WESLEY CHAPEL is a building typical of Victorian Methodism. A slight concession is made to architecture in the façade, which aims in stucco at a Grecian Ionic effect with fluted columns and a triangular pediment over the portico: but for the rest everything is severely ordered for useful service and downright hard work.

No effort is made to lay a spell upon the senses with dim windows, branching pillars, timbered roof, and twilight aisles conducting to a holy of holies. Worshippers here are evidently expected to bring with them their own warmth and tenderness, their own passionate but invisible sense of beauty, their own mood of thanksgiving, aspiration, and worship.

Historians of the nineteenth century will probably pay some attention to this architecture of Nonconformity —— this deliberate effort of the religious conscience to do without aids, this evident suspicion and dislike of beauty, this rather hard and insensible insistence on utility. What monuments exist more eloquent of the stern and pugnacious spirit which accompanied the middle classes of England from the ruins of aristocracy to the first foundations of democracy?

More than a touch of the Puritan is in this early Victorian architecture of Nonconformity; one sees there, visible and proud, the firm, masterful trade-mark of a practical commercialism. Not only was a chapel intended to defy the pagan traditions of architecture, not only was there to be an entire absence of Popish ornamentation and sacramental imagery, but advantage was to be taken of every possible contrivance that bricks and mortar could give for the work of a businesslike and organized religious centre.

A chapel was intended to be not only a place of worship but a place of business. It was no longer merely a humble and obscure dwelling-place for despised dissenters, but a prosperous and challenging headquarters of a conquering Church.

In some measure this spirit indicated a return to the middle ages, when churches were not kept locked and empty for six days and only dismally opened for a few lugubrious hours on the seventh, but when they were the scene of many astonishing festivities throughout the week.

The Nonconformist rightfully regarded with horror the locked door of the State Church. He determined that his protesting chapel should be open from week-end to week-end, not for the wicked festivities of the dark ages, not for the vain repetition of ritual and liturgy, but for every possible function which would serve the religious life of the district.

In the case of Wesley Chapel — likely, on account of William Booth, to be a place of pilgrimage so long as it stands — one may see very perfectly this spirit of practical and business-like Nonconformity. The building is lofty and spacious, with wide galleries, a large central platform for the minister, a clear view from side to side, and no suggestion whatever of a sensuous purpose.

Only behind the preacher’s back are there any seats of obscurity — the free seats hidden away by the back entrance to which William Booth’s ragged regiment was condemned in the late forties. But it is under the floor of the chapel, in the basement, that the spirit of the place most clearly communicates itself to the visitor. Here, in a rather bad light it is true, and with no very satisfactory supply of fresh air, are numerous classrooms, vestries, offices, and minor halls for meetings, Sunday schools, and choir practices.

One feels in going from room to room of this immense basement, penetrating gloomy corridors, opening endless doors, and passing up and down flights of stone stairs with iron banisters, that one is exploring some centre of local government — a town hall or a court of justice. It is all so entirely different from the crypt of a church, that one is not in the least surprised to see men with hats on their heads, or to hear loud voices and laughter.

It impresses one with the sense of a spirit which is active, thorough, economical, and practical — a spirit which has no time for celebrating a victory or keeping a memorial, so eager is it to drill and marshal every soldier of religion for the battle of the present hour.

It was in this great cold barrack of a chapel that the soul of William Booth opened to religious influences. It was within these bare and chilling walls that he was first conscious of spiritual warmth, first felt his life kindled by the imagination of God. Untouched by the beauty of the Anglican liturgy, utterly unmoved by the innovations of the Puseyite clergyman of Sneinton Church, this dissatisfied and unruly youth, this excitable boy interested in Chartism, found himself quickened into new and most wonderful life under the whitewashed ceiling of a Methodist chapel, there discovered for the first time his possession of a soul.

Something came to him in this chapel which had hitherto not come to him anywhere — neither in his home nor his church, neither in the crocus meadows of the Trent nor the stirring streets of Nottingham. And when the illumination came, the magic which transformed at the same moment his own inner life and the whole world surrounding him, he threw himself with a passionate ardour into the mechanic activities of this thriving chapel, became one of the workers, progressed till he was a street missionary, and finally found himself at the age of nineteen an accredited local preacher.

We have already seen in what manner he was converted; it is now our work to study the life of the eager boy as an orthodox and unquestioning Methodist. On the surface these years of his existence would seem the most dull and the least interesting, but in truth they are years of singular significance to the history of his life.

For they witness, almost more than all the other changes in his career, to the principle of growth and development; they show us that William Booth grew gradually to be what he was, and that he was veritably forced into Salvationism by the pressure of circumstances; they reveal to us that at the threshold of manhood William Booth was a disciplined and obedient member of an organized and earnest sect, a youth only different from other youths who attended this same chapel in the capacity of his soul to grow, in the force and power of his character to increase its energies.

