go to Quotes from Catherine Booth

go to a primitive recording of William speaking at the beginning of the 20th century

'Some men's ambition is art.
Some men's ambition is fame.
Some men's ambition is gold.
My ambition is the souls of men.'
(Written by William in King Edward VII's autograph book, 1904)

'I want to see a new translation of the Bible into the hearts and conduct of living men and women.'
(From an article in The War Cry following the publiction of the Revised Version of the Bible in 1885)

'Nobody gets a blessing if they have cold feet and nobody ever got saved while they had toothache!'
(In a committee discussing facilities at the People's Mission)

'We are not sent to minister to a congregation and be content if we keep things going. We are sent to make war...and to stop short of nothing but the subjugation of the world to the sway of the Lord Jesus'
(From an address at the 'War Congress' of 1878)

'Secular music, do you say, belongs to the devil? Does it? Well, if it did I would plunder him for it, for he has no right to a single note of the whole seven...Every note, and every strain, and every harmony is divine, and belongs to us.' (From a War Cry article in 1880) 'If I thought I could win one more soul to the Lord by walking on my head and playing the tambourine with my toes, I'd learn how!' (Spoken to the young Rudyard Kipling)

'I don't believe in any religion apart from doing the will of God.'
(In a letter to her mother)

'I know not what He is about to do with me, but I have given myself entirely into His hands.'
(Journal written in her teens)

'The more you lead me up to Christ in all things, the more highly shall I esteem you, and if it be possible to love you more than I do now, the more shall I love you.'
(In a love-letter to William)

'Here is the principle...adapt your measures to the necessity of the people to whom you minister. You are to take the Gospel to them in such modes...and circumstances as will gain for it from them a hearing.'
(From a public address)

'There is no improving the future without disturbing the present.'
(Occasion not known)

'He may not be able to put together two sentences of the Queen's English, but if he can say that he has been born again, if he can say "once I was blind but now I see", he will do for The Salvation Army.'
(From a public address)

'The curse, of this age especially, is unbelief, frittering the real meaning of God's word away, and making it all figure and fiction.'
(In a letter to her parents)

'Cast off all bonds of prejudice and custom, and let the love of Christ, which is in you, have free course to run out in all conceivable schemes and methods of labour for the souls of men.'
(Messages to last Christian Mission Congress)

Next page: William's Songs

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