There is surely little need for me to commend this so intimate and living picture of Staff-Captain Kate Lee. It speaks for itself in speaking of one whose fine character and ceaseless labour were of singular charm and amazing fruitfulness. The Salvation Army has been happy in its Women Officers. The lessons of experience undoubtedly teach us that they are fully qualified for all the work of the ministry of Christ. Long denied the right of public testimony as well as the opportunity to proclaim the truth of the Saviour's mission, women have in the history of our Movement fully proved that they may be as effective, as acceptable, and as successful as their brethren, both as teachers and rulers in the Kingdom of Christ on earth. The extraordinary theory that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are confined to those who have taken part in a certain ecclesiastical ceremonial, narrow and mistaken as it may be, is surely a mild and simple form of error, compared with the appalling notion that those gifts are confined to men, and are to be for ever withheld from the other half of the human family. The Churches of the world seem at length prepared to debate within themselves whether they should venture to follow our example, and give to woman a place worthy of her gifts in their various plans of campaign. Perhaps the brief story of this life may help some of them a step forward. Kate Lee was an unfaltering believer in the power of God to save from the power of sin. This was really her secret. That faith dominated her own frail and often sick body with its nights of sleeplessness -- its days of pain. It conquered the worst in the worst of men whom she encountered in her work of mercy. It won a multitude of souls to believe in her and in her message, and then to believe in her Saviour. It was ever greater than her circumstances. It was greater than herself. It makes her life, and this story of it, wonderful for us who remain. And Kate Lee was a Salvationist; that is, she was seized with what we sometimes call the spirit of The Army -- that union of holy love and fiery zeal and practical common sense which, by the power of Christ, produces wherever it is found the fruits of Salvation in the bodies and souls of those who are without. And I feel no sort of doubt that to any woman, having the opportunity to do so, and to whom she could speak to-day, she would say -- 'Do as I have done.' I do not mean by that that every sincere woman is bound to become a Salvation Army Officer, or is called forthwith to go to the ends of the earth as a member of our Missionary Forces. But I do mean that Christian women everywhere have a part to play in the great Ministry of Conversion -- in the glorious Mission of the Apostles of every age, for the evangelization of the world. It behooves them to see that they play their part. Bramwell Booth, |
    |