The Authoritative Life of General William Booth Part 41

"Vegetable life has its powers, enabling it to draw nutrition out of the ground.

"Fish life has power adapting it to an existence in the water.

"Animal life has powers or senses suitable to its sphere of existence, such as seeing, hearing, tasting, and the like.

"Human life has faculties, emotions, loves and hatreds, suitable to its manner of existence. And it has its own peculiar destiny. It goes back to G.o.d, to be judged as to its conduct when its earthly career terminates.

"And the Spiritual Life of which we are speaking has powers or faculties necessary to the maintenance of its existence, and to the discharge of the duties appropriate to the sphere in which it moves. For instance: it has powers to draw from G.o.d the nourishment it requires; it has powers to see or discern spiritual things; it has powers to distinguish holy people; it has powers to love truth, and to hate falsehood; it has powers to suffer and sacrifice for the good of others. It has powers to know, and love, and glorify its Maker.

"Those possessed of this Spiritual Life, like all other beings, act according to their nature.

"For instance: the tree grows in the woods, and bears leaves and fruit after its own nature. The bird flies in the air, builds its nest, and sings its song after its own nature. The wild beasts roam through the forest, and rage and devour according to their own nature. If you are to make these or any other creatures act differently, you must give them a different nature. By distorting the tree, or training the animal, or clipping the wings of the bird, you may make some trifling and temporary alteration in the condition or conduct of these creatures; but when you have done this, left to themselves, they will soon revert to their original nature.

"By way of ill.u.s.tration. A menagerie recently paid a visit to a northern town. Amongst the exhibits was a cage labelled 'The Happy Family,' containing a lion, a tiger, a wolf, and a lamb. When the keeper was asked confidentially how long a time these animals had lived thus peacefully together, he answered, 'About ten months.

But,' said he, with a twinkle in his eye, 'the lamb has to be renewed occasionally.'

"As with these forms of life, so with men and women and children.

The only way to secure conduct of a lasting character different from its nature is by effecting a change in that nature. Make them new creatures in Christ Jesus and you will have a Christlike life.

"The presence of the powers natural to Spiritual Life const.i.tutes the only true and sufficient evidence of its possession.

"The absence of these powers shows conclusively the absence of the life. If a man does not love G.o.d and walk humbly with Him; if he does not long after Holiness, love his comrades, and care for souls, it will be satisfying evidence that he has gone back to the old nature--that is, to spiritual death.

"All Spiritual Life is not only imparted by Jesus Christ, but sustained by direct union with Him.

"'I am the Vine,' He says, 'ye are the branches; he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing' (John xv. 6).

"Nothing will make up for the lack of this life.

"This, indeed, applies to every kind of existence. You cannot find a subst.i.tute for life in the vegetable kingdom. Try the trees in the garden. Look at that dead apple-tree. As you see it there, it is useless, ugly, fruitless. What will make up for the absence of life? Will the digging, or the manuring of the ground around it do this? No! That will be all in vain. If it is dead, there is only one remedy, and that is to give it life--new life.

"Take the animal world. What can you do to make up for the lack of life in a dog? I read the other day of a lady who had a pet dog.

She loved it to distraction. It died. Whatever could she do with it to make up for its loss of life? Well, she might have preserved it, stuffed it, jewelled its eyes, and painted its skin. But had she done so, these things would have been a disappointing subst.i.tute.

So she buried it, and committed suicide in her grief, and was buried by its side.

"Take the loss of human life. What is the use of a dead man? Go to the death-chamber. Look at that corpse. The loved ones are distracted. What can they do? They may dress it, adorn it, appeal to it. But all that human skill and effort can conceive will be in vain. All that the broken hearts can say or do must soon terminate, as did Abraham's mourning for Sarah, when he said, 'Give me a piece of land that I may bury my dead out of my sight.' Nothing can make up for the lack of life.

"But this is specially true of the Spiritual Life of which we are speaking. Take this in its application to a Corps. If you want an active, generous, fighting, dare-devil Corps, able and willing to drive h.e.l.l before it, that Corps must be possessed, and that fully, by this spirit of life. Nothing else can effectively take its place. No education, learning, Bible knowledge, theology, social amus.e.m.e.nts, or anything of the kind will be a satisfactory subst.i.tute. The Corps that seeks to put any of these things in the place of life will find them a mockery, a delusion, and a snare; will find them to be only the wraps and trappings of death itself.

"And if it is so in the Corps, it is so ten thousand times more in the Officer who commands that Corps--in you!

"Spiritual Life is the essential root of every other qualification required by a Salvation Army Officer.

"With it he will be of unspeakable interest.

