The year 1896 was marked by the publication of Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, in which Josephine Butler gives a vivid history of the first ten years of the strenuous fight against the Contagious Diseases Acts. She hoped to be able to continue the history in a subsequent volume, but ill-health prevented the fulfilment of this design.

In the following year the question of the health of the Indian Army came very prominently again before the public eye. The passing of the Act of 1895, which absolutely prohibited the compulsory examination of women, had been followed by a marked increase of disease, perhaps largely due to the fact that the new measure had been accompanied by the closing of the special hospitals in many of the Cantonments, so that no opportunity was afforded of testing the effect of substituting the voluntary system of hospital treatment (always advocated by Josephine Butler and her fellow workers) for the old compulsory system. But, whatever the cause may have been, the statistics were such as to produce a panic among persons, who were not accustomed to study statistics, and did not therefore realise that figures relating to a few years may often deceive, and that a true judgment can only be gained by careful comparison of facts and figures spread over long periods. The panic was so great that a Departmental Committee was appointed at the India Office to enquire into the matter; and the Government received several memorials on both sides of the question. One of the memorials, praying for the reintroduction of the regulation system, was signed by women, including princesses and other ladies of title. This roused Josephine Butler to issue a passionate and powerful pamphlet, Truth before Everything.

My own countrywomen have been the first in the world to set their seal to the infernal doctrine of the necessity of vice, and to proffer to our Imperial Government before the whole world, what Lady Frederick Cavendish rightly styles their “counsels of despair.” The scene has changed indeed; we accept the fact, and look it full in the face. For my own part, I do so without alarm for our cause, and scarcely even with surprise, although my heart is wounded with a sense of shame, and I mourn for those whose eyes are blinded to the truth. Men and women alike in the most exalted social classes frequently possess extraordinarily little knowledge of the conditions of life among the poor, and consequently little sympathy with the humbler people who are the most liable to suffer under grievances imposed officially, over and above the hardships incidental to their condition. High rank itself tends to confuse and obscure the mental vision on a subject concerning which, of all others, we need to know the instincts and convictions of the people, and to make room for the expression of the great heart of toiling and suffering humanity, which still so largely beats true among us, and in all lands.

The Government however did not reintroduce the old regulation system, but while they expressly laid down that no registration, and no periodical and compulsory examination of women should be permitted, they suggested that the special diseases in question should be made notifiable and dealt with in the same manner as other contagious diseases. Accordingly a new Cantonment Act was passed in the same year, and new Cantonment Regulations made, under which women suspected of being diseased may be expelled from the Cantonments, unless they submit to medical treatment. Abolitionists have always objected to these Regulations, which are still in force, with some later modifications, because they appear capable of being worked in such a way as to involve indirectly, but no less truly, the whole method of compulsion, which was inherent in the old system, and because the Act of 1895, which expressly prohibited registration and examination, has been repealed.

In May, 1897, Josephine Butler contributed to Wings a short article on the “Joy of God,” part of which is here given.

Jesus spoke much of His joy in His last wonderful conversation with His disciples: “That my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John xv, 11). His joy is His Father’s joy. I do not believe that that joy is ever interrupted. It flows on like a mighty river, like God Himself, its source—infinite, unceasing, unfathomable joy; and Jesus offers us to be sharers in it. It is not possible that the joy of God can be interrupted by the works of the devil, by his apparent present victories. God’s joy continues, eternal like Himself, through all the evils and sorrows and horrors of earth, and of the kingdom of darkness, for He sees beyond all. He knows that the end will be victory. Jesus feels for His people’s sufferings, and suffers with them; nevertheless His joy is not diminished. It seemed to me one day, as if for a moment I saw the Divine face looking down at all that is taking place in these days, and (if I dare to express it) it seemed as if there were tears in those Divine and pitying eyes: yet all the time there was a smile upon the lips, for while He pitied He knew what the end would be, and He smiled.

It was a half-waking vision I had when I was recovering from illness at Lausanne. I felt as if the obstacles in the way of all our efforts for reforms and for blessing were like huge high walls blocking the way and darkening the daylight on every side. But as I looked, and as I felt the pitying, smiling face of God, and all these walls got lower and lower, till they were quite low, and above and around them all was God’s great sky, His open, clear, and glorious heavens, I sprang on the top of one of these low walls (like some of the low vineyard walls in Switzerland), and I shouted for joy and victory!

Later in the year she contributed a series of articles to Wings, which were republished under the title, Prophets and Prophetesses: some thoughts for the present times. A French translation of this was also issued. The rest of the present chapter contains extracts from this volume.

How greatly are prophets and prophetesses needed in these days, days in which the air is filled with a confusion of voices—some of them mocking voices, some of them wailing and sorrowful voices—when false prophets abound, lying spirits, demon worshippers and materialists. The promise stands in the Scriptures of God that He will send true prophets and prophetesses in the latter days. Where are they? Why is that promise not abundantly fulfilled? It