“ God has indeed been wonderfully good to me, an undeserving sinner! He has rolled away the stone from a heart heavy with sin and sorrow. I thank Him daily for His mercy, and wonder how I could ever have lived so long without Him. No wonder I failed and would have been lost, had I not found Him at last through you, dear Maréchale. Life has a new meaning for me. It is a pleasure to live now, and before it was a curse. ”

“ That was what filled the halls at Havre and Rouen, Nîmes and Bordeaux, Brussels and Liège. We personified Some One, and that was the attraction. I have not the insufferable conceit to suppose that it was anything in me that drew them. What am I? Dust and ashes. But if you have the fire, it draws, it melts; it consumes all selfishness; it makes you love as He loves; it gives you a heart of steel to yourself, and the tenderest of hearts to others; it gives you eyes to see what no one else sees, to hear what others have never given themselves the trouble to listen to. ”

“ The Maréchale was profoundly moved, and felt that she stood upon holy ground. At last she spoke—
"Then Calvary is the greatest fiasco the world has ever seen."
Stretching out his hand, he said, "Oh, madame, do not say that; it is blasphemy."
"But, my father, we are in the presence of facts, not fancies. You have left what men prize most. You have lived up to your light. And what do I find? Torment instead of rest, conflict instead of assurance, bondage instead of deliverance. Surely, my father, Jesus did not come to increase our burdens, but to relieve them. ”

“ The first letter Catherine received from her father after she set foot in France breathed tender affection and ardent hope. "Oh, my heart does yearn over you! How could you fear for a single moment that you would be any less near and dear to me on account of your brave going forth to a land of strangers to help me in the great purpose and struggle of my life? My darling, you are nearer and dearer than ever.... France is hanging on you to an extent fearful to contemplate, and you must regard your health, seeing that we cannot go on without you. ”

“ In the autumn of 1883 the Maréchale suddenly leapt into fame as a latter-day Portia, brilliantly and successfully pleading in a Swiss law-court, before the eyes of Europe, the sacred cause of civil and religious liberty. The land of Tell, the oldest of modern republics, has always been regarded as a shrine of freedom. It has shown itself hospitable to all kinds of ideas, even the newest, the strangest, the most anti-Christian, the most anti-social. There is a natural affinity between free England and free Switzerland. ”

“ She found it to be utterly independent of time and place, form and ceremony. In the glare of public life, in the storm of persecution, in the hour of temptation and danger, she had always a cathedral into which she could retire that she might find peace. She was spiritually akin with the Hebrew mystics who lived in the secret place of the Most High, who had at all times a pavilion from the strife of tongues. In her Neuchâtel prison she wrote some simple words which sent a thrill through the heart of Christian Europe:
Best Beloved of my soul,
I am here alone with Thee ”

“ They preach the Bible, they write books, they offer tracts. But that does not do the work. 'Curse your bibles, your books, your tracts!' cry the French. I have seen thousands of testaments given away to very little purpose. I have seen them torn up to light cigars. And the conviction that took shape in my mind was that, unless I could inspire faith in me, there was no hope. Only if Jesus is lifted up in flesh and blood, will He to-day draw all men to Him. If I cannot give Him, I shall fail. France has not waited till now for religion, for preaching, for eloquence. Something more is needed. ”

“ Asked by Lady Cairns how she dared to send a girl so young and unprotected into such surroundings, she answered, "Her innocence is her strength, and Katie knows the Lord." And if Katie herself was asked to define Christianity, she answered, "Christianity is heroism!" For a girl of this spirit, was there, after all, anything so formidable in the French people? Was there not rather a pre-established harmony between her and the pleasant land of France, as her remarkable predilection for the French language already seemed to indicate? Is any nation in the world so chivalrous as the French? ”

“ Drawn by the cords of love, held by ties too sacred to be broken, worn by years of poverty and sickness, and moving at last in a kind of trance, more dead than alive, one of God's truest and bravest servants blindly stumbled on till she found herself, for a time of agony, in a spiritual prison-house from which there seemed to be no escape. ”

“ I have made your country mine, and I realise what France might be but for the worm which gnaws at the root of your national life. It makes me shudder to think—it makes me literally sick to see—how many thousands of my sisters, and your sisters, in your beautiful city are ministers of vice. So many, your policemen tell me, under twenty, so many under seventeen, so many under fifteen, and there are even those known to the police who are not in their teens. Gentlemen, they do not sin alone, for we are all solidaires. ”

