received a thousand dollars a year for singing in church while she was yet in her teens. She took that noble voice, of rarest, richest quality, and used it in the open winter air to lead her sisters in Crusade hymns. God kept it for her and made her doubly consecrated thereafter. Her pastor, Dr. M―, says: "No movement ever reached my church that gave it such a spiritual uplift."

In

Such was the spirit of this heaving tide of heavenly influence that flowed over us from the throne of God. its onsweep it reached Ravenna, and if it did not close as many saloons as elsewhere, it did very much more. It lifted Mrs. Woodbridge into the light, freed her from the trammels of custom and made her ever after herself. In common with thousands of others of her Ohio sisters, she felt the movings of the Spirit. Her eyes were opened to see in a new light the woes caused by intemperance. She went to her closet, and there, when alone with her God, heard the divine voice asking, "Whom shall I send?" She had the grace given her to lay herself upon the altar in consecration, with the prayer, "Here am I; I will be or do whatever pleaseth Thee."

But she did not yet understand the vision, nor realize that a live coal had touched her lips. She had been a professing Christian for thirty years, but had never spoken a word in public or offered an audible prayer. Soon she attended a great union meeting which had come together in the excitement of the hour without anyone having been appointed to preside. It was thought best that this should be done by a woman. Who should it be? One after another thought of Mrs. Woodbridge and she was asked to take the place. She was utterly overcome with fear and a sense of inability, and pleaded to be excused. Her aged father, who knew her better than she knew herself, came to her side and tenderly reminded her of her consecration vow and left her. Her pastor came a second time, when,

with a struggle, she said to a deacon sitting near her: "Doctor Alcorn, ask the audience to rise and sing 'Coronation'; I never can walk up the aisle with those people looking at me." As they sang she went forward trembling with weakness and praying every step, "Lord, help me! Lord, help me!" She called upon a brother to pray; then read a verse of Scripture, and began to speak-she knew not what. God, even her own God, fulfilled His promise, and put His own message into her anointed lips. The depths of her woman's heart were moved. Self was forgotten in her message. She pleaded for the degraded victims of drink, for their heartbroken wives and mothers, for their suffering and degraded children. Her words poured forth in tender and resistless eloquence, till the multitude was moved as one man. The strong were melted to tears, Christians wept and prayed together. A cool-headed judge arose and solemnly declared that he had never been in an audience so manifestly moved by the Holy Ghost.

In that one sacred hour she was lifted by the providence of God into a new life. Her mission had come. Like St. Paul she had had a revelation; and she was never afterward disobedient to the heavenly vision.

Here we will digress from the chronological order of the story for the sake of the unity of the theme, and introduce an address delivered in the amphitheatre at Chautauqua, Sunday, August 15, 1880, by Mrs. Woodbridge on "The Ohio Crusade." This speech will not only show how much she had made of herself in six years as a speaker, but will also throw additional light upon this great epochmaking movement which will yet be the wonder of men. It was by no means a theme at which she could be at her best; for it was in its nature a narrative, while she rose to her true altitude only in some masterly argument. But its reverence and tender grace and Christian spirit are apparent throughout.

ADDRESS: THE OHIO CRUSADE.

The sufferings resulting from intemperance have rested most heavily upon women, who in their agony looked upon this scene with clear vision; they have listened to warning admonitions and to the voices of those crying unto God for fathers and husbands and brothers and sons swept by the maelstrom of death if so be He would rescue them; and the Lord has heard and answered, and in 1873-4 came upon the women of Ohio the baptismal blessing. On the day we are wont to celebrate as the natal day of Christ, a cry was heard from Hillsboro as of one in deepest agony, finding expression only in the words of the Psalmist read in your hearing to-night. As Mary "who had chosen that good part which never could be taken away from her" listened in loving attitude to her Lord, they had sat still in the house until called.

The Lord spake also unto the women of Washington Court House and they answered, "Rabboni," and under His command they went forth unto the battle, retreating not therefrom until there was victory over all their foes. God has drawn near and "in a still small voice" called name after name of women who had prayed His coming. They stood still, scarcely daring to lift the eye and only breathed a prayer, when to them sweetly, softly, came the grace to say: "Thy will, O Lord, not mine be done;" and while waiting that will, Dr. Dio Lewis, through whom the Lord had spoken in quickening words at Hillsboro and Washington Court House, called a convention of Crusaders to meet in the city of Columbus, where women, who before these weeks, had never heard their voices in public audience above a whisper, not even in social or religious gatherings, in the liberty with which Christ had made them free, spake of all they had looked for, the redemption in Jerusalem.

