But as the tide of Divine blessing rose, the tide of human hatred also rose, and in the beginning of February the "exercises" of the Army were by Cantonal decree forbidden. A week later, the Maréchale, with a young companion, Miss Maud Charlesworth, now Mrs. Gen. Ballington Booth, was expelled from the Canton of Geneva. During her six weeks in the city she had been used to bring about probably the greatest revival which it had witnessed since the days of the Reformers.
One of the most eminent lawyers of Geneva, Edmond Pictet, who had himself been greatly blessed during those stirring weeks, helped her to draw up an Appeal (_Recours_) to the Grand Council. He found, however, that she needed but little help, and often remarked that with the warm heart of an evangelist she combined the lucid intelligence of an advocate. When the Council of State had deputed two or three of its members to hear her on the subject of her Appeal, she came back to Geneva under a safe-conduct to meet them. In the course of the interview, at which the British Consul in the city was present, the leading Councillor said, "You are a young woman; it is not in accordance with our ideas and customs that young women should appear in public. We are scandalised (_froissés_) by it." The rejoinder which he received was so remarkable a defence of "the Prophesying of Women" that we give it in full.
"Listen to me, I beg of you, sir. It is contrary, you tell me, to your sense of what is right and becoming that young women should preach the Gospel. Now, if Miss Charlesworth and I had come to Geneva to act in one of your theatres, I have no doubt we should have met with sympathy and approval from your public. We could have sung and danced on your stage; we could have dressed in a manner very different from, and much less modest than, that in which you see us dressed; we could have appeared before a miscellaneous audience, men and women, young and old, and of every class; members of the Grand Council, M. Herdier himself and others, would have come to see us act; we should have got money; Geneva would have paid ungrudgingly in that case; and you would all have sat and approved; you would have clapped your hands and cheered us; you would have brought your wives and daughters to see us, and they also would have applauded. There would have been nothing to _froisser_ you, no immorality in all that, according to your ideas and customs. The noise (_bruit_) we should have thus made would not have caused our expulsion. 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. You would not bring your wives and daughters to hear us speak of Jesus, though you would bring them to hear us if we danced and sang upon the stage of your theatre. Now you have expelled us; but still there are those multitudes in Geneva who are dark, lost, unsaved; and you know it. There they are; they exist. What will you do with them? Say--what will you do? Are they not a danger? Does not their lost condition cry out against you?"