Josephine Butler to 'Dear friends' [Miss Forsaith and Harriet]

  • This material is held at
  • Reference
      GB 106 3JBL/49/03
  • Former Reference
      GB 106 5456
  • Dates of Creation
      3 Jan [1905]
  • Physical Description
      1 item

Scope and Content

Photocopy of a letter. Written from [Wooler, Northumberland]

Complains of the tempests they have had all round their coasts, and O! the shipwrecks. She compares the Torry-Alexander movement with the Welsh Revival. 'there is something more spontaneous about the latter.' Evans Roberts has no sandwich men to advertise his meetings; he says 'If we are filled with the Spirit, we shall be magnets... to draw others to the Spirit'. She speaks of Japan, of how a Japanese general said he could wish that the whole army were Christians; of the bravery of both sides at the defence and attack of Port Arthur.

In one of the papers she is slowly writing fro the Jubilee celebrations in Switzerland she has recorded an incident of her girlhood never before recorded; 'that preparation and all its travail of soul began with me when I was only 17!!' She felt so strongly about 'the inequalities and injustices and cruelties in the world' that she used to run away into the thick woods near the house where no one followed her; then ;kneeling on the ground for hours, I used to shriek to God to come and deliver!!...but God turned the madness to a purpose He had.

Administrative / Biographical History

'The Torrey-Alexander movement'

Reuben Archer Torrey (1856-1928) was a special lecturer at the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago who in 1878 entered the Congregational Ministry. 1902-5 he conducted the Torrey-Alexander Mission in Australia, New Zealand, India and Great Britain

JB praised his work but to her he was not in the same Pentecostal class as Evan Roberts, who used no advertising, sought no support, but was so filled with the Spirit that whether he spoke, or remained silent, he attracted all to him

Biog: RA and Alexander Torrey; Evan Roberts; Mme Pieczynska