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Cadets and Love for Souls
by General Bramwell Booth
From book 'Training Staff Council Lectures 1925'

*Editor's note - This article has undergone some editing in length and vocabulary.


'Love for souls' embraces so much of the life and work of The Salvation Army that it might almost be said to be an alternative name for the whole Organisation. I can imagine some holy being just arrived from another world asking 'What is The Salvation Army?' and being answered in terms according to his own understanding. 'The Salvation Army is love for souls.'

Love is the attraction, which has brought us together as an Army. It is the uniting principle, which, in spite of many differences in race, language, character, and temperament, has made us one. Love is more than this. It is the sustaining force of the Movement. Without love, The Army, no matter how powerful, or useful, or popular, would be a dead thing. With love, The Army, no matter how small, or poor, or despised, is a living Branch in the True Vine of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Love is more than mere feeling; love is a willing. We often hear the word 'benevolence' used to denote love, and rightly so. Benevolence comes from the Latin benevolentia, meaning the will to love or to bless. That great principle, the will, is a part of love. It is to a certain extent within man's power to love. He can will to love. Indeed, without the will, love would not be love: it would be a mere
sentiment. Love between a man and woman, unless there be will in it – a genuine purpose or will on the part of each for the good of the other – must, under pressure or change of circumstances, pass away. The will to love, the determination, 'I will be a lover,' is vital to the maintenance of tenderness, compassion and sympathy between husband and wife; indeed, between any lovers, human or divine.

In emphasising the importance of the will, I do not want to detract from the power and glory of the emotional part of love. Emotion, the movement of the heart to pour out its riches, this more than anything else, except Holiness – and Holiness could not be without love – makes man like God, who, because He loved, gave His only-begotten Son to bless the world of sinners. Never let a word escape your lips, especially when dealing with Cadets, in disparagement of emotion or tenderness of feeling. By all means guard them against being swayed by mere sentiment, but never let them disesteem that outflow of emotion and tenderness, which so beautifully characterises the lives of those who truly love.

Love at its highest, the will and the feeling melted into one, brought The Salvation Army into being. The Army was raised as a special manifestation of love for souls – for the souls of sinners. When William Booth was asked what had been the compelling influence of his life, he said that it was 'an ardent, holy love for God and souls.' He was, to use his own words, impelled by 'the impulses and urgings of an undying ambition to save souls.'

Everything that we can know or learn about the Founders' lives indicates that, from first to last, an unselfish love impelled them in all that they did and said and planned. Many of you have heard me say of the Founder, that when preaching in chapels before The Salvation Army was born, his heart was with the churchless multitude outside.From the pulpit he could sometimes see out of the windows, and while speaking to his congregation he would often be saying to God in his heart, 'Oh, these people here have the light, they know the truth; but outside are the multitudes for whom not man cares! My heart is out there.' The love that produced The Salvation Army sustains us today. We want that love above all else implanted in the hearts of all Cadets.

Implanting Love in the Cadet
My purpose is to point out some means by which this love may be established as the ruling influence in the Cadet's heart. It is a difficult task. They are not always loving natures upon which we haveto work. Love is alien to their make-up. It may be dormant, but so profound is the sleep that it seems as if only by magic can the awakening come! When they come to us many of them are servants to that which is harmful to love. Much in their characters, in their lives, sometimes in their habits, is discouraging. Many of them are selfish. They are accustomed to consider themselves in everything. Every circumstance, even the most trivial, calls forth the query, 'What about me? Where do I come in?' but the language of love is ' Never mind me!'

Some who come to the Training Garrisons with a sincere desire to serve God are hard in their make-up. Any latent tenderness in their natures has never been cultivated. The circumstances of their lives have been such as to harden them. Many of them have had very little affection shown to them. Talking to one Cadet – a cold-blooded sort of fish whom I wanted to help – I asked whether any one had ever kissed him.He thought I meant, had any girl kissed him! 'Oh, no; no one has ever kissed me!' he said, quickly and emphatically. 'Surely you can recall whether your mother ever kissed you?' I asked. 'My mother wasn't that sort,' was his reply.

Again, some whom you are asked to train are by nature fickle, quick to change. That characteristic is unfriendly to love. The person who is played upon by every wind that blows, who passes rapidly from one kind of feeling to another, is not fertile soil for the heavenly plant of love. Some, especially the more educated type, are inclined, by training and temperament, to repress and starve their love. They do violence to their natural feelings by cultivating the habit of repression. They have been trained to bottle up their emotions. They may even cultivate a kind of cynicism as a self-protection against any display of feeling. The consequence is that this part of their nature has become crippled like the Chinese women's feet – dwarfed againstnature.

