account, helps me forward. God bless and keep and comfort you
every day and every hour."

Undoubtedly, these services, whilst blessed to all present, have also
served to provoke much prayer and faith for all our bereaved ones, and
for The General most of all, and have thus made it easier for him, and
for all of us, to triumph over personal sorrows and losses, and press
forward to ever-increasing victory.

That The General's example of burying his own sorrows in redoubled
effort to cheer and help others has been followed everywhere, may count
as large compensation for all he has lost. And yet, all who knew him
best, have seen that the wound caused by Mrs. Booth's loss was never
healed. With the badge of bereavement, which we have substituted for any
costly mourning, ever upon his left arm, just as it was twenty years
ago, our first General went onward to the great re-union above, "as
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing," his sadness ever touching as many
hearts as his merry remarks aroused.

Curiously enough, The General, whilst anxious at all times to remind
every one of death and judgment, and to prevent their being so
intoxicated by pleasure and passing trivialities as to prevent their
thinking of their souls and of eternity, abolished, so far as his
followers were concerned, the horrible formalities which, in all
countries have come to be thought necessary whenever death and the grave
come into view.

Nothing could be more opposed to everything taught by Christ than the
usual processes of "Christian burial," and the records of "the
departed." He who "brought life and immortality to light" through His
Gospel could not wish to see His people's graves surrounded exclusively
by signs of mourning, and then plastered over with flattering records of
earthly glory, making, as a rule, no mention of His Salvation, and the
eternal glories it assures. He manifested, indeed, and always shows the
deepest sympathy with our sorrows; but He does so most by teaching us to
make them steps to higher life and joy.

This great purpose The General aimed at in all his arrangements as to
burials, and thus alleviated sadness, and turned death into victory to a
very remarkable extent. No widow or orphan under his Flag will add to
all the inevitable costs of nursing the dying those of fashionable
"mourning," clothing, flowers, or monuments. The cross and crown badge
worn on the left arm by himself and his bereaved ones, sometimes for
ye