This convention was called not alone to tell the old, old story, but to conserve the rising interest through organization. But at this crisis such effort could only be embryonic. A bureau of correspondence was established, of which Mrs. Dr. McCabe, of Delaware, was made chairman. Little could be done at this time but reply to the teeming inquiries which came from all over the land, with

regard to this strange phenomenon in Ohio, and to answer timorous veterans and speakers of the old school, who desired to speak in the state, that the movement would admit of nothing but its own spontaneous eloquence, and that mostly from the lips of praying women.

At this time, through this baptism there evolved a threefold conviction to the women of the nation; first, that as God had joined moral and civil law upon Sinai, it was to be a precedent for all time; secondly, for the glory of God, and for the good of humanity, the statute of man must harmonize with the statutes of God; thirdly, as in a republic, national responsibilities can not be separated from individual action, and the people are interested in and responsible for its weal or woe. This responsibility requires immediate action on the part of all for the overthrow of this bitterest of all woe.

At this very time, in the city of Cincinnati, in session was a body of men, representatives, framing for us a new constitution. Fearing the introduction of a clause permitting license for the sale of intoxicants in the state, a call for a convention on the 22d of the same month, to consider this subject, was issued. Although but six days intervened between the date of the call and the opening of the convention, five hundred and sixty delegates presented themselves, and others, unable to send representatives, spent the days in prayer, and sent messages of sympathy to the body in session.

The convention assembled in Ninth Street Baptist thurch, which was filled to overflowing. A committee on memorial to the constitutional convention was appointed, whose adopted report was presented to that body, of which I mention but two clauses, showing a mutual interest which was roused in the society of protection by law. First, no license for the sale of intoxicating drinks shall be granted within this state. Fifth, nothing in this article shall be construed by the Assembly as denying to it a right to restrict or prohibit the liquor traffic. The results are eternal; the immediate gain was a vote on no-license, which was carried by an overwhelming majority. Thus, to-day (August 15, 1880), Ohio is not guilty of licensing the sale of intoxicants within her boundary; but the grand, the most imposing feature of this chapter of our

history, was the spontaneous and the silent, solemn march to the esplanade, where, in the presence of five thousand people, the very heavens seemed opening as prayer after prayer ascended to the throne from six hundred souls, who bowed there with the very chrism of the Crusade fire upon their brows and their whole being enthused by the Holy Ghost.

Mrs. Dr. McCabe, before made chairman of a bureau correspondence, was made chairman of a committee to call a convention of the state for organization under the same name that we had taken for our regular home unions. This convention took place at Springfield, Ohio. Large numbers gathered together and there formed the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Ohio. Although Ohio had thus far been the scene of Crusade action and our organization dates earlier than others, all over the land we found women ready to take action for themselves. As a wild prairie fire this Crusade had spread, and voices, attuned to heaven's harmonies, chanted the same rhapsody. Soon we heard from afar one voice and another calling to us for help, and so it went forth, on, on, until we found women who recognized the call of the Lord to them as clearly as that call which was given to Paul in the olden time, and they go in that grace which overmastereth, to the feet of Jesus, rebuked, humbled, emptied, ready to realize that His feet was the highest station to which creatures might attain. They went forth proclaiming the glad voice of the gospel of temperance, and in the power of the Holy Ghost, reproducing the image of the Son of God in dying souls, until in the length and breadth of this land there are homes once dark and imbruted, where now is found a sanctity as pure as that within our own.

While women in great numbers received this pentecostal blessing, Christian men at this hour of need also received the same gift from God, and among them one from the Crusade state. Lewis Miller, of Akron, moved for the good of all mankind and the glory of God, sought through the better education of the children in the Sab. bath schools of the land this great end, and called into counsel kindred minds. This led to the formation of the Chautauqua Sabbath School Association, and to its first assembly in 1874. Was ever year so prolific of good as