The Eulogy - Grace there is my every debt to pay.

Herbert Booth was a gifted musician and he wrote many songs that are sung by Salvationists around the world. He also exhibited a key skill in the organization of large spectaculars, such as the annual SA anniversary celebration at the Crystal Palace in London, where attendances at times reached 70,000 and Salvation Army massed bands and songster brigades (choirs) performed under Herbert's baton.

BRAMWELL BOOTH

When only 26, Herbert took control of all Army operations in the British Isles. However, conflict with his bureaucratic older brother Bramwell, his superior as Chief of the Staff, led to his departure from England.... In 1896, at the age of 34, he was appointed to oversee the Australasian Territory.... 
It proved a good move.... It placed him several thousand more miles from Bramwell. l.(From a bio not 100% historically correct - A  Correction will follow)

Grace there is my every debt to pay.

“It is a work of sheer inspiration. For eighteen months the rhythmic music had been sounding within him without words considered appropriate for an Army song.”  E Booth

The Words and music of Herbert’s most loved and admired song came together.

In 1889, Commandant Herbert Booth, supported by Major Richard Slater, completed Herbert’s most revered and sung chorus; 

Grace there is my every debt to pay.

Blood to wash my every sin away ;

Power to keep me spotless day by day,

For me, for me.

And thus, that emotive chorus – revealed the depth and conciseness of the Army’ doctrine: love, redemption and holy living. The pairing of the words with a simple, beguiling melodic form, found solid admiration and direct acceptance.

1926

From Evangeline Booth, THE COMMANDER'S EULOGY at her brother Herbert’s Funeral

Westchester, New York 

(Members of the NY Staff Band and Male Chorus participated)

He wanted nothing in a minor key…. hymns, brass band selections, have gone round the world, attracting and winning thousands of souls for the Kingdom of God.

“Who can say what soul-help has flowed and is flowing and, will flow from that gem :

Grace there is my every debt to pay, '

Blood to wash my every sin away,

Power to keep me spotless day by day….

to the multitudes who have and do and will sing such hope-inspiring, strength imparting words ?

         "Yet shall he live" in the sweet cadency and rhythmical flow of his glorious music and in the lilting strength and depth of those stanzas that voice the heart-longings of the oppressed with sin and sorrow and the searchers after God.

The musicians here to-day, therefore, represent tens of thousands of Salvation Army bandsmen the world over who are lovingly grateful for this consecrated gift of my brother's.

         It is impossible to make a comprehensive survey of his life on an occasion such as this. His affection as a relative,

         The great majority of popular songs of the 'nineties was the wretched spawn of an unspeakable sentimentality, in which music shared with words the odium of emotional unrestraint.

         It is to the credit of Herbert Booth that he seriously questioned the moral value of collective hysteria and that his work maintained the high average of dignity, variety and vigour reality demands and only intelligence supplies. Whatever else a musical critic, examining his song-tunes, might say, he would hardly have the temerity to suggest that they lacked strong, individuality. The popularized songs of the Army, though run largely in the mould of a two-four time air and a three-four, or waltz, time chorus, are quite as distinctive as its military garb and its chosen sphere of activity.

         "The Penitent's Plea" is given a setting which is certainly one of the finest examples of simple, melodic devotional songs in the extant literature of the type. The melody, tender and sweet, possesses also a lilting quality in which it becomes perfectly adaptable to the emotion of glad release expressed triumphantly in the chorus—"Grace there is my every debt to pay".