HERBERT BOOTH MISSION

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 200, 19 May 1920, Page 8

HERBERT BOOTH MISSION

Mr. Herbert Booth, who for some time has been conducting a, mission in ,tho Town Hall, last night delivered a lecture upon the early martyrs of the Christian Church. The Btyle Mr. Booth adopted waß in the main that of narrative rather than that of exhortation. In vivid phraseology he impressed upon his hearers the marvellous fortitude' and the unwavering faith of those who died to establish Christian liberty as we know it to-day.' He began with Stephen,' condemned out of the mouths of false witnesses and cruelly stoned; and he dwelt upon the sublimity of the earliest martyr's dying words: "Lay not this sin to their oharge." Speaking of Paul, next in, the glorious array of those who -were faithful unto death, the lecturer said: "Who, viewing his prostrate body,,would havo believed that to perpetuate his memory cathedrals like St.. Paul's would onb day lift their domeß into the sky?" Paul's roartrydom,' urged Mr. Booth, should teach all followers of Jesus to strive hopefully in His service, s,ince men and women clearly never knew what their actions might at some time amount to. Of Rome, of Nero, and tho. terriblo era of 'perF.ecution that drove tho Christians to caves, to "lonely places, and to subterranean galleries to worship, tho lecturer spoke with considerable power and pathos. He finally related in r.onio detail the story of one who renounced everything —fortune, father, mother, even her babyto die for Jesuß on the blood-stained «ands of the arena; and while this tale .of glorious fidelity was fresh in the minds of all hia hearers, he besought the women to keep their garmentß white and their lamps trimmed in tho midst of an impure and Christ-rejecting world, and the : men to arm themselves /with the weapons of the Spirit and go forth to slay the dragons of sin. ■ ■ i * Mr. Booth's lecture was illustrated throughout by coloured lantern slides, many of them reproductions of vory fa- i mous pictures.