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 cribbed, cabined, and confined by a body of cold, hard usages, and still colder and harder people. I desired freedom! I felt I was called to a different sphere of labour. I wanted liberty to move forward in it. So when the Conference definitely declined my request to set me free for evangelistic work I bade them farewell.
"It was a heart-breaking business. Here was a great crowd of people all over the land who loved me and my dear wife. I felt a deep regard for them, and to leave them was a sorrow beyond description. But I felt I must follow what appeared to be the beckoning finger of my Lord. So, with my wife and four little children, I left my quarters and went out into the world once more, trusting in God, literally not knowing who would give me a shilling, or what to do or where to go.
"All my earthly friends thought I was mistaken in this action; some of them deemed me mad. I confess that it was one of the most perplexing steps of my life. When I took it every avenue seemed closed against me. There was one thing I could do, however, and that was to trust in God, and wait for His Salvation."
The difficulty of the Church was really insurmountable at that time. Since those days most of the Protestant Churches have learnt that evangelistic work is just as essential as the ordinary pastoral ministrations.
The fact is, that neither the Booths nor the Church were then aware that God, behind all their perplexities, was working out a plan of His own. Who laments that separation to-day? As the evangelists of any Church they could not possibly have become to so large an extent the evangelists of all.
Chapter VI
Revivalism
Not many days passed after William Booth's retirement from the ministry of the Methodist New Connexion before his faith was rewarded by a warm invitation to a small place at the other end of the country. One of his former Converts was a minister in the little seaport Hayle, in Cornwall, and he sent the call, "Come over and help us."