Godliness is Catherine Booth’s searching call to a religion that is real all the way down — a life of genuine repentance, living faith, fervent prayer, holy love, and wholehearted surrender to God. If you have come looking for a quick summary, here it is: Booth is convinced that most of us are content with far too little, mistaking respectable belief and outward observance for the transforming power of God, and she writes to disturb that contentment and press you toward the real thing. You can read the whole book free on Ochorus at Godliness; this guide is a companion — what the book is, how it is built, what it presses on you, and how to read it well today.

What the book is, and Booth’s aim

Godliness gathers a series of addresses and sermons by Catherine Booth (1829–1890), the co-founder, with her husband William, of The Salvation Army and one of the most influential Christian voices of the nineteenth century. Known as the “Mother of The Salvation Army,” she was a preacher of rare directness, and these pages carry the same platform fire that shaped a whole movement. You can read more about her life and work on her author page.

Her aim is not to inform the mind but to move the will. Booth is preaching to the conscience of the churchgoer, not the outsider — to the person whose Christianity may be more form than power. Scripture had already named the danger she is chasing: people “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). Against that counterfeit she sets a godliness that is inward, definite, and life-changing, the kind Paul commends when he writes that “godliness is of value in every way” (1 Timothy 4:8) and that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6). She wants you to leave the book having actually turned to God, not merely having admired the idea of it.

How the book is organized

The volume moves from the foundations of the Christian life up into the heights of holiness, and it helps to read it as that ascent rather than a set of disconnected talks. Booth opens with an Introduction that frames her burden, then plants the two roots of any real godliness: Repentance — a downright abandonment of sin and a turning to God — and Saving Faith, where she carefully distinguishes true trust from a bare intellectual assent to the facts of the gospel.

From there she gives four sustained chapters to Love — “Love,” “Love and Rebuke,” “Love and Conflict,” and “Love and Loneliness” — all built on the great hymn of 1 Corinthians 13:13, tracing how divine love actually behaves when it meets sin, opposition, and isolation. She then turns practical and pastoral: Conditions of Effectual Prayer, The Perfect Heart, How to Work for God with Success, Enthusiasm and Full Salvation, and Hindrances to Holiness. The book closes with four Addresses on Holiness delivered in Exeter Hall, where the whole argument gathers to a single point: a definite, trusting entrance into a life wholly given to God.

The central themes

What godliness actually is

For Booth, godliness is never outward religion or respectable morality; it is a heart truly changed and wholly given to God. The counterfeit is her great enemy throughout — a Christianity with the shape of devotion but none of its substance. In her chapters on love she warns that the devil has spent his cunning imitating God’s most precious things, and love most of all, because of its worth:

This love—this love—is God’s most precious treasure. It is dearer to His heart than all the vast realms of His universe—dearer than all the glorious beings He has created.

Catherine Booth

The test of the genuine article is not feeling but fruit: a love willing to rebuke, to bear conflict, and even to walk alone. Paul’s charge that grace trains us “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives” (Titus 2:12) is exactly the transformed life Booth is after.

The fear of God and the perfect heart

Booth’s chapter on the perfect heart takes its stand on 2 Chronicles 16:9 — God’s eyes ranging the earth to strengthen those whose heart is wholly His. A “perfect heart” is not sinless achievement but undivided allegiance: a will that has stopped negotiating with sin and set itself, single-handed if need be, toward God. Booth draws it from the history of King Asa, who purged idolatry from his kingdom and then found God strong to defend him — a picture of what happens when a person turns to God without reserve. This reverent, wholehearted seriousness about God, this refusal to keep one foot in the world, is the spring from which everything else in the book flows.

Repentance, faith, and a salvation freely offered

The foundation chapters insist that repentance is not an arbitrary hurdle but the necessary turning of a heart back into harmony with its Father, echoing the first note of Jesus’ preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2), and Paul’s testimony that people should “repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance” (Acts 26:20). Yet Booth is no legalist. She is emphatic that the way is not made hard by God:

I believe God has made human salvation as easy as the Almighty, Infinite mind could make it.

