Religion: Little Eva

• Share

In London on Christmas morning, 1865, tall, hirsute William Booth came down to breakfast with a straw-lined basket in his hands. "Here," he said to his sons & daughters, "is God's Christmas gift."

God's gift to the Booths that Christmas was an auburn-haired girl who grew up to be a general—Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army. Now 82 and retired, General Booth has never written her memoirs, though she has often been urged to. Said she: "I have never written about myself. I won't write about myself, and that decides it." But she let somebody else do it: she handed her papers and correspondence over to British Journalist Philip Whitwell Wilson, with whom she had been in close touch for some 20 years. Published this week is Author Wilson's General Evangeline Booth (Scribner; $3.50)—a warm and folksy paean of praise for a remarkable woman.

"I Die a Ransom!" The Salvation Army (first called the Christian Mission) and Evangeline were both born in the same year. At 15 she was fitted out with a sergeant's uniform and sallied forth as a full-fledged soldier of Christ. The Salvationists of those days lived in a world of bitter war. Mission houses were "citadels" and "forts," converts were "prisoners of war" or "trophies." Posters proclaimed:

WAR! WAR IN WHITBY!

2,000 MEN AND WOMEN

Wanted at once to Join the Hallelujah

Army that is Making an Attack

on the Devil's Kingdom . . .

Little Eva,* as she was called, dressed herself in rags and masqueraded as a Piccadilly Circus flower girl, or sold matches, to learn the needs and ways of the poor she was dedicated to help. To campaign against liquor, she bought a guitar and charmed boozers out of pubs with her singing. She began to preach in the vivid, staccato style that later packed the biggest auditoriums:

"Judgment thunders: the wages of sin is death. Ye must die.

"But breaking through the ranks of heaven and hell there comes one with garments dyed crimson red.

"His brow drops blood, His side is torn, His hands have nail prints, His feet are bruised, His heart is bleeding, and He throws his emaciated body across the gaping chasm between justice and mercy, and cries:

" 'Stand back, ye lawful accusers, I die a ransom! . . .'

"Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world."

In 1895, when General William Booth was on a tour abroad, his eldest son, Chief of Staff Bramwell Booth, ordered a general shuffling of Commissioners. In what has been called a game of musical chairs, he recalled his younger brother, Commissioner Ballington Booth, from his post in the U.S. In protest Ballington and his wife resigned and began to set up a rival organization called Volunteers of America. Evangeline was rushed to New York to talk him out of it, but Ballington was adamant. When he called a meeting, of New York Army members to try to convert them to his Volunteers, sister Evangeline found the doors closed against her. She dashed around to the rear of the building, climbed the fire escape and appeared dramatically on the platform. She spoke, writes Author Wilson, "as seldom she has spoken before or since." The Salvationists (but not brother Ballington) were won over.