The Inspiring Life Of Catherine Booth

2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

Catherine Booth did not have an enviable life. Her mother was a rigid, narrow, and sometimes neurotic woman of stern principles, who gave her daughter little liberty to be a child. Her father was a backslidden Methodist minister who, though at one time an advocate of the temperance movement, eventually turned to alcohol himself. To avoid secular contamination, most of Catherine’s education was at home. Hence, Catherine grew up without any playmates. Instead, she played church with her dolls and often preached to them.

Catherine battled various health problems from childhood. At fourteen, curvature of the spine forced her to be bedridden for several months and at eighteen tuberculosis forced her to leave home for the seaside town of Brighton for sixteen months.

But Catherine was intelligent and had a quick mind with an aptitude for learning. Next to her passion for God and the Scriptures, she had an eagerness to engage in thoughtful discussion and disputation. By many a Victorian man’s standards, Catherine would have been too much, but not so for William Booth. Like William, Catherine had definite thoughts about everything and this endeared her to him.

Their early years of courtship before marriage and even beyond, were racked with hardship and poverty. Ousted from the Methodist Church, William traveled further and further away from London to secure preaching work and attend to his calling and passion for evangelistic work. Catherine, an avid writer, engaged in corresponding with her husband by letters. William’s notes were short; hers were frequently between 2,500 to 3,000 words in length.

Catherine’s letters were full of encouragement, guidance, remonstrance and pastoral advice. Always she exhorted her husband to glorify God, ‘not so much by preaching or teaching or anything else, but by holy living’.

Catherine did not sit idly by while William was whirling about the country preaching. Catherine redeemed this time to prepare to be a minister’s wife. She wrote with her own hand, ‘I enlarged the scope of my reading, wrote notes and made comments on all the sermons and lectures that appeared at all worthy of the trouble, and started to learn shorthand.’

Armed with a wealth of Biblical knowledge, the desire to glorify God through holy living and an aptitude for writing, Catherine began writing sermons and outlines for William. He was so busy traveling from one of his circuit churches to another that he often dashed of notes to her asking for a sermon on whatever subject he felt to preach upon. Catherine, with acumen and spiritual understanding produced exactly what William needed.

In the years following their marriage, Catherine’s skills were not to be limited to writing alone. In a time when most Victorian women lived in a world of comfort and kept their opinions to themselves, Catherine defied the status quo. After feeling ‘divinely compelled’ to give a personal word at the conclusion of a morning service, Catherine was so well received that the offers to speak and teach the church congregation began to flow freely. In time, her speaking ministry was so popular that she was often better received than her husband.

Time moved forward and Catherine learned to juggle a family, financial hardship, constant moving, deterioration of her own health and also the bouts of moodiness and depression that plagued her husband when he was home. But after bearing six children in nine years of marriage, struggling with a wandering, homeless existence and trying to cheer up William, Catherine too became depressed herself. Her youngest baby was suffering from convulsions; she was having trouble paying the bills; she had her hands full with active children and her spinal problems were escalating.

Yet, despite these debilitating circumstances, Catherine accepted an invitation to conduct revival meetings, apart from her husband, in south London. Those among the most poverty-ridden and underprivileged sections of the city came to listen to Catherine, who was shortly joined by William. This was the turning point in their lives and the very means that God used to thrust the Booth’s into a ministry together that grew to another 55 countries worldwide: The Salvation Army.

But despite the growth of the Army, family and financial pressures never diminished. At the age of sixty, Catherine was diagnosed with breast cancer and found that she was obliged to move from public to private life, administering the necessities of the ministry from her bedside. The extent of the Salvation Army was far beyond anyone’s perceived expectations. By 1890, there were over 3,000 centers; 750,000 pounds per year was being raised for the underprivileged and 10,000 Salvation Army officers were holding 50,000 meetings each week.

In her final days, Catherine Booth, the woman who had committed herself to her God, her husband and her family passed away. A wall motto above the mantel in her bedroom read, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’ And His grace truly was.

(Excerpts taken from Martin Luther Had a Wife by William J Petersen (Bridge Publishing UK, 1984).