Introduction

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 2 TIMOTHY 3:5

Catherine Booth is usually remembered as a wife. She was the wife of William Booth, the founder of The Salvation Army, and the mother of eight children, several of whom went on to lead that Army on three continents. All of that is true, but it leaves out the thing that most astonished the people who heard her. In an age when a respectable woman did not speak in public, and when many churches taught that Scripture forbade her to, Catherine Booth became one of the most compelling preachers in England. She wrote the most influential English defence of a woman’s right to preach the gospel. She shaped the doctrine of a movement that went round the world. And she did it while nursing babies, while chronically ill, and while being, by her own account, one of the most timid and bashful believers the Lord ever saved.

One thread

Her teaching is easy to summarise because she said the same thing in every sermon, from every angle, for thirty years. She wanted reality. She believed that the church of her day had kept the form of godliness and lost the power of it. The verse at the head of this chapter was never far from her mind. Her book Godliness bears its key word in the title, and nearly everything she wrote is an argument about the difference between having the form and having the power.

So she pressed, relentlessly, for the real thing at every point. A real repentance, which actually lets go of sin rather than merely feeling sorry about it. A real faith, which commits the whole person to Christ rather than agreeing with facts about Him. A real assurance, the witness of the Spirit to something that has actually happened. A real holiness, which saves from sin and not merely from its penalty. A real love, which goes after the lost where they are rather than waiting politely for them to come. And a real power, the Holy Spirit Himself, without whom all the rest is a well-made corpse.

For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. 1 CORINTHIANS 4:20

That is the thread running through all nineteen chapters of this book, and it is the question to carry as you read: is my religion the form, or the power? Would anything be different in my life, this week, if none of it were true?

How this book is arranged

After a chapter on her life, the book follows the order of her own preaching. It begins where she began with every enquirer: with godliness, repentance, saving faith and assurance. It moves on to the Holy Spirit, to what she called full salvation, and to prayer. Then it turns outward, as she always did — to the difference between true and counterfeit love, to the worldliness of what she called popular Christianity, to aggressive Christianity and the world’s need, to witnessing, to what she taught about getting the truth home to the heart, and to her insistence that the church adapt its methods to reach the people it was losing. Three chapters deal with matters close to her own life: the right of women to preach, the training of children, and the cost of discipleship. One takes up her campaigns against drink and vice. The last teaching chapter follows her to her deathbed.

Each chapter ends with application points and a prayer. She would have insisted on it. She thought that a sermon which left its hearers exactly as it found them had failed, however orthodox it was, and she said so to ministers’ faces. Read one chapter a day, or one a week. Stop at the application points. Pray the prayer, or better, pray your own.

Where she must be read with care

This is not a book of hero-worship, and there are places where Catherine Booth must be read with care. It is better to say so at the outset.

First, the sacraments. In 1883, while she was alive and with her support, The Salvation Army ceased to observe baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The reasons given were partly practical and partly principled: the ordinances divided the churches, some converts from drink were endangered by communion wine, and she and William were convinced that many people trusted in the outward sign while knowing nothing of the inward grace. She herself taught that forms and ceremonies are nothing in themselves. The Army has kept to that position, and has always insisted that it does not forbid the sacraments to others. But the great majority of Christians, reading the plain commands of Christ, have judged that the answer to the abuse of an ordinance He appointed is its right use, not its disuse. The chapter on her adaptation of measures sets out what she taught and why, and where most readers will part company with her.

Second, holiness. She taught, with the Methodist and holiness tradition she came from, that entire sanctification is a definite experience to be received by faith after conversion, a clean heart given in a moment. Many godly Christians read the same Scriptures and see a lifelong process of growth instead. This book presents her teaching as she gave it and notes where the disagreement lies.

Third, her severity. She was a woman of extraordinary intensity, and it could run to harshness. She was quick to tell a congregation that most of them were not converted, and her counsel to mothers to conquer a baby’s will in its first year will make many readers wince. Fourth, her teetotalism, which she held as an absolute rule for every Christian rather than as a wise and often costly choice. Each of these is dealt with honestly where it arises.

Why read her at all, then? Because on the central matter she was right, and because she lived what she taught at great cost. She preached through ill health for most of her adult life and gave her children to the work one by one. She stood against the drink trade and the traffic in young girls when it was dangerous to do so. And she died of cancer, slowly and in great pain, without once suggesting that God had failed her. So the counsel of this book is the counsel of Scripture: Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Weigh every chapter against the Word of God. Where she is faithful — and on the necessity of repentance, on the reality of the Spirit’s power, on the church’s duty to the lost and the poor, she is faithful indeed — receive it and act on it. Where she presses beyond what is written, mark it, set it aside, and lose nothing.

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. ZECHARIAH 4:6

She preached to Victorian England. She is read now in places she never saw, by people whose churches owe more to her than they know. Her subject was not a culture but a question, and wherever this book is opened, the question will already be waiting.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write down, honestly, three things in your Christian life that are form rather than power — habits you keep up that no longer reach your heart. Do not abolish them; ask God to fill them.

2. Ask the question the book will keep asking: if the gospel were not true, what would change in my life this week? If the answer is very little, say so to God.

3. Decide now how you will read this book: one chapter at a time, with the application points actually attempted before you go on.

4. Where you already suspect you will disagree with her, note it, and resolve to test her against Scripture rather than against your habits.

5. Name one person you know who has the form of religion and not the power, and one who has the power. Pray for the first, and thank God for the second.

A PRAYER

Lord God, I have a form of godliness. I know the words, the habits and the hymns, and I am not always sure there is power in any of them.

Do not let me read about reality and remain unreal. Search me as this book goes on, and show me where I have settled for the shape of the thing instead of the thing itself.

Where Your servant was right, make me willing to obey. Where she went beyond Your Word, give me the wisdom to see it and the humility not to despise her.

Give me the power, and not only the form, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.