As We Look Back On Life . . . .

    Catherine Booth spoke the following words from a sick chamber, knowing that it was her last sickness, and in a short while she would leave this world for a better.

    "Oh, how often I have felt while lying here, thinking of our Officers (Salvation Army) toiling and conquering all over the world,  'If I could but have them all together in one room and speak to every heart just as I feel! Oh, how I would strive to make them realize the value of souls and the verities of eternity and the emptiness and hollowness of everything else!’

    "In fact, as I look back on life I don't seem to recognize anything else. I don't remember the houses I have lived in, the people I have known, the things of passing interest of the moment. They are all gone. There is nothing stands out before my mind as of any consequence but the work I have done for God and for eternity. That is all that there is to rejoice in....

    "I know how often you will be tempted to feel that the struggle is too heavy and that the fight is too hard. There have been crises in my own history when the devil has tried to get me to be indifferent, when I have been met on every hand by professing Christians and others who have carped and criticized. The devil has said, ‘I’d give it up. You see what comes of it. Why should you not take an easier course?'

    "I have been through the temptation when the flesh is weary, and the spirits down, and one feels lonely and loosed from all human aid. But I do thank God that I did not give way, but that I held on, and that we have fought our way through, so far, and that He has let me live to see as much of the victory as I have seen, and I shall see the rest from the battlements of Heaven."