Others – and this is a far more serious matter – are lacking in the first principle of love for souls in that they do not deeply love God. If more affection flowed from them as individuals towards Him who is the Fountain of Affection, they would be more ready to receive our help and instruction.

Yet each Cadet comes to us more or less in the spirit of 'Here I am; do what you can with me.' There is our opportunity – to make of every Cadet a lover.

Perhaps because I am getting older, I see more clearly than ever the wonderful truth hidden in a few words the dear Founder said to me in one of our last talks together. Towards the end he was unable to converse for long at a time, but he uttered sentences and etched expressions. His normal condition was restless. He was always in life a kind of travelling earthquake! He was restless when he was dying! But in an interval of quiet one evening he stretched his hand over the bed to take hold of mine, and said, 'Bramwell, I have been looking back, and let me tell you, Love is all.'

Yes, love is all, and if we fail in planting this great power in the hearts and lives of the Cadets we fail with them altogether. None of us would desire to spend our precious time making mere professors of Salvationism. We do not want to turn out a people painted to look like Salvationists. We want men and women on whose lives at last may be written, 'Love is all.'

Drink at the Fountain of Divine Love
You will not plant this love in the hearts of the Cadets unless you love them. I do beg that you will drink at the Fountain of Divine Love yourselves. Divine Love is different from human love in this: that man must be daily baptized with it. Human love may endure against all odds without much effort. Once deeply embedded, I doubt if it ever really dies. But if we are to be lovers of the Divine Lover, whose love is ever flowing to us, we must will daily to love Him. We must go perpetually to the Fountain. We must put ourselves in the place for daily baptism.

Then we must be lovers of souls. Perhaps more than most Staff Officers, some of you are withdrawn from actual contact with sinners in the mass. But true love carries us to those whom we love when theyare in misery and bondage. We feel ashamed to be glad when they are sad, to be lifted up with joy when they are cast down with grief, to be filled when they are hungry. True love for souls will take you in prayer into the haunts of the lost. It will open many opportunities of wayside contact with the sinner. Many ways will present themselves of pointing him to Christ. And there is this fact, not least of all, that if love for sinners burns in your heart, the Cadets will catch its glow and warmth. Their own love for souls will increase thereby, and you will be sending out men and women in hundreds, perhaps in thousands, to succour the multitude you will never see, and to bring to Christ magdalens and prodigals of whose existence you do not even know.

Love One Another
Next, strive by every available means to help your Cadets to love each other. Let them begin by loving you. Do not be afraid to allow their hearts to receive from yours that which is so precious, and to find in you that which they can appreciate and admire. Your example must have great power with them, and, if you love them, they will naturally give some of their love to you. You do not, of course, want to attach them to you except in so far as you can lead them to God and attach them to The Army; but do not repel the offering of appreciation and affection they bring you while they are in the Garrison. How can they love the lost outside the fold if they fail to love the saved within the fold? Does not that wonderful commandment which Jesus Christ gave through John, 'Love one another,' imply that unless we have a warm, pure love for each other there will be a poor chance of our loving anybody else; that to 'Love on another' is the first short step towards that height from which after a while we shall love the whole world? Therefore, do your utmost to help the Cadets to love one another, to be patient with one another, to show kindness to one another to the extent of self-denial, to enter into one another's feeling, to prefer one another in honour.

Help them to find pleasure when they see a fellow Cadet excelling on the platform, or in the visiting, or in the examinations. Save them ever from envy and jealousy. Help them to show humility, which is one of the first graces born of love. Where there is no humility there is no love. Humility yields its own and seeks the interests of others before its own. If a Cadet has been unkind to another, bring him into the spirit in which he will ask forgiveness. There is plenty of time in the training period for the development and exercise of all the graces which spring from love, plenty of opportunity to help the Cadets in these ways and to draw out their hearts.

Then I would say, encourage sympathy with such sinners as may especially stir their individual hearts. Perhaps when 'fishing' in a Meeting a Cadet's heart will be particularly drawn out to some person whom you may happen to think not worthy of his attention. Do not snub that Cadet. Even if the object of his interest is worthless – ought we not to hesitate before we say that anybody is worthless? - do not on any account tell the Cadet so. If his or her heart is drawn out to this poor, worthless creature, take advantage of that to try and develop the Cadet's affection and feeling through love for that soul. The same applies to visiting. Cadets will become concerned about particular people; for example, the sick and dying, or the very poor, and will come back to the Garrison full of this or that case. Try and arrange for such Cadets to follow up the individual in whom they have become interested, so that, their hearts being moved and stirred, you can draw them out further.

