"Let him that is without sin get up and testify."
Greatly daring, the Maréchale whispered to a comrade who sat beside her, "Rise, Bisson," which he did, and in a few simple words testified, not indeed to his own perfection, but to God's power to sanctify and keep as well as justify.
After a momentary lull, the storm became fiercer than ever, and the ministry of women was now the cause of war. The Maréchale alluded to her mother's manifesto on the subject.
"We have read it," said a lady, "and we do not agree with it. Women are meant for the home. They are commanded to be silent in the churches."
"Besides," cried another, "you are not old enough."
The Maréchale quoted the words, "Let no man despise thy youth."
"But that," retorted a pastor's wife, "was said to a man."
Thereupon the babel of voices became deafening.
"Pretty and prepossessing girls," a matron was heard to say, "should not show themselves in public."
"If you do speak," said a pastor, skilled in distinctions, "you should speak to women only, and not before men."