two pages. By this time her husband was so entirely with her in this
matter that he encouraged her to make her defence. And we find Mr. Booth
copying the pamphlet from his wife's manuscript and preparing it for the
press.

But while Mrs. Booth was the most powerful advocate in England of woman's
right to preach, she herself had never attempted to speak in public.

At last there came a day when she realized that her silence was not
consistent with her profession and at great personal sacrifice she broke
the bonds of timidity and publicly witnessed for her Lord. The following
is an account from Mrs. Booth's own lips of her experience given in a
public meeting twenty years after she began to speak:

Perhaps some of you would hardly credit that I was one of the most timid
and bashful disciples the Lord Jesus ever saved. But for four or five
months before I commenced speaking the controversy had been signally
roused in my soul, and I passed through some severe heart-searchings.
During a season of sickness, it seemed one day as if the Lord revealed it
all to me by His Spirit. I had no vision, but a revelation to my mind. He
seemed to take me back to the time when I was fifteen or sixteen, when I
first fully gave my heart to Him. He showed me that all the bitter way
this one thing had been the fly in the pot of ointment, preventing me
from realizing what I otherwise should have done. And then I remember
prostrating myself upon my face before the Lord, and promising Him there
in the sick room, 'Lord, if Thou wilt return unto me as in the days of
old, and revisit me with those urgings of the Spirit, which I used to
have, I will obey, if I die in the attempt.' However, the Lord did not
revisit me immediately. But He permitted me to recover, and to resume my
usual duties.