"He will be a pleasure to himself. There is an unspeakable joy in having healthy, exuberant life.

"He will be of interest to those about him. Who cares about dead things? Dead flowers--throw them out. Dead animals--eat them. Dead men--bury them. Dead and dying Officers--take them away. Give them another Corps.

"If he is living he will be of interest to all about him. Men with humble abilities, if full of this Spiritual Life, will be a charm and a blessing wherever they go. Look at the lives and writings of such humble men as Billy Bray, Carvosso, and Hodgson Ca.s.son. Their memory is an ointment poured forth to-day after long years have pa.s.sed away.

"Without this life an Officer will be of no manner of use. No matter how he may be educated or talented, without life is to be without love; and to be without love, the Apostle tells us, is to be only as 'a sounding bra.s.s.' But it is not that of which I want to speak just now.

"Spiritual Life is essential to the preservation of life.

"The first thing life does for its possessor is to lead him to look after its own protection. When the principle of life is strong, you will have health and longevity. When it is weak, you have disease.

When it is extinct, you have decay and rottenness.

"Only vigorous Spiritual Life will enable a Salvation Army Officer to effectually discharge the duties connected with his position.

"Life is favorable to activity. It is so with all life. Go into the tropical forests, and see the exuberant growth of everything there.

Look at the foliage, the blossom, the fruit. Look at the reptiles crawling at your feet, and take care they do not sting you. Look at the birds chattering and fluttering on the trees, and they will charm you. Look at the animals roving through the woods, and take care they do not devour you.

"Contrast all this movement with the empty, barren, silent, Polar regions, or the dreary, treeless sands of the African desert.

"Go and look at the overflowing, tirelss activity of the children.

Why are they never still? It is the life that is in them. Go to the man at work. With what glee, and for what a trifling remuneration, he sweats, and lifts and carries the ponderous weights. Go to the soldier in the military war. How he shouts and sings as he marches to deprivations, and wounds, and death.

"Even so with Spiritual Life. It never rests; it never tires; it always sees something great to do, and is always ready to undertake it. What is the explanation? How can we account for it? The answer is, Life--abundant life.

"It is only by the possession of Life that The Salvation Army Officer can spread this life.

"That is, reproduce himself, multiply himself, or his kind. This reproduction or multiplication of itself is a characteristic of all life.

"Take the vegetable kingdom. Every living plant has life-producing seed, or some method of reproducing itself. The thistle: who can count the number of plants that one thistle can produce in a year?

One hundred strawberry plants can be made in ten years to produce more than a thousand million other strawberry plants!

"Take the animal kingdom. Here each living creature has this reproductive power. They say that a pair of sparrows would in ten years, if all their progeny could be preserved, produce as many birds as there are people on the earth--that is, 1,500,000,000. 'Ye are of more value than many sparrows.'

"Just so, this Spiritual Life is intended to spread itself through the world.

"It is to this end it is given to you. G.o.d's command to Adam was, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.' How much more does this command apply to you and to me! You are to be progenitors of a world of men and women possessed of Spiritual Life; the parents of a race of angels. How this is to be done is another question. About that I shall have something to say as we go along.

For the moment, I am simply occupied with the fact that you have to call this world of holy beings into existence by spreading this life.

"Every Officer here is located in a world of death. Sometimes we style it a dying world, and so it is on its human side, but on its spiritual side it is past dying; it is dead. By that I do not mean that the spiritual nature, that is the soul, ever ceases to be in any man. That will never come to pa.s.s. Perhaps nothing once created will ever cease to be. Anyway, man is immortal. The soul can never die. Neither do I mean that there is no Spiritual Life.

"By spiritual death we mean that the soul is--Separated from G.o.d; no union with Him. In a blind man the organ may be perfect, but not connected.

"Inactive. No love for the things G.o.d loves. No hatred for the things He hates. Dead to His interests, His kingdom; dead to Him.

"Corrupt, bad, devilish, etc. What a valley of dry bones the world appears to the man whose eyes have been opened to see the truth of things. Verily, verily, it is one great cemetery crowded with men, women, and children dead in trespa.s.ses and sin. Look for a moment at this graveyard, in which the men around you may be said to lie with their hearts all dead and cold to Christ, and all that concerns their Salvation. Look at it. The men and women and children in your town are buried there. The men and women in your city, in your street. Nay, the very people who come to your Hall to hear you talk on a Sunday night are there. There they lie. Let us read the inscriptions on some of their tombs:--

"_Here lies Tom Jones_

"He had a beautiful nature, and a young, virtuous wife, and some beautiful children. All starved and wretched through their father's selfish ways. He can't help himself. He says so. He has proved it.

He is dead in drunkenness.