on her second journey
to France, "you have remarkable instincts;
follow them, and you will never go wrong."  Twenty
years after, her friend Mlle. Constance
Monod, the daughter of the great French
preacher, wrote to her, "I would beseech you
to trust yourself, trust your divine instinct,
which God has developed so, so wonderfully in you."

Heredity, training and experience had
combined to give her the instincts of a prophetic
soul-winner.  The grace of God had imparted
to her a spirit of wisdom and revelation.  Her
intuitions were at once her strength and her
safety.  Her instinctive love of the true, the
beautiful, and the good, her instinctive hatred
of the false, the sordid, and the selfish, formed
the touchstone to which she brought everything
in the moral, social and religious life of France.
Great numbers of the *élite* of Paris and other
cities, who were technically far better educated
than she, came and sat at her feet, because they
bowed to the authority of the Christ-Spirit in
her.  And her instincts of sympathy with poor,
sick, suffering souls drew multitudes who were
outside the pale of the Church to the Saviour.

She always maintained that she went on her
mission as a simple English girl, doing only
what any other girl, with the same opportunities
and the same faith, might have done.
There is a divine power in a woman's instincts
of purity and righteousness which puts the
baseness of men to shame.  That power, many
believe, will be the chief factor in the
salvation of the modern Church and modern
society.  Ours is an age which needs Deborahs
and Huldahs with their divine instincts.  The
Song of Songs tells how a simple Hebrew girl,
tempted by the glory of the world, but strong
in her passion of holy love, merited the wonderful
ascription, "Fair as the moon, clear as the
sun, *terrible as an army with banners*."  If the
Christian womanhood of the twentieth century
rises to that level, the future of the Kingdom
of God will be far more glorious than its past.

The Maréchale's instincts for the beautiful
in nature and in art doubtless constituted no
small part of her charm for the Latin races.
She looked at all the glory of heaven and earth
with a poet's eyes.  During her early crowded
life of evangelism in England, her father once
took her on a tour through the Trossachs of
Scotland, and the memory of that vision of
beauty at the age of sixteen ever afterwards
haunted her like a passion.  "Let me stay
here!" she said to the General, whose reply,
calling a soldier to arms, equally remained in
her memory: "Men are more interesting than
scenery."  If she scarcely ever took holidays
in after life, it was not that she did not
sometimes sigh for the wings of a dove that she
might fly away and be at rest.  There was a
lifelong conflict between the natural and the
ascetic in her.

She had never had time to cultivate any art
except music, but her sense of everything
lovely in form and colour and sound was
exquisite, and she became without study a
supreme artist in at least one department.  At
the time of the coronation of Queen Wilhelmina
of Holland, there was a grand Exhibition
of all that women can do in the modern
world.  A deputation waited on the Maréchale
and begged her to give an address along with
two other well-known lady speakers.  She
agreed to come, provided she should be allowed
to choose her own subject.  Consent was
readily given, and she delivered an address in
French upon what Christ has done for
Woman and what Woman for Christ.  She gave
no thought to the manner of delivery; she
merely realised that she had a golden
opportunity of proclaiming her Saviour to a
magnificent audience.  She had never in her life
received a lesson in elocution, and to have done
so might have seemed to her wicked backsliding.
But she was awarded the palm of eloquence.

If her scholastic education was somewhat
defective, she was wonderfully guided by her
instincts in her later self-education.  During
her American tour she was taken one day by
three white-haired professors to see the greatest
library in the States.  Her unsophisticated
mind was bewildered by all that mass of learning.
"Surely," she said, "it must strike despair
into the minds of the students!"

One of her guides questioned her about her
own favourite books.

"Well," she answered, "I have never been
a reader; I think I have only two."

"What might they be?"

"One of them you know."

"Yes, the Bible; what is the second?"

"The Heart of Man.  I am always at it,
on land and sea, in the streets and in railway
carriages, morning, noon and night.  It helps
me with my first book better than any commentary."

She came to know the Bible with a thoroughness
which not one man in ten thousand ever
attains.  Her spiritual instinct seized, and her
extraordinary memory retained, the vital and
the essential.  She never studied the Bible in
the ordinary way, sitting down with lexicon
and concordance.  There was no time for that
in her busy life.  She took her spiritual food
from the Bible as the bee sips honey from
flowers.  The Bible was her companion and
she read it for pleasure.  She absorbed and
assimilated it without effort.  That she knew
much of it by heart was of less importance
than the fact that it became part of herself.
Therein lay her power of expounding and
applying it.  "Nothing," said Dr. Munroe
Gibson after listening to her nightly for a week,
"charmed our people more than her expositions of Scripture."

The truths by which she lived came to her
intuitively.  Her religion did not consist of
commandments and dogmas.  It was life, light,
liberty, and above all love.  Alike in what
she accepted and what she rejected, she acted
instinctively—she could do no other.  She had
an aversion to religious controversy.
Arguments made little or no impression upon her
mind.  She might sometimes be overwhelmed
with theological doctrines, the truth of which
she could neither affirm nor deny, but in the
end she would emerge with the naïve remark,
"I am a very simple child, and I must have a
child's religion."  She always held that Christ's
religion is for the multitude, and that the
multitude are children.  The essence of Christianity
can be assimilated by boys and girls who
do not know how to read and write, and they
may become saints and saviours.  A glance at
the Maréchale's well-used Bible suffices to
prove that for her the heart of the Old
Testament is in Hosea, the prophet of love, and
Isaiah the prophet of atonement, while the
heart of the New Testament is in the story
of the returning prodigal or the penitent Magdalene.

.. vspace:: 2

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 Maréchale'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 Maréchale, "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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale'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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale
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 Maréchale'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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale looked for a friend and found
none.  All the world believed that she had
"joined Zion."  The French papers announced
that she had burned (*brulé*) 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 Maréchale
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
Maréchale 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 Maréchale 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."





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.. _`SURSUM CORDA!`:

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   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   SURSUM CORDA!

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All the Maréchale'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 Père 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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale'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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale herself sing.  She sat
right through the service without opening her
lips and with a hard look on her face.  At the
end the Maréchale 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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale 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
Maréchale.  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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale 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
Maréchale 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 Maréchale 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 Maréchale
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 Maréchale 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."

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The following is from a gentleman in
America, who, for thirty-five years, had never
entered a church.  He happened to hear the
Maréchale 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 Maréchale
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:

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"Dear Maréchale and honored Spiritual Mother:

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"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 Maréchale.  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 Maréchale."

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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, Maréchale, 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, Maréchale (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,
Maréchale, 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!!!!*"

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A young gentleman whose life was transformed
through attending the meetings held
by the Maréchale'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.'"

.. _`302`:

.. figure:: images/img-302.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: THE MARÉCHALE (*From a photograph taken at the Gainsborough Studio, Oxford Street, London, W., in* 1913)

   THE MARÉCHALE 
   (*From a photograph taken at the Gainsborough Studio, 
   Oxford Street, London, W., in* 1913)

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."

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.. class:: center

   THE END

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.. pgfooter::