ration of
Mrs. Booth from the customary silence which Church system has almost
universally imposed upon woman. It might almost be said that the whole
problem of cold formality, as against loving warmth, can be solved by
woman's liberation. True, in the ordinary state of things, the most
excellent ladies of any church become its most conservative bulwarks;
and, fortified, as they imagine, by a few words in one of St. Paul's
Epistles, such ladies can oppose every new spiritual force as powerfully
as some of them opposed him in Antioch, nineteen hundred years ago. But
"daughters" of God who have been liberated by His Spirit generally make
short work of any continued opposition.

Mrs. Booth, herself trained and hitherto fettered by this old school of
silence, to the astonishment of every one prayed in the church on the
first Sunday evening in Gateshead. The opposition of an influential
pastor, in a neighbouring city, to the public ministrations of a Mrs.
Palmer, a visitor from the United States, very soon afterwards led Mrs.
Booth to defend her sister's action in the Press, and thus to see more
clearly than before what God could do through her, if she was willing.

The General had not yet seen the importance of this advance, and, in
view of his wife's delicate health, had not pressed her into any sort of
activity, much as he had valued her perfect fellowship with him in
private. But he rejoiced, of course, in her every forward step, and when
she not only visited a street of the most godless and drunken people in
the neighbourhood, but began to speak in the services, he gave her all
the weight of his official as well as his personal sanction, little
imagining at the time what a mighty force for the spread of the truth he
was thus enlisting.

After faithfully serving the Church in Gateshead for three years, he
found the Conference no more willing than before to release him for the
evangelistic work which now both he and his wife more and more longed
for.

The final scene, when, in a Conference at Liverpool, Mrs. Booth
confirmed The General's resolution to refuse to continue even for one
more year his submission to form, by calling out "Never!" marked a stage
in his career which was decisive in a startling way as to the whole of
his future.

"It is true that I had a wonderful sphere of usefulness and
happiness," says The General; "but I was not contented. I had many
reasons for dissatisfaction. I was cribb