The minister of this chapel at that time was the Rev. Samuel Dunn, superintendent of the circuit, a man of some scholarship, autocratic, hard, obstinate, and incurably radical. He was destined to become one of the Reformers who rent the Wesleyan body in twain, one of the famous five ministers expelled from the Wesleyan Church on a question of its government.

William Booth spoke always well of this man, saying that he was kind to him, encouraged him, helped him: but it was the kindness of a headmaster to a boy in the second form, the encouragement of a general to a private soldier, the help which a bishop may stoop to give to a sacristan or a Sunday school teacher; there was nothing of warmth and generosity in this kindness; it was always cold, formal, and aloof.

Nevertheless in the austerity of the minister, his unbending rigidity, and his severe earnestness, the young William Booth saw something to honour and respect, something to which he could look up, and something of which he stood always in a little awe. And in the services of the chapel conducted by this austere minister, he got all the warmth, fire, and excitement that his soul desired.

There were Love Feasts on Sunday afternoons, when men spoke freely of their religious experiences; at night the great chapel, which held at that time eighteen hundred people, was filled chiefly with working-class members, and after this service there was a prayer-meeting, free of all ritual and formality, at which men uttered their supplications with a fervour and a freedom unknown at the present time.

Conversion was the central doctrine of the Methodists, and at the evening services sinners were invited to confess their sins, to elect then and there for God, and to prove the reality of their hunger for Divine mercy by coming inside the communion-rails and there giving themselves up to Christ. The oratory of James Caughey had given fresh impulse to this revival of the old Methodist teaching, and none who worshipped in that chapel was more convinced of the need for conversion than William Booth, none more earnestly proclaimed this doctrine of the miracle.

Caughey had preached an unforgettable sermon on the words recorded in St. Mark, “ Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” — words whose meaning is only now coming home to the minds of multitudes of men with a significance scarcely glimpsed by the American revivalist.

Prayer was regarded as the wrestling of a soul with God; it did not suffice the Methodists to kneel in decent propriety, listening to the recital of a printed prayer, or repeating in low and reverent voice a supplication as familiar to the mind as the alphabet. This might serve on occasion, at the fashionable morning service, for instance; but at Love Feasts, at certain of the evening services, and at the prayer meetings, a fervent and even clamorous supplication led the way to remarkable conversions.

They believed that conversion was a distinct and instantaneous experience, and that the soul thus converted received “the Witness of the Spirit” to the forgiveness of sins and adoption into the family of God. They believed also that the converted soul may press forward to a higher experience of Grace, that known as the state of Entire Sanctification.

A man decisively and instantaneously converted might of course grow cold in his faith, might fall into sin, might even lapse into the darkness of atheism; but a man, advancing from conversion and achieving through the Spirit of God the condition of Entire Sanctification could become so purified that sin had no more lure for him; he was not only saved, he was at unity with the purpose of his Creator.

Therefore at these Love Feasts and prayer-meetings, not only did men pray that sinners might be converted, but that they themselves might deepen their spiritual life, and that they might enter into this blissful condition of Entire Sanctification and be free of the stain of sin for evermore.

“They like to dabble!” was one of William Booth’s disdainful remarks in later life concerning those who talk on the surface of these great matters and never plunge below to the actual experience of holiness. He was emphatic from those early days to the end of his life on this doctrine of persistent faith, on this doctrine of Entire Sanctification. He never changed his mind in this respect. He could as easily have changed his skin as changed in this belief which had become the very core of his character.

The dangers of this doctrine do not concern us at this point in the narrative, nor need we defend such a man as William Booth from the charges of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and spiritual intoxication which odious or foolish creatures have so often and disastrously associated with it in their efforts either to exalt themselves or to deceive their fellow-men. Conversion was preached in Wesley Chapel, and this conversion was the conversion that turned a radically bad man into a radically good man, a miracle visible to all, provable by all.

William Booth, himself converted, believed in conversion as the only way of entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven; and he believed in Entire Sanctification as the great proof that his spirit was advancing in holiness.

It was because he found this depth of religious teaching among the Methodists that he gave himself with unquestioning loyalty to their Church. Had there been any other church in existence which more earnestly proclaimed the same doctrine, or more fervently practised the same method of religious propaganda, beyond a question his ardour would have carried him into their midst.

But there was no other church, and therefore for him this was the veritable Church of Christ, and he loved it with so great a love that at the very end of his days he spoke at times of the Wesleys and the Methodists with a deep, almost wistful affection.

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One might have thought that a nature so strong and imperative would have found even in youth many points of divergence in the Methodist body, would have been critical of them, impatient of his elders, scornful of any authority over him.

