Godliness

It is Catherine Booth's searching call to real, heart-deep godliness — a life marked by genuine repentance, living faith, fervent prayer, holy love, and wholehearted surrender to God. She confronts a merely nominal or counterfeit Christianity, presses the reader to examine their heart in the light of Scripture, and holds out a godliness that is inward, transforming, and spiritually powerful rather than outward and formal.

Catherine Booth was the co-founder, with her husband William, of The Salvation Army, and one of the most influential Christian women of the nineteenth century — a powerful preacher and writer known as the 'Mother of The Salvation Army.' Godliness carries the same earnest, holiness-driven passion that shaped the whole Salvationist movement.

Not outward religion or respectable morality, but a heart truly changed and wholly given to God — repentant, believing, prayerful, and filled with holy love. Booth insists that godliness is inward and real, evidenced by a transformed life and spiritual power, and she refuses to let the reader mistake religious forms or good reputation for the genuine article.

A religion that has the appearance of godliness but lacks its power — outward observance, correct belief, or social respectability without a truly repentant, surrendered heart. Booth warns her readers not to rest in such a counterfeit, and searches the conscience to expose the difference between merely professing Christ and being inwardly transformed by him.

The marks of a godly life as Booth understands them: genuine repentance, living faith, fervent prayer, holy love, and wholehearted surrender to God. She takes up each in turn, pressing the reader to examine whether these realities are truly present, and calling them from a shallow or formal religion into a life of real holiness and obedience.

Urgent, direct, and heart-searching, in the manner of a preacher who spent her life pressing people toward God. Booth writes to disturb the complacent and to move the will, not merely to inform the mind, and the clarity and fervour of the Salvation Army platform come through on every page as she calls readers to real godliness.

For any Christian who wants to know whether their faith is real, and who longs for a deeper, holier walk with God rather than a comfortable, nominal religion. Booth writes for the earnest seeker after holiness and for anyone uneasy that their Christianity may be more form than power, calling them to genuine repentance and surrender.

At the beginning, letting Booth press the question of what true godliness really is, and then follow her through repentance, faith, prayer, love, and surrender. The book is meant to search the reader and lead to a definite turning of the heart to God, so it is best read prayerfully and applied rather than merely studied.