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Catherine Booth
Catherine Booth (1829–1890). Born Catherine Mumford on January 17, 1829, in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England, to a devout Methodist family, she became a co-founder of The Salvation Army. A sickly child, she was educated at home, reading the Bible by age 12, which shaped her fervent faith. In 1852, she met William Booth, a Methodist preacher, and they married in 1855, raising eight children. Catherine began preaching in 1860, defying norms against women in pulpits, delivering powerful sermons on holiness and social reform. Co-founding The Christian Mission in 1865, which became The Salvation Army in 1878, she championed the poor, alcoholics, and prostitutes, establishing homes for “fallen women.” She authored books like Practical Religion and Aggressive Christianity, advocating passionate evangelism. Despite battling breast cancer, she preached until weeks before her death on October 4, 1890, in Clacton-on-Sea, England. Catherine said, “If we are to better the future, we must disturb the present.”
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Catherine Booth passionately preaches about the eternal nature of the soul, emphasizing the power of sowing to the Spirit and righteousness. She highlights the transformative work of Jesus Christ, who bore the punishment for our sins and offers freedom and renewal to all who come to Him. Through the precious blood of Christ, even the most hardened sinners can be washed, sanctified, and restored to favor with God. Catherine urges her listeners to make a decisive choice to stop sowing to the flesh and commit to sowing to the Spirit, promising the blessing of eternal life for those who choose righteousness and true holiness.
What Will You Do?
You cannot kill your soul; it is made of material on which you cannot lay violent hands--it will live in spite of you. What will you do? You have been sowing to the flesh all your life. You say, `I have no power to sow to the Spirit, to righteousness, and to God.' Do you say, `Woe is me, I am undone; there is no hope?' Are you tired of sowing to the flesh? are you willing to begin to sow to the Spirit? If so, Oh, joyful news! there is help, desperate as your case may be. Help is laid upon One that is mighty. Only a God could meet your case, and lo! a God has met it. Jesus Christ, the Righteous. He has not destroyed this law, but He has found a way by which to deliver those who come to Him from its awful consequences by letting its envenomed tail so to speak, sink into His own bosom, and Himself bearing the punishment due to your deadly sowing, in His own `body on the tree. He who knew no sin has been made a curse for you, that you might be made a partaker of the righteousness of God in Him. If you will only come to Him, and cast your guilty soul on His sacrifice, He will free you from the bitter consequences of your past evil ways. And He will,' better still, renew your mind, and put a new spirit within you, so that henceforth you shall be able to sow to the Spirit. And then this terrible law of which we have been speaking will become your friend, and you' shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. He has done this for some of us. We once sowed to the flesh, `more or less in outward acts, but all alike in heart. We lived unto ourselves, and are now ashamed of the fruits of our evil sowing. But `He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost and He will save you if you will let Him. `Oh!' said a young man the other day, `but the marks, the stain, can never begot off.' `Oh, yes!' we replied, `they can; there is one medium, and ONLY ONE, that can wash the blood-red hand and the blood-red conscience too, and that is the precious blood of Christ.' We could show you thousands in the ranks of The Salvation Army once as bad as you, and most likely a great deal worse. Men and women, some of them, who have been favoured with every advantage in youth-wept over and entreated by Christian parents, loved and laboured for by teachers and ministers, who notwithstanding, had wandered to the ends of the earth, and committed every sin that human nature is capable of--hardened, besotted, brutalized, sunk to the lowest level of debauchery and crime. And yet now they are washed, they are sanctified and restored to favour with God and man, all through the Blood. Will you try it? Will you put your foot down, and say this afternoon, `By the grace of God, I will never sow another seed to the flesh?' Will you let go all your miserable provision for the gratification of the flesh? and will you come and pledge yourself to be the Lord's in righteousness and in true Holiness? If you will, be sure you shall know the blessing of sowing to the Spirit in this life, and in the next you shall reap `life everlasting.' May God help you! Amen.
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Catherine Booth (1829–1890). Born Catherine Mumford on January 17, 1829, in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England, to a devout Methodist family, she became a co-founder of The Salvation Army. A sickly child, she was educated at home, reading the Bible by age 12, which shaped her fervent faith. In 1852, she met William Booth, a Methodist preacher, and they married in 1855, raising eight children. Catherine began preaching in 1860, defying norms against women in pulpits, delivering powerful sermons on holiness and social reform. Co-founding The Christian Mission in 1865, which became The Salvation Army in 1878, she championed the poor, alcoholics, and prostitutes, establishing homes for “fallen women.” She authored books like Practical Religion and Aggressive Christianity, advocating passionate evangelism. Despite battling breast cancer, she preached until weeks before her death on October 4, 1890, in Clacton-on-Sea, England. Catherine said, “If we are to better the future, we must disturb the present.”