Encourage them to pray for people in whom they are specially interested. Prayer strengthens and enlarges love. I have had some of the richest blessings from the hand of God, especially in recent years, in pleading with Him for particular people in whom I have been interested in my own Meetings, especially backsliders. My heart is always tender to backsliders. They suffer so much. They have such troubles. They feel (especially if they have been in The Army any length of time and enjoyed its comradeship) so isolated – left like refuse on the shore. In my own spirit I have been so blessed and touched in pleading with God for some particular man or woman who has drawn out my sympathy. I shall soon be seventy years of age, if God allows me to live long enough, and here I am, after nearly sixty years of soul-saving work and trying to bless the people and word for God, and my own heart is touched and made tender, my love for souls is increased, and I am made to realise my own need, while I am praying for particular souls. If that is so with me I am sure that such prayer will affect the Cadets, and enlarge their love, even more powerfully through the very fact of their inexperience. God will draw very near to them when they pray for others, and their own hearts will be drawn out to Him. Encourage them to pray for souls.

The Value of Souls
Help the Cadets to dwell on the value of souls. Try and show them how to study the people. The souls of men are like books in a library, of which the outsides only are visible; to be understood they must be studied. Even when read most carefully, much in them will be found to be in an unknown tongue unless the Holy Ghost interpret it. Make the Cadet feel that he ought to be able to take the book from the shelf, and that when he has opened it, he ought to have sufficient knowledge of its language to enable him to read. Help him to see that to these people belongs an eternal future; that even the worst and lowest and most degraded of them has powers which point to another life and another world – powers of the spirit, a capacity for worship, for God, power to think, to reason; above all, power to love. Sometimes it seems to me that failure – even ruin – help to prove the immortality of the soul. A blighted soul is like a plant, which, in an unfavourable climate, cannot flower, or if it flower, cannot bring its seed to perfection. The plant lives, struggles, and comes to maturity of a kind, but is never perfected. When we look at it we say that there must be a clime somewhere where that flower can blossom, where that seed can be perfected and fall fertile into the soil. Let the Cadets be inspired with love and hope so that they will still hope for the uttermost failures, so that they will never despair of drawing the worst and vilest into the Kingdom.

The Cadets will be helped to bless souls if they realise the immense possibilities for development which lie before the individual. Just think what it means to be capable of eternal growth, continual advance! How wonderfully people develop here when they bring themselves into the full sunshine of God's will! Do you not often feel that the transformations which take place in the Cadets themselves are almost a miracle? You can see some of them growing. Look at ourselves. Think what we were ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago. Look at what we have become. We do not detract from – rather we add to – the glory we want to give to God when we confess what progress we have made, what signs we see in our lives of growthunder His hand.

And that development is going on forever. I think highly now of many of you here, but I do not know what you will yet be. Think of what Yamamuro will be a thousand years hence! When I look at saved people who do not become what one had hoped, who wobble and shirk, who do not know their own minds and get astray in their devotion, I often say to myself, 'They are only in their childhood; there is going to be another life; they will be better by and by; there is a better day coming.' And that thought encourages me.

But just as souls have infinite capacity for growth in goodness, so they have infinite capacity for growth in badness. Make the Cadets feel that a man's decision here is so tremendously important just because, if he does not range himself at the Cross, his life on earth will be a prelude to eternal progression downward, in what is bad. How true it is that 'he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sins.' I can recall the very hour, the very spot, where that truth really seized me when I was a little more than a boy. I had thought about it often, and had heard it spoken of at home. Religion was going strong in our house all the time! But one day it came home to me that every sinner we rescued was rescued from an eternal progression in evil. This idea changed many things in my life. If you can find some powerful means of bringing that truth home to Cadets, you will be doing much to develop their character and intensify their devotion.

The Eternal Wrath
I rely upon you to instruct the Cadets about retribution and the operation of that law. Convince them of retribution, and you bring to bear on them influences which evidently played a powerful part in Jesus Christ's life and experience. Convince them of retribution, and they will feel something of Jesus Christ's compassion for the wandering and the lost, something of His passion to save souls at any cost to Himself. No teacher so continually taught the great fact of retribution as did Jesus Christ. He realised – His words say so clearly – the tremendous fact that broken law must bring punishment, separation, and misery. If they saw the inevitableness of punishment and the separation from God, which is the darkest part of what is meant by Hell, I feel certain that any of those about whose slowness of heart you mourn, would rouse themselves out of lethargy, out of the 'take it easy' attitude which some assume towards the work they are to do.

I have no doubt that some Cadets pass through conflicts as to the doctrine of eternal punishment. It is of the greatest importance how they come through those conflicts. You should deal personally, if possible with any Cadet who is having a struggle of this kind. Make him feel that no change is possible in the principle which God has laid down, 'whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' That is in the nature of life, and no more to be escaped than we can escape from the fact that two and two make four.

