“Papa, Papa. Come and play the fox and geese with us,” said Eva, who was also celebrating her third birthday.
In this game William was the fox and the children the geese. He would chase them around the house until he caught each one. It was the family’s favorite indoor game.
“Soon,” he said, tousling Eva’s hair.
After his daughter left the room, William began pacing across the hearth rug. Half an hour later Catherine came in rocking Lucy in her arms. “What is it, William?” she asked.
William paced back and forth two more times and then sat in the leather armchair by the fire. Catherine sat down opposite him. Waterford, the family’s faithful retriever, plopped himself down at William’s feet.
“It was so depressing walking home today,” William began. “I know I see the same sights every day, but today should be different—it’s Christmas. But still the streets are filled with drunk, wretched children and adults. It’s Christ’s birthday, and they have nothing to look forward to. Look at Lucy. We have this big house and food, and she has a family that loves her and cares for her. Her future is filled with hope, but those people out there on the streets—they have no hope. They are dirty and ragged and lost. We must do something about it. I’ll never again spend a Christmas like this.”
“What do you have in mind?” Catherine asked soothingly.
“It’s not much, but it will be a start. Next Christmas why don’t we make Christmas puddings and distribute them in the slums? We have to find a way to bring some hope to people on Christmas,” William replied.
A week later, on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, William was preparing his sermon for the evening service. The title was “What Are You Going to Do in 1869?” He was putting the finishing touches to it when the doorbell rang. Soon afterward Emma brought in a telegram. William looked at the sender’s address. The telegram was from Henry Reed, a rich Methodist man who lived some distance away in Tunbridge Wells. In the telegram Henry Reed asked William to visit him as soon as possible, by means of that evening’s train if he could. William had no idea why he was being summoned at such short notice, but he handed the sermon he was preparing to Catherine for her to deliver and headed for the train.
Henry Reed was waiting at the train station in Tunbridge Wells to meet William. “Mr. Booth, so good of you to come,” he said, holding out his hand to shake William’s.
The two men rode in a carriage to Henry Reed’s estate. The house was expansive and exquisitely decorated. Fine Persian rugs adorned the floors, and the furniture was made of mahogany imported from Asia. A servant took William’s coat as he stepped inside, and then Henry guided William to the drawing room, where a large fire blazed in the hearth. William made himself comfortable on a sofa beside a well-stocked bookshelf, and Henry sat in a wing-backed chair opposite him.
After a maid had brought in a pot of tea and served a cup to each man, the two men got down to serious conversation.
“No doubt you are wondering why I asked you to come,” Henry began.
William nodded.
“My concern is with the financial well-being of your mission, Mr. Booth. I have taken an option on a piece of land in the East End, near where your original tent meetings were held. I am willing to build a meeting hall on this land for you to hold your meetings in. You may review the plans and make any alterations you desire. When it is finished, the building will be entirely at your disposal.”
“That is a very kind offer, sir,” William said, a little startled but feeling very relieved. Perhaps 1869 was going to be the year he could finally stop worrying about the family’s bills!
Henry cleared his throat. “There are, however, a few minor conditions attached with this offer.”
“Go on,” William replied, leaning forward in his seat.
“First, you will hold no more Sunday services in hired theatres. Paying rent for these places on Sunday as you do only helps finance the godless activities that go on in them the rest of the week. Second, you must agree to fill this new hall each time you hold meetings there. If you agree to these conditions and abide by them, I will financially support your ministry. However, if you fail to live up to them, I shall have no other option but to withdraw my support and reclaim the deed to the new building and the land on which it will sit. What do you say? That doesn’t sound too difficult for you, does it?”
William sat quietly for a few moments mulling over Henry Reed’s offer. It was an attractive one, one that would guarantee William personally some measure of financial stability and provide a permanent facility in which to carry out his ministry. There would be no more lugging chairs in and out of dance halls, no more setting up tents on vacant lots, no more chilling winds sweeping through broken windows of old factories, no more competing against the squeals of pigs being slaughtered in the market area. But no matter how attractive the offer was, William knew he could not accept it. In doing so he would be serving Henry Reed and his conditions and not God. William knew that he had to be free to follow God’s leading. “I thank you for your kind offer, sir,” William said, “but I am afraid I cannot accept it.”
After spending the night at Henry Reed’s home, William returned to London the following morning, New Year’s Day 1869. He did not have a doubt that he had done the right thing in turning down the offer. The words of the sermon he had been preparing the day before came back to him as a personal challenge: “What are you going to do in 1869?” William realized that the great test of character is doing. God, the church, and society at large all estimate a man not according to his sayings, feelings, or desires but according to the things he does. William knew he needed to be free to do whatever God showed him to do, without caring what Henry Reed or anyone else would say.
