Home League Rally
Mrs General Booth Addresses 4,000 Women
Local Representatives Present
The Home League connected with the local Corps of the Salvation Army at Buntingford was well represented among the nearly 4,000 women who attended the Congress Hall on Wednesday, October 13th, to hear their President, Mrs General Booth.
Mrs Booth received a very affectionate welcome from those who attended. She recalled the time, 19 years ago, when she inaugurated the Home League, which has now spread throughout the world, and numbers 80,000 members in their country alone.
Mrs Booth commented on the wonderful opportunities that women have in the Salvation Army, where position open to a man is equally open to a woman, and stated; "Just lately the churches have begun to talk about giving woman her position to work for God, and I am afraif from what I can gather they will have to talk a very long time before some of the churches will open the door of their opportunity as the Salvation Army has done.
"Women have not yet come to realise how great is their power over one another. If I have one thing more than another to thank the Army Mother for, it was this - she taught me to value my womanhood.
"We want the Home Leagues everywhere to help women to understand that they have the duty of representing God to the world in a way that men cannot do. God has endued women with a certain aspect of His own image, and He wants them to represent Himself to the world. The central idea of the Home League is that we shall help women do that work which God has specially given them to do, that is the creation of a home, bringing into the home and family that kind of atmosphere that God wants developed there, representing His spirit.
Home Makers
"Perhaps we married women have the best of it in this respect, but all women can be home-makers whether they are married or not. Everyone here represents a home of some kind, even if it is only one room.
Homeless Women
"I hope you think with sympathy about the homeless women. You know there is a very bad state of things in London, and it is important that we should do something to help these women who have no home, and I wish we could do for London what we have just done for Paris, where we have opened a splendid hotel where they have 700 little rooms to offer to the homeless women of Paris.
I was glad to hear that it is now practically full. Six hundred and seventy-eight women were sleeping there a few nights ago. A poor woman I spoke to in Holloway Prison yesterday said she was glad the police had arrested her because she had no friends in the world and nowhere to go. I was glad that I could say that we would see she had somewhere to go when the morning came, and she was released.
Dens Where They Snarl
"A home without the right kind of feeling in it may be very grand and well-fitted up, but without the right spirit it may be little better than a den where they bring home food to eat and sometimes snarl and growl at one another as they eat it.
"It is a woman's duty to create an atmosphere. Every woman belonging to the Home League is one who is out to make the right atmosphere in the home where she lives. Her true work is to make it a place of love.
No Limiting Birthrate
"We mothers know a taste of heaven that nobody else can know. The caring for little ones before they can give us any response. One of the saddest things in the present day is the lonely children. In so many homes where the selfishness of their parents has deprived them of the companionship God intended them to have; the little children who have only elder people to minister to them, which begets selfishness and the lack of power to stand for themselves in the world.
We will have none of that abominable doctrine of limiting the birth-rate. That is not God's way. God said that children were His blessing, and where God is honoured in the home no true mother is ever unwilling to receive from Him a little child.
The things we teach in the Home League - plenty of fresh air, plenty of cleanliness and order, and above all, the abolishing of strong drink.
"When Sunday Schools were started some years ago, everyone agreed it was a great step forward, but Sunday Schools were never intended to take the place of the Family Altar, the Church in the home, religion at mother's knee. Do not leave it to the school, mother and father, sister and brother. Are they whom God wants us to lead, little children, to pass on Jesus' message? 'Let little ones come unto Me.'
A Plea for Modesty
"As mother let us be out to preserve the modesty of our daughters. Do not send them out into the streets unclothed. What will be world become if little girls lose their modesty? Will you all do something to help in this matter, so that our daughters may be modest and may know how to preserve that most priceless jewel God gives to women, her virtue. Unless women are virtuous, men will become nothing better than ravening wild beasts. It is we who are women who can lead them up to purity and true manliness.
"I want to say to every woman, set yourself to help some other woman who is heading the wrong way. Do not merely say 'I am not like that.' Perhaps they have never had a good home, or a good mother to help them understand the priceless treasure of chastity."
The children from "The Nest" - one of the Army's homes - gave much appreciated items.