Many of us have passed through very dark and trying experiences about this particular truth; but we would not be without those struggles, for we learned in them a great lesson. For myself, I can say that I learned that in this, as in all else, I must go to Jesus Christ and learn of Him. In Him I found the solution of my difficulty. If you read His words you will find that He said more about Hell than about Heaven, and the words He used are His own words. He was the first to speak of Hell fire and to portray the dungeon into which evil men are to be cast forever. It was He who first spoke of the worm that dieth not and of the fire that is not quenched. It was He who spoke of the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Many Cadets find it a cross to speak those words – a cross to warn the sinner of judgement and doom. But do you not think it was also a cross to Jesus Christ? Do you not think that that wonderful Being of light, of love, and tenderness, must have felt with the greatest intensity the agony of having to proclaim these truths to those for whom He came to die? We must teach the Cadets to follow their Master and take up that cross, to enter into this fellowship of His sufferings.

The Wonders of Mercy
But just as definitely as you must help them to see the inevitableness of eternal separation from God for those who do not turn to the Deliverer, so you must help them to see the wonders of God's mercy. You must lead them to understand, each in his own way, that the most degraded soul who turns to Him may be free from the bondage of sin and death. Show them that the Holy Spirit never rests in seeking the lost, that He is ever knocking at their hearts. Show them by illustration and incident something of your own illuminated passion, how God prolongs His dealings with individuals, calling them by many different means to repent and renounce sin.

Try to call up their pity for sinners whose condition is, in part at any rate, the consequence of some awful influences in their lives – a bad home, drunken parents. In nearly every country there is, if not a drink evil as we have it there, something that corresponds to it in its dreadful and debasing influence. You may have heard me tell the story of the little boy who rushing into the Slum Officer's room one morning, crying joyfully 'Captain! Captain! Father's dead; now I can be converted!'

Many children are brought up in indifference to God and unbelief; others are subject to cruelty or to spoiling in childhood and lack of all guidance in youth. The influence of home, friends and associates are all against some. The handicap is not always drink or kindred indulgences in the home, though, alas, it may arise from a pollution that is even worse! But the power of a bad past – what a terrible infliction!

Many of the Cadets, especially if brought up more or less in association with The Army, have had great advantages. Help them to compare their circumstances and upbringing with those of the people whose souls we are seeking, and they will pity them. Don't we all know what it is to feel, as we plead with some poor, wretched wastrel, 'If I had had his parents and his chances or no chances, I should be as bad as he is'? What ought to be the holiest influences in life have become for some people in the most degrading. Many are pulled down by the very ties that should lift them up to God.

Then think of the desolation of those who have no one on earth to love them. In some cases the memory of one who is dead may help them. One lad told me how he was working in a warehouse among filthy-minded companions, the stream of filth was about him from morning till night, and sometimes he did not know what to do. I asked him where he turned for help, and he pulled out something wrapped in a bit of black silk – the portrait of his mother in uniform. She was then in Heaven. 'When I feel I am slipping,' he said, 'I take it out and look at it, and that helps me.'

You will find that Cadets are often helped in their love for souls as they come to realise, more and more, the power that sin formerly had in their own lives. Under the influence of Training, the Cadet comes to look back upon his own sin as a far more serious matter than he formerly regarded it. The Cadet is helped when he deals with the rebellious and the wicked if he can say to himself, 'I know the power sin once had over me, so I can understand the power of sin over them.' But while they pity the sinner, they must remember the condemnation, 'that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.' Men and women are to be pitied because they drink or because they are idolatrous, but they are to be condemned if they do not turn to Him who offers them Salvation. Our first duty to such people is to give them the good news of God's love. If they refuse to turn to the living Saviour, we must try to make them realise the condemnation they bring upon themselves.

Sympathy with Jesus Christ
My last word on this subject today is that we must teach and train the Cadets to associate themselves with Jesus Christ. If they can feel true sympathy with Him they will love the sinner.

In my own life I have always been greatly influenced by my sympathy with God. Perhaps my circumstances have been more favourable to that sympathy than many people's circumstances, because I have had something to do with governing and managing people since my boyhood, and I know the difficulties and the conflicting and heart moving interests brought to bear in such matters.

Bring the Cadets, one and all, into closer sympathy with Jesus Christ. The more they love Jesus Christ, the more they will love those for whom He suffered and died. Love for the Shepherd will beget in us love for the sheep, especially the lost sheep.

When you go to your Meetings, to your Lectures, to your Side Council, kindle afresh each time your own sympathy with Jesus Christ. Associate yourself in your own mind with Him. Lay the hands of your soul, so to speak, upon His hands and enter into what you are doing in sympathy with Him in what He wants to do. Then your love for Him, and the Cadets' love for Him, will be like the rod of Moses, which brings water out of the very rock.

 

 

 

 

   

 

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