| Triumphant In Death back to 'Catherine Booth'
Catherine Booth's sixty-one years of life came to an end at half-past three on the afternoon of Saturday, 4 October 1890, the last day of the Self-Denial Week for that year, and after a night of thunder, lightning, and torrential rain.
Her message for the effort had been :
My dear children and Friends, I have loved you so much, and in God's strength have helped you a little. Now, at His call, I am going away from you. The War must go on. Self-Denial will prove your love to Christ. All must do something. I send you my blessing. Fight on, and God be with you. Victory comes at last. I will meet you in Heaven - Catherine Booth.
Bramwell Booth, describing the last scene wrote : Soon after noon, I felt the deepening darkness of the long valley of the shadows was closing around my dear mother, and a little later I took my last farewell. Her lips moved, and she gave me one look of inexpressible tenderness and trust, which will live
with me for ever. Again we sang :
My mistakes His free grace doth cover,
My sins He doth wash away;
These feet which shrink and falter
Shall enter the Gates of Day.
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Holding her hand, the General gave her up to God. It was a solemn and wondrous scene ...the dear General bowing over his beloved wife and companion in life's long stress and storm, and giving her, his most precious of earthly joy and treasure, to the eternal keeping of the Eternal Father. ...Their eyes met the last kiss of love upon earth - the last word till the Morning, and without a movement the breathing gently ceased, and a Warrior laid down her sword to receive her crown.
Writing in William Booth, Founder of The Salvation Army, Harold Begbie says :
So passed away one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth century, whose beautiful spirit impressed itself alike upon the most exacting of her intellectual contemporaries and upon vast masses of the poor. The development of her personality in conjunction with that of her husband is a most interesting study in psychology, and the growth of her spiritual power seems to me like one of the miracles of religious history.
With prophetic insistence Mrs Booth had frequently called upon all around her death-bed to be true to God and let nothing come between them. "Love one another, oh, love one another. Stand fast together and the devil can do his worst! "
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