ng that asked men to prove it by trial. She decided to try it, and
she tried it by reading, by meditation, and by prayer. The trial was a
failure. But in this failure was a mystery. For the more she failed the
more profoundly conscious she became of Christ as a Power. This feeling
remained with her, and it grew stronger with time. The Christ who would
not help her nevertheless tarried as a shadow haunting the background of
her thoughts.

There was a secret in life which she had missed, a power which she had
never used. Then came the second event to which I have referred. Miss
Royden met a lady who had left the Church of England and joined the
Quakers, seeking by this change to intensify her spiritual experience,
seeking to make faith a deep personal reality in her life. This lady
told Miss Royden the following experience:

One day, at a Quakers' meeting, she had earnestly "besieged the Throne
of Grace" during the silence of prayer, imploring God to manifest
Himself to her spirit. So earnestly did she "besiege the Throne of
Grace" in this silent intercession of soul that at last she was
physically exhausted and could frame no further words of entreaty. At
that moment she heard a voice in her soul, and this voice said to her,
"Yes, I have something to say to you, _when you stop your shouting_."

From this experience Miss Royden learned to see the tremendous
difference between physical and spiritual silence. She cultivated, with
the peace of soul which is the atmosphere of surrender and dependence,
silence of spirit; and out of this silence came a faith against which
the gates of hell could not prevail; and out of that faith, winged by
her earliest; sympathy with all suffering and all sorrow, came a desire
to give herself up to the service of God. She had found the secret, she
could use the power.

Her first step towards a life of service was joining a Women's
Settlement in Liverpool, a city which has wealth enough to impress and
gratify the disciples of Mr. Samuel Smiles, and slums enough to excite
and infuriate the disciples of Karl Marx. Here Miss Royden worked for
three years, serving her novitiate as it were in the ministry of mercy,
a notable figure in the dark streets of Liverpool, that little eager
body, with its dragging leg, its struggling hips, its head held high to
look the whole world in the face on the chance, nay, but in the hope,
that a bright smile from eyes as clear as day might do some poor devil a
b