This is an etext version of Mildred Duff, Catherine Booth: A Sketch, with preface by General Bramwell Booth. Originally published by Salvation Army Book Department, circa 1907. This edition was created by Jone Johnson Lewis, 2003.
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If ever you are in Abney Park Cemetery you should visit her grave. It is very simple. Around the little piece of earth runs a grey stone, with these words carved on it: -
Catherine Booth,
Mother of The Salvation Army
More than Conqueror, through Him that loved us,
and gave Himself for all the world and for you.
Do you also follow Christ?
and above are two small beds of flowers.
Do many people go to see it? you wonder.
Oh, yes. All round it a path is worn in the grass, made by the tread of many feet; for mothers bring their boys and girls to see it, and tell them what a mother she was, and men and women of all creeds and races pause beside it, and remember.
Many Officers, too - from distant lands, and speaking strange tongues you could not understand - come to The Army Mother's grave when they visit our shores. For she was their Mother as well as ours, they say.
They kneel beside the stone, and spell out the name, and then they consecrate themselves afresh to God and the needs of the heathen lands, and they claim His grace to follow in her steps.
For our Army Mother is not dead. True, her body lies in the quiet grave at Abney Park, and her spirit is in Heaven; but her life and influence still live among us, her words are treasured, and our greatest prayer and desire for the girls and wives and mothers in our ranks is that they may live to be worthy daughters of Catherine Booth.
This is an etext version of Mildred Duff, Catherine Booth: A Sketch, with preface by General Bramwell Booth. Originally published by Salvation Army Book Department, circa 1907. This edition was created by Jone Johnson Lewis, 2003.
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