Even without Henry Reed’s help, the East London Christian Mission continued to grow at a fast clip during 1869. Mission workers fanned out to the worst areas of the city. It was impossible to enter a pub without first being offered a pamphlet by a worker or to leave one without an invitation to a soup kitchen or Christian tearoom.
Even the British Parliament was taking notice, and some of its members began sending money to William to help in his fight against poverty.
The rapid growth of the ministry was mostly due to the way in which new converts were encouraged to take a full part in the services and activities offered. William believed that they could be effective Christian workers from the time they were converted. Certainly they had many rough edges, but he would point out time and time again that those rough edges were what enabled them to relate to others who were trapped in the endless cycles of poverty and drink.
In April 1869 a group of young women from the mission got together and announced they were forming themselves into the Christian Female Pioneers. On William’s fortieth birthday the women told him they wanted to start a cottage prayer meeting and a night school for children in the infamous London suburb of Bethnal Green.
William knew that most Christian leaders would insist that men accompany any group of women workers to such a dangerous place, and even direct their work, but he had been married to Catherine too long to stand in the way of determined women! He had come to believe that women and men were completely equal in God’s sight and were capable of doing the same things. His two oldest daughters, ten-year-old Kate and nine-year-old Emma, were also starting to be a help to the mission. They would go out onto the streets to gather groups of poor children to preach to, and they often spoke at cottage meetings.
The Christian Female Pioneers were an instant success, or at least in the way William defined success. His favorite verse of cheer was Matthew chapter 5 verse 12: “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.” The women were taunted and pelted with rotten fruit by the residents of Bethnal Green for their efforts, but they would not give up, and soon a cottage meeting sprang up in the area.
In August William traveled to Edinburgh, where a group called the Edinburgh Friends ran a mission similar to the East London Christian Mission, only on a much smaller scale. The Edinburgh Friends approached William and asked if they could become part of his mission. William agreed enthusiastically. The East London Christian Mission was beginning to spread its wings.
While the mission was rapidly growing, William was determined not to lose sight of the simple message of salvation and offering a helping hand to the poor. At Christmas that year he made good on his pledge to bring cheer to the slums. The entire Booth family labored together to mix up 150 puddings and boil them at home in the family’s laundry copper. Their new kitchen helper Polly joined in too. On Christmas morning everyone helped deliver the puddings.
Over the next three years, the East London Christian Mission continued its growth. The soup kitchen and poor man’s dining hall in Whitechapel offered cheap and nutritious meals to over two thousand men and women. People flocked to the reading rooms and other warm and comfortable places the mission provided as an alternative to the pubs.
Throughout this time Catherine kept on preaching in churches around England, and William wrote a short book entitled How to Reach the Masses With the Gospel: A Sketch of the Origin, History and Present Position of the Christian Mission. In this book he set out his ideas on preaching the gospel and the opposition those who tried to reach the poor would face. He warned:
This kind of work ensures opposition and persecution, it raises the hatred of men and devils.… If you will stop quietly in your church or chapel or meeting place, you may talk of religion forever and, beyond a little passing ridicule, the ungodly will let you alone.… Only proclaim the truth at the gates of the city or in the crowded market place and they will gnash upon you with their teeth and hate you as they hated Him [Jesus] who went about all the cities and villages in Palestine.
As if to prove William’s point, the East London Christian Mission continued to be embroiled in very public persecution. Catholics in Croydon threw pots at mission workers, while in the East End the workers were pelted with flour, mud, stones, and cabbage stalks. In Shoreditch, drunk men threatened to punch any man or woman who spoke the name of Jesus.
One confrontation, which made newspaper headlines, became know as the Battle of Sanger’s Circus. The circus set itself up near one of the mission’s preaching stations. This was a double insult to William, since he objected to circuses because he believed that they were cruel to animals and that the circus had more “star power” than a preacher did. At the Battle of Sanger’s Circus, the preacher announced a hymn, which he and his helpers started singing loudly. Soon circus employees started pelting the singers with clods of dirt and stones. The group sang on. Next the circus brought out several brass instruments, and the clowns and acrobats made an awful din with them. The group started on a new song, “I Am a Pilgrim, Bound for Glory.” Since the tuba and trumpet were having little effect, more instruments appeared. A huge drum was beat, and a pretty girl bashed cymbals behind the preacher. All of this drew an immense crowd of onlookers. It was much more entertaining than either the preaching or the circus. Not to be defeated, the circus brought out its star attractions—a large elephant and two dromedaries! The animals’ handlers led the animals into the crowd. Men shouted and women screamed and grabbed their children as the animals swayed by. But the preacher continued on.
An hour and a half later the group sang their final hymn and invited people in the crowd to come forward and become Christians. The mission had triumphed in the true style of William Booth.
