Those who know something about the Salvation Army will know that on their crest there are the words “Blood and Fire”. They were founded in 1865 by William and Catherine Booth. It still ministers today, although much of its current emphasis in many places tends to be more in the provision of social services and the like.
The truth is, many Christian movements and organisations start off strong and vibrant, but not all of them stay that way. While many good people might remain in these groups, the original fire, passion and dedication of the founders can tend to dissipate over time. I have had many Salvos telling me this very thing.
I recently posted on the social media a powerful quote by Catherine Booth about opposition. Under it I added these words: “There are many great Salvos today. But I suspect that many (most?) in the West at least, upon reading that quote but not knowing who said it would OPPOSE it! They would say we are meant to be nice, gentle and kind and not turn people off by such strident remarks.”
One fellow from the Army quickly replied with these words: “You’d be amazed by how the Salvation Army founders are ignored or canceled in today’s Salvation Army. William’s, Catherine’s, Bramwell’s, Brengle’s writings and sermons are ignored, dismissed, hidden away. And not taught.”
I repeat, there are still many on-fire Salvos today who know and love their roots. But that cannot be said about all of them. To give you a feel for just what radical warriors for Christ the Booths were, let me share some powerful quotes from each one.
William Booth (1829-1912)
“The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender.”
“Most Christians would like to send their recruits to Bible college for five years. I would like to send them to hell for five minutes. That would do more than anything else to prepare them for a lifetime of compassionate ministry.”
“Oh, my comrades, again I say what I have said before – when you see your duty, that is the moment of action. Don’t let that moment slip, and so miss the power of it, for, perchance, you will never be as strong again.”
“Teach your people. Teach them sound doctrine; if you do not give them the truth, somebody else will give them falsehood.”
“The chief danger of the twentieth century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, and heaven without hell.”
“God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible.”
“The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender to God.”
“Work as if everything depended upon your work, and pray as if everything depended upon your prayer.”
“Make your will, pack your box, kiss your girl, be ready in a week.”
“Faith and works should travel side by side, step answering to step, like the legs of men walking. First faith, and then works; and then faith again, and then works again—until they can scarcely distinguish which is the one and which is the other.”
“While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight; while there is a poor drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight – I’ll fight to the very end!”
“You see we have no reputation to lose; we are not obliged to stop and consider what anybody will say; everybody has settled it that we are fools, if not a great deal worse; and, therefore, we can go into town and do exactly what we think best without taking the least notice of what anybody may say or wish. We have only to please God and get the people saved, and that is easily done.”
“I will tell you the secret [of success]. God has had all there was of me. There have been men with greater brains than I, men with greater opportunities. But from the day I got the poor of London on my heart and caught a vision of all Jesus Christ could do with them, on that day I made up my mind that God would have all of William Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in the Salvation Army today, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life.”
“‘Not called,’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. He has been calling loudly ever since He spoke your sins forgiven – if you are forgiven at all – entreating and beseeching you to be His ambassador. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull poor sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitying wail for help. Go and stand by the gates of Hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house, and bid their brothers, and sisters, and servants, and masters not to come there. And then look the Christ in the face, whose mercy you profess to have got, and whose words you have promised to obey, and tell Him whether you will join us heart and soul and body and circumstances in this march to publish His mercy to all the world.”
Blood and Fire (William and Catherine Booth and the Salvation Army)by Hattersley, Roy (Author)
Catherine Booth (1829-1890)
“If we are to better the future we must disturb the present.”
“Real Christianity is, in its very nature and essence, aggressive.”
“Oh, precious Savior! Save us from maligning Your Gospel and Your name by clothing it with our paltry notions of earthly dignity, and forgetting the dignity which crowned Your sacred brow as You hung upon the cross!”
“What can we do without the Spirit? This is the reason of the effeteness of so much professed Christianity – there is no Holy Ghost in it. It is rotten. It is like a very pretty corpse.”
“Darling, you are not here in this world for yourself. You have been sent for others. The world is waiting for you.” (Catherine Booth, praying over her children in their cribs)
“A barracks is meant to be a place where real soldiers were to be fed and equipped for war, not a place to settle down in or as a comfortable snuggery in which to enjoy ourselves. I hope that if ever they, our soldiers, do settle down God will burn their barracks over their heads!”
“Oh! People say you must be very cautious. You must not push religion down people’s throats. What! Should I wait until an unconverted, godless man wants to be saved before I try to save him? Am I to let my unconverted friends and acquaintances go quietly down to damnation, and never tell them about their souls until they ask, ‘If you please, I want you to preach to me!’ Is this anything like the spirit of early Christianity? No! Therefore we must make them look, and if they run away from you in one place, meet them in another, and let them have no peace until they submit to God. This is what Christianity ought to be doing in this land, and there are plenty of Christians around to do it. Why, we might give the world such a time of it, that they would get saved in self-defense – if we were only aggressive enough and determined that they should have no peace in their sins.”
“Opposition! It is a bad sign for the Christianity of this day that it provokes so little opposition. If there were no other evidence of it being wrong, I should know it from that. When the Church and the world can jog along comfortably together, you may be sure there is something wrong. The world has not altered. Its spirit is exactly the same as it ever was, and if Christians were equally faithful and devoted to the Lord, and separated from the world, living so that their lives were a reproof to all ungodliness, the world would hate them as much as it ever did. It is the Church that has altered, not the world.”
“Faithful witnesses must speak out, not mince the matter – not ‘mumble,’ as they say in court. The judge makes the witness speak up so that everybody may hear him. He must be heard. Speak out – why should not the Lord’s witnesses speak out? I wonder when we shall be done with this sneaking, hole-and-corner, shame-faced religion. I wonder when Christian England will cease to be ashamed of its God!! The only nation under Heaven ashamed of its religion and its God is the one that has got the true God to worship and to love. What an anomaly! Speak out!”
“This was the kind of witnessing the martyrs did. I often wonder whether there would be any martyrs now. Sometimes I think that the greatest boon to the Church of Christ would be a time of persecution. I believe it would. I believe it would drive us up to God and each other. We should find out, then, whether we were willing to forsake all to follow Him. You know that if the martyrs had taken the standard of religious life that exists now, they would never have been martyrs. They would have looked after their own skins, and left the Lord to look after the Gospel.”
“Here is the reason why we have such a host of stillborn, sinewless, ricketty, powerless spiritual children. They are born of half-dead parents, a sort of sentimental religion which does not take hold of the soul, which has no depth of earth, no grasp, no power in it, and the result is a sickly crop of sentimental converts. Oh! the Lord give us a real, robust, living, hardy, Christianity, full of zeal and faith, which shall bring into the kingdom of God lively, well-developed children, full of life and energy, instead of these poor sentimental ghosts that are hopping around us.”
“Whatever the particular call is, the particular sacrifice God asks you to make, the particular cross He wishes you to embrace, whatever the particular path He wants you to tread, will you rise up, and say in your heart, “Yes, Lord, I accept it; I submit, I yield, I pledge myself to walk in that path, and to follow that Voice, and to trust Thee with the consequences”? Oh! but you say, “I don’t know what He will want next.” No, we none of us know that, but we know we shall be safe in His hands.”
For further reading
Booth, Catherine, Aggressive Christianity. Freedom House, 1880, 2012.
Collier, Richard, The General Next to God. Fontana/Collins, 1965, 1976.
Gariepy, Henry, Christianity in Action. Eerdmans, 2009.
Green, Roger, The Life and Ministry of William Booth: Founder of The Salvation Army. Abington Press, 2006.
Hattersley, Roy, Blood and Fire. Doubleday, 1999, 2000.
Le Feuvre, Cathy, William and Catherine. Monarch, 2013.
Poxon, Stephen, ed., Through the Year with Catherine Booth. Monarch, 2016.
Poxon, Stephen, ed., Through the Year with William Booth. Monarch, 2015.
Yaxley, Trevor, William and Catherine. Bethany House, 2003.
Yaxley, Trevor, Through Blood and Fire. Castle Publishing, 1999.