Catherine Booth

Repentance and faith are the two hands by which we take a salvation God has made as accessible as love could devise.

Practical holiness and growth in grace

The later chapters are the beating heart of the book. Holiness, for Booth, is the most important question a person can face:

it is the most important question that can possibly occupy the mind of man—how much like God we can be—how near to God we can come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like Him

Catherine Booth

And it is attainable now, because it rests not on our strength but on God’s. Her definition of the holy life is one of the clearest statements in the book:

they have come to understand this blessing to be human weakness, leaning with all its weight upon Divine power

Catherine Booth

This is her answer to the reader who longs for holiness but feels too weak for it: the blessing is not for the strong, but for the weak who will trust. In the chapter on hindrances she works patiently through the excuses that keep people from this rest, and in “How to Work for God with Success” she insists that the spiritual life obeys real laws, as certainly as a harvest obeys the seasons — that we cannot expect fruit while we scatter seed carelessly and refuse the labour. Growth in grace is not self-improvement; it is a fuller and fuller leaning of our weakness on His power. Prayer, for Booth, is where that leaning becomes real — and it is conditional: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7), asked “in faith, with no doubting” (James 1:6). The pursuit of holiness reaches its summit in her plea to present ourselves as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1), for “the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14) is nothing less than the promise held out to the pure in heart, that they “shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

Who should read it

Read Godliness if you want to know whether your faith is real. Booth writes for the earnest Christian who is uneasy that their religion may be respectable rather than transforming, and for anyone who has settled into a comfortable, nominal walk and half-suspects there is more. It will speak powerfully to those drawn to the holiness tradition — readers of Wesley, of the Keswick teachers, of the early Salvation Army — and to anyone weary of a Christianity that has lost its power. It is bracing rather than soothing, so come ready to be searched; but readers who let it do its work often find it among the most clarifying books they have read on what God actually asks of a life.

How to read it today

These began as spoken addresses, so read them as such — slowly, a chapter at a time, letting each one press its question before you move on. Read the two foundation chapters, Repentance and Saving Faith, together; they set the terms for everything that follows. Take the four Love chapters as one movement and notice how Booth refuses to let love be sentimental, binding it to rebuke, to conflict, and to loneliness. Save the Exeter Hall addresses for when you have time to respond, because they are designed to bring you to a decision, not merely a conclusion.

Booth’s nineteenth-century directness can feel confronting, and a few examples belong to her platform world; read past the period and let the underlying question stand. Keep a Bible open beside her, since she is always preaching from a text, and keep a pen ready to answer honestly where the counterfeit has crept into your own heart. Above all, take her at her word that this is meant to be applied, not admired — read it prayerfully, and expect to be moved to a definite turning of the will.

If Godliness stirs a hunger for more, two companions sit close beside it on the Ochorus shelf. Her husband’s Purity of Heart presses the same Salvation-Army passion for a clean, wholly-surrendered inner life; and John Wesley’s A Plain Account of Christian Perfection is the foundational statement of the holiness hope that Booth inherited and preached.

For reflection

Use these questions alone or in a group, letting Scripture and conscience answer rather than mere opinion.

  • Booth is relentless about the difference between a form of godliness and its power (2 Timothy 3:5). Where, honestly, might your own religion be more form than power?
  • She calls repentance a turning of the heart back into harmony with the Father. Is there a specific sin or attachment you have been negotiating with rather than abandoning?
  • Booth ties true love to the willingness to rebuke, to face conflict, and to walk alone. Which of these does your love most avoid — and what would it cost to grow there?
  • Her definition of holiness is “human weakness, leaning with all its weight upon Divine power.” What are you still trying to carry in your own strength that you could lean on His?
  • If, as Booth insists, God has made salvation “as easy as” infinite love could make it, what is really keeping you from a definite, wholehearted surrender today?

When you are ready, read the whole book free at Godliness and let Catherine Booth press her question all the way home.