But so far was this from being the case that William Booth was for some time a contented member of a Class “led by” an old man who acted as the chapel-keeper, one known familiarly as Sammy Statham — a genial, fat-faced, side-whiskered old man who is said to have looked like an alderman’s coachman.

On one occasion the minister of the chapel, Samuel Dunn, wanted a young man to do some village preaching for him, and mentioned the matter to his chapel-keeper, then holding his Class. Statham said that he knew the very man, and summoned William Booth before the minister.

When he was asked if he thought he could preach, Booth replied confidently that he had been preaching now in the streets for some time. And to this the great Dr. Dunn made answer, “By whose authority? Have I given you leave?” Instead of revolt William Booth bowed his head and accepted the rebuke.

He was so far from being a rebel that he hesitated before the dignity of becoming a regular minister of this Church. There is no doubt whatever that he regarded his preaching in the streets and his labour among the sinners of Nottingham slums as religious duties of his leisure time; that he considered it the first necessity of his life to earn money, provide for his mother, and make his own way in the world.

He was tremendously in earnest about his religious work, inordinately earnest perhaps; but this great earnestness was only the earnestness of a good layman. He was poor; he suffered the deprivations of poverty; and life was embittered by the financial struggle to exist even in the most humble circumstances. His proud spirit, his ambitious nature, urged him away from this hateful inhibiting poverty; and if he worked for his Church, and gave almost every moment of his scant leisure to religious labours, in the busy hours of his daily life he dreamed of commercial greatness and success in the world of toiling men.

One of his companions at this time, Walter James of Sneinton Hollows, remembers walking with William Booth past Sneinton Church one day, and suddenly being asked the inconsequent question, “Have you no ambition?” James looked at him, surprised, and asked, “What do you mean?” He replied, “Because I have; I intend to he something great; I don’t mean to belong to the commonalty.”

This desire to accomplish something was always smouldering in the heart of the youth. He did not realize that greatness was to come to him in the religious life which as yet he loved only as one loves a favourite crotchet. He saw this greatness, to which the qualities of his nature impelled him, as victory to be wrung after immense struggle from a hard world — victory and success, wealth and power, position and honour. Always he would be a faithful Methodist, always he would be a devout and earnest Christian, always he would be a worker for religion; but also he would be a man of position and power in the secular world.

That religion was, nevertheless, the most potent force in his life is abundantly manifest. A loss which might have quenched his ardour and driven him into privacy occurred in his nineteenth year. Will Sansom died.

There were others among the chapel youths who accepted Booth’s leadership, but Will Sansom was the friend of his soul and the supremest human inspiration of his missionary labours. And, as it happened, with Will Sansom’s death, the chilling hand of authority was laid upon William Booth. “I had to go forward all alone,” he says, “in face of an opposition which suddenly sprang up from the leading functionaries of the church.”

With no Jonathan at his side, and followed only by timorous youths who looked to him for leadership, the lad went on with his street preaching, his cottage prayer-meetings, and his face-to-face encounters with notorious profligates; using means which startled orthodoxy and inventing methods wholly unsanctioned by traditional authority.

Moreover, he was ready to sacrifice for his religious instincts his very means of subsistence, was prepared to kick away from his feet the ladder by which his father had promised him that he should ascend to riches, and to which he now clung desperately enough for daily bread.

I have told you how intense had been the action of my conscience before my conversion. But after my conversion it was naturally ever increasingly sensitive to every question of right and wrong, with a great preponderance as to the importance of what was right over what was wrong.

Ever since that day it has led me to measure my own actions, and judge my own character, by the standard of truth set up in my soul by the Bible and the Holy Ghost; and it has not permitted me to allow myself in the doings of things which I have felt were wrong without great inward torture.

I have always had a great horror of hypocrisy — that is, of being unreal or false, however fashionable the cursed thing might be, or whatever worldly temptation might strive to lead me on to the track. In this I was tested again and again in those early days, and at last there came a crisis.

Our business was a large one, and the assistants were none too many. On Saturdays there was always great pressure. Work often continued into the early hours of Sunday. Now I had strong notions in my youth and long after — indeed, I entertain them now — about the great importance of keeping the Sunday, or Sabbath as we always called it, clear of unnecessary work.

For instance, I walked in my young days thousands of miles on the Sabbath, when I could for a trifling sum have ridden at case, rather than use any compulsory labour of man or beast for the promotion of my comfort. I still think we ought to abstain from all unnecessary work ourselves, and, as far as possible, arrange for everybody about us to have one day’s rest in seven.

But, as I was saying, I objected to working at my business on the Sabbath, which I interpreted to mean after twelve o’clock on Saturday night. My relatives and many of my religious friends laughed at my scruples; but I paid no heed to them, and told my master I would not do it, though lie replied that if it were so he would simply discharge me.

I told him I was willing to begin on Monday morning as soon as the clock struck twelve, and work until the clock struck twelve on Saturday night, but that not one hour or one minute of Sunday would I work for him for all his money.

He kept his word, put me into the street, and I was laughed at by everybody as a sort of fool. But I held out, and within seven days he gave in, and thinking my scrupulous conscience might serve his turn he told me to come back again. I did so, and before another fortnight had passed he went off with his young wife to Paris, leaving the responsibilities of a business involving the income and expenditure of hundreds of pounds weekly on my young shoulders.

From this incident it will be seen that William Booth had established himself in the confidence of his employer, and was first among the assistants of the establishment, a position remarkable for a youth of nineteen.

He had now made sufficient mark as a missionary to attract the attention of his minister. Dr. Samuel Dunn sent for him, and urged him to offer himself for the ministry.

William Booth hung back. He says he shrank from the responsibility. No doubt there were other causes, and in all likelihood ambition was one of the reasons for his refusal. I do not mean that he found it difficult to sacrifice any lingering ambition for worldly success, but rather that he had so accustomed himself, “with a long persistency of purpose,” to shouldering the responsibilities of his domestic position that no idea of the ministry had ever presented itself to his imagination.

He had his living to get; his mother was struggling with poverty; the responsibility of providing for his mother and sisters had been present in his mind, like a torture, since his thirteenth year. Therefore. when the Superintendent of the Circuit suggested to the youth that he should become a minister of the Wesleyan Church, the thought was so foreign to the drift of his purpose that he could do nothing but refuse. He was asked for an excuse. He pleaded ill health.

The minister, not to be baffled, sent him to a doctor. The doctor justified the excuse. He declared that if the young man attempted the life of a minister he would be done for in twelve months. “I remember him saying,” relates William Booth, “ that unless a man with a nervous system like mine was framed like a brute, and had a chest like a prize-fighter, he would break down.”

So the lad continued the daily round of his former life. He was a local preacher, and went far afield to preach the gospel of conversion. He worked from early morning until late in the evening to earn a pitiful wage. He had no thought in his mind, no other purpose before his eyes, but to work for his mother and sisters, and use every hour of his leisure as a layman in the service of Christ.

His eldest sister, Ann Booth, married one of his school-fellows, then a well-off business man, and went to live in London. Mrs. Booth and the two other sisters remained in the smallware shop, working industriously to keep a roof over their heads. The son William, with the six years of his apprenticeship drawing to a close, began to look about him for a fresh start in life.

The position of the family at this period was the position of William Booth — a hard and deadly struggle to exist. The golden dreams of Samuel Booth had vanished. The former comforts and respectabilities of the household had disappeared. Definitely and decisively, it seemed, this little circle of humanity had sunk into a dark obscurity from which it was impossible that they should ever emerge.

Only in the son did the determination to be “something great” persist; and the widow and her daughters saw with something like despair this last hope of their lives wasting his strength and consuming his most precious time in a quixotic effort to convert the disreputable mob of Nottingham to the religion of Christianity.

And to William Booth himself it seemed at last that he was losing time and squandering opportunities. He saw nothing in Nottingham that offered him any hope.

At nineteen the weary years of my apprenticeship came to an end. I had done my six years’ service, and was heartily glad to be free from the bitter and humiliating bondage they had proved. But I was still under the necessity to work, and a situation had to be sought.

I tried hard to find some kind of labour that would give me more liberty to carry out my aggressive ideas in the way of saving the lost, but failed. For twelve months I waited. Those months were amongst the most desolate of my life. You may say, Where was the Church to which I belonged? Where were its rich business members who might surely have found employment for one who was already giving promise of a useful life? Yes: well, it was the question we asked. For no one took the slightest interest in me.

Twelve desolate months in the life of a very exceptional youth, twelve desolate months at the threshold of his manhood; and at the end of them, nothing.

It was in those twelve months that his mother and sisters came nearer to him; he was cast down, dejected, humiliated, and almost crushed; it was impossible for them to look upon this tragedy of romantic youth unmoved.

For there was William Booth hunting the streets of prosperous Nottingham for honourable employment, working by night in the slums, giving himself on Sunday to the work of the Chapel, seeking sinners, praying in cottages, visiting the sick and dying, reading Finney’s Sermons and Lectures, studying the works of Whitefield and Wesley, protesting his faith at home that God would surely provide for him — and at the end of twelve months not a door had opened.

“ I had to move away,” he says; and, like many another adventurer with empty pockets and a fighting spirit, he set his face towards London.

Chapter 7

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