“ Is it not wonderful, Maréchale, I am no longer alone for I have my Christ? The warm thing that flames in my soul is the knowledge that He loves me! Now I know why all these years I have searched with empty hands for something. I have it now, I LIVE!!!!"
A young gentleman whose life was transformed through attending the meetings held by the Maréchale's family in Keswick writes from Beyrout, Syria:
"Oh! what a responsibility it is for us to be the ambassadors of Christ, to represent Him to those who do not know Him, to be His Images! ”

“ During her early crowded life of evangelism in England, her father once took her on a tour through the Trossachs of Scotland, and the memory of that vision of beauty at the age of sixteen ever afterwards haunted her like a passion. "Let me stay here!" she said to the General, whose reply, calling a soldier to arms, equally remained in her memory: "Men are more interesting than scenery." If she scarcely ever took holidays in after life, it was not that she did not sometimes sigh for the wings of a dove that she might fly away and be at rest. ”

“ I know also that the day my 'self' will be chased away—which is doubtful—I shall love no one, for to love one must be a self, one must have one's own heart."
"I doubt if there are any others who bear you such a deep, complete, living, warm and luminous affection. Not that you do not deserve it, but all natures are not alike, and you know the fault of mine. I cannot love by halves." ”

“ Then she expanded the truth:
"The needs of a man's soul are the same as a woman's, and vice versa. You do not get up and say there are so many men and so many women in a meeting. They all need salvation, pardon, purity, peace; all the gifts and graces of the Spirit are for men and women alike. Of course," she continued, "if any woman is so light and frivolous that she makes such a distinction, that certainly proves that she has no vocation to be an evangelist, and I should send her home by the next train." ”

“ Among all the bold and original acts by which the breath and the flame of a new life have been brought into the modern Church, none is more striking, and yet none more simple and natural, than the revival, after all these centuries, of the apostolic ministry of women. Like Philip the Evangelist of Cæsarea, William and Catherine Booth "had four daughters who did prophesy"; brave and gifted English girls who, baptised with the Holy Spirit, used their dower of burning eloquence to bring sinners to the mercy-seat. ”

“ I agree with him; there must be a cause, far deeper than any that has been mentioned here to-day. It is at this cause that we strike—which exists in the heart of man.
"As to our aim, we are trying to bring these people who outrage your laws, who fight against God, to the feet of Him who alone can change them, to the only hope that exists for them, the Saviour of the world. We work, we live, we suffer to do this. This is our one hope and object—to bring the world to the great Deliverer, Jesus Christ. ”

“ She always held that Christ's religion is for the multitude, and that the multitude are children. The essence of Christianity can be assimilated by boys and girls who do not know how to read and write, and they may become saints and saviours. A glance at the Maréchale's well-used Bible suffices to prove that for her the heart of the Old Testament is in Hosea, the prophet of love, and Isaiah the prophet of atonement, while the heart of the New Testament is in the story of the returning prodigal or the penitent Magdalene. ”

“ Socialists who had found refuge in Geneva—men of many nationalities—came en masse. A large part of the audience were so entirely strangers to the idea of worship or of a Divine Being, that the sound of prayer called forth loud derisive laughter, with questions and cries of surprise and scorn.
But the soldiers of Christ, clad in armour of light, were more than a match for the powers of darkness. Many a winged word found its mark, and the after-meeting in the smaller hall, into which three hundred were crowded, was pervaded by a death-like stillness, in which many sought and found salvation. ”

“ Young men of the world have heard the call of God and resolved to enter the ministry or go to the mission-field. God's gift of life has revealed to many questioning eyes its glorious possibilities. Multitudes who had no faith have heard another say that she has faith for them—a faith which has somehow dispelled the mists of doubt and error and brought them into the sunlight of Divine love.
At the same time her ever-deepening knowledge of her two books, the Bible and the Heart of Man, have made her a unique preacher to preachers. ”

“ Ours is an age which needs Deborahs and Huldahs with their divine instincts. The Song of Songs tells how a simple Hebrew girl, tempted by the glory of the world, but strong in her passion of holy love, merited the wonderful ascription, "Fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners." If the Christian womanhood of the twentieth century rises to that level, the future of the Kingdom of God will be far more glorious than its past.
The Maréchale's instincts for the beautiful in nature and in art doubtless constituted no small part of her charm for the Latin races. ”

“ Christ's primary idea, His means of saving the world, is, after all, personality. The face, the character, the life of Jesus is to be seen in men and women. This is the bridge to the seething masses who believe in nothing, who hate religion, who cry 'Down with Jesus Christ!' What sympathy I felt with them as I listened to their angry cries against something which they had never really seen or known. ”

“ But when women come to try and save some of the forty or fifty thousand of your miserable, scoffing, irreligious population who never enter any place of worship, when they come with hearts full of pity and love for the ignorant and sinful, and stand up to tell the glad tidings of salvation to these rebels, this mob, among whom many accept the tidings with eager joy—then you cry out that this is unseemly and immodest. ”

“ Whatever gifts were the dower of the young evangelist, she refused to regard herself as different in God's sight from the poorest and meanest of sinners. If God loved her, He loved all with an equal love. That conviction was the motive-power of all her evangelism. A limited atonement was to her unthinkable. How often she has made vast audiences sing her father's great hymn, "O boundless salvation, so full and so free!" ”

“ And the Maréchale deserved the thanks of every Swiss patriot. By her bold and successful claim of right she had made history. At a time when the old Republic was forgetful of its noblest traditions, untrue to itself, she restored its ideal. She vindicated for every man and woman freedom to worship God according to their conscience. She brought back to the hills and valleys of Switzerland the crown rights of the Redeemer. ”

“ Wisdom to the devil when it is a question of the heart."
"I cannot believe that He must detach us from everything to attach us to Himself—that would make me very sad. On the contrary I feel that it is only human love, disinterested love, but deep and living, which can make us understand Divine love. It is only through human experience that we can appreciate His great, His mighty, His eternal love for us. All the life of Jesus is filled with that palpable love for His creatures, and that is why He is so near to us. ”

“ Genius is never easy to understand. Its weakness is often related to its strength. It has what the French call the defects of its qualities. A great part of the Maréchale's power certainly lay in her childlike humility. As a soul-winner she never gave the impression of condescending. She did not need to stoop; by nature and by grace she was meek and lowly in heart. What drew multitudes of poor sinners to her was their assurance that she would hear with human sympathy their tales of sin and sorrow. ”

“ Renée Gange, the heroine of the Belgian socialists, after passionately embracing her before a thousand eyes, published a charming pen-and-ink portrait of "this enigmatic woman," comparing her to a serene, calm statue that almost smiles. "The fine and slender figure of the Maréchale will long remain one of the most curious, the most strange apparitions in the midst of our society of money-makers and machine-constructors."
The prophet, the mystic, the saint will always be a mystery to the art and science, not to speak of the sin and selfishness, of the world. ”

“ Jesus Himself watched the games of the children who piped and mourned in the market-place. Life is none the less strenuous for its interludes of mirth. Catherine, who was dramatic to the finger-tips, was very early mastered by a sense of the sacredness of duty. The moral ideal set before her was the highest, and her conscience was tremulously sensitive. She was oppressed with the sense of what ought to be, and inconsolable when she failed to attain it. A word of rebuke cut her like a knife, and she would sometimes weep far into the night if she thought she had put pleasure before duty. ”

“ To the training of company after company of young cadets—French, Swiss, English, Belgian, German, Italian and Russian—the Maréchale gave a great deal of her time and strength, her pattern being ever our Lord's own training of the Twelve. All obeyed her joyfully and without question. She realised intuitively that the highest thing in training is not discipline, but something which discipline follows as light follows the sun. That something is the spirit, the atmosphere, which men and women are brought into and which transforms them. ”

“ Perhaps you are right about pleading your own cause, only you should have some one at your elbow who knows the law. You will not be up on points of law, I fear, otherwise I have no doubt that God will give you what you should say. I feel it a great thing to have a child in prison for Jesus' sake; there could be only one greater, namely to be there myself; but one would hardly have thought it possible in this age. How true that the devil hates real saints as much as ever he did, and that the spirit of persecution only needs the real presence of the Spirit of God to call it forth.... ”

“ The Maréchale regarded the wish of that saintly and chivalrous woman as involving a kind of sacred trust. Her own heart was early and deeply troubled by the darker aspects of our modern civilisation. When she and her two brave comrades, Florence Soper and Adelaide Cox, took their first flat in Paris, they were shocked to learn that they had as their nearest neighbours—above and beneath, to the right and to the left—families unconsecrated by any marriage tie; and in the course of their ordinary work they found themselves hourly confronted by all the devils of vice. ”