There is certainly
nothing about him which suggests the old General, and his mind is much
more the mind of his mother--one of the most remarkable women in the
world's history--than the mind of his father.
Catherine Booth was a zealot and at the heart of her theology a hard
zealot. She believed that the physical agony of disease was a part of
God's discipline, and that humanity is called upon to bear that fierce
fire for the purification of its wicked spirit. She never flinched in
confronting the theology of Methodism. She was in practice the tenderest
of women, the most compassionate of missionaries, the most persuasive
orator of the emotions in her day; but in theory she was as hard as
steel.
Her husband, on the other hand, who threw Jehovah's thunderbolts across
the world as if he liked them, and approved of them, and was ready for
any further number of these celestial missiles, of an even vaster
displacement, was in his heart of hearts a wistful believer in
everlasting mercy. Few men have been born with a softer heart. He
sometimes wondered whether in framing the Regulations of the Salvation
Army he had not pressed too hard on human nature. To the horrified
scandal of his son, he even came to question, if only for a passing
moment, the ordinance which forbids tobacco to the Salvationist.
He used to say in his old age, ruminating over the past, "Our standard
is high.
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