The Living Embodiment of Christ

Catherine Booth, along with her husband William, were the founders of the Salvation Army.  The following is from her Papers on Godliness:

"I challenge anybody to disprove by the Bible that He [God] proposes to restore me--brain, heart, soul, spirit, body, every fibre of my nature--to restore me perfectly, to conform me wholly to the image of His Son. If He could have saved me without restoring me, then He could have saved me without a Saviour at all.

"How do you read your Bibles? How do you read the history of the miracles--the stories of His opening the eyes, unstopping the ears, cleansing the leper, and raising the dead? The Lord show us how to read it. He will heal you if you will let Him. These are the sort of words the world wants--the living words, living embodiments of Christianity, walking embodiments of the Spirit, and life and power of Jesus Christ.

"You may scatter Bibles, as you have done, all over the world. You may preach, and sing, and talk, and do what you will; but, if you don't exhibit to the people living epistles, show them the transformation of character and life in yourself which is brought about by the power and grace of God--if you don't go to them and do the works of Jesus Christ, you may go on preaching, and the world will get worse and worse, and the Church, too. We want a living embodiment of Christianity. We want JESUS TO COME IN THE FLESH AGAIN.

"Did you ever notice the tense in that passage--'Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus is come in the flesh!'--not that He did come once upon a time, but that He is come now. Oh! how people hate 'Jesus Christ in the flesh.' You may be ever so devout, ever so Pharisaic, till you come to Jesus in the flesh, and then they will gnash on you with their teeth as they gnashed on Christ. They can't resist such people.

"This is what the World wants--holy people; and nothing else will do. We have tried everything else. You Christian people from other divisions of the Lord's forces, you have tried Bibles, and preaching, and singing, and services, and Sunday-schools.

"I have been lately to a part of the country where they told me that nearly every member of the population had passed through their Sunday-schools, and yet there are men there who will drag a young girl down a flight of stone stairs and kick her till she is black and blue. The great mass of the people who took part in the Lancashire Riots have passed through your Sunday-schools.

"Now, I say, God is speaking to you in these things, if only you will hear Him, and He is saying that the letter killeth, that circumcision, and baptism, and forms, and ceremonies, and going to chapel, and Bible reading is all nothing, when there is no Holy Ghost in it. You want a real, living embodiment of Christianity over again, and if The Salvation Army is not going to be that, may God put it out! I would be willing to pronounce the funeral oration of The Army if I did not believe it was going to be that. The world is dying for this."