Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1909 — BOOTH’S WORD TO AMERICANS [ARTICLE]

BOOTH’S WORD TO AMERICANS

Daofhterof Salvation Arm; Founder Reads Message. “MIGHTY, MAGIC FORCE” “Then When the Wondering World Asks: “In What Country Can I Find the Thing Described by the Letter of the Bible and Set Forth In the Life of Jesus Christ?* the Answer Shall Be: ‘America.’ " New York, April 13.—The message from General William Booth, founder and commander of the Salvation Army, read at a remarkable celebration in Carnegie hall in honor of his eightieth birthday anniversary by Miss Eva Booth, the general’s daughter and commander of the Salvation Army in America, was as follows: ( “O, America, how vaat is your opportunity for making a last mark for good on the entire human race. Endowed with measureless material resources, enjoying the unbounded confidence of your own people, favored with the concentrated light of earth and heaven, possessed of an Influence covering, like a shadow, all the world beside; what a power you must be destined to become. “What will you do with this mighty, magic force? If you are permitted to realize your ambition to lead the world whither will you lead it? To utter abandonment of «falth in the Eternal and the neglect of every duty flowing out of it, to senseless worship of mammon, to useless frivolities? No! lam sure you won’t, and I blush at the very mention of such things and denounce them with ail my soul. “Where else can you lead this poor, blind, stumbling world of ours, but to the mighty, just, holy God, and obedience to His commands; to the practice of righteousness, purity, honor, kindness and simplicity, to self-sacri-Being service of mankind? “America, I invite you to the actual realization of the Christian principles you profess and to practical imitation of Jesus Christ, who came out of His Heaven to seek and to save. “Come along then, let us gird up our loins and go out of our heaven and put our arm* around perishing multitudes and bring them to Christ, purity, peace and paradise. “I invite you to make our common Christianity an ungainsayable reality and thus wipe out the reproach fast gathering over us that it is nothing more than an exploded tradition, a fashionable association, or a lifeless ceremony. Then when the wondering world asks: ‘ln what country <*«n I find the thing described by the letter of the Bible and set forth in the life of Jesus Christ?’ the answer shall be: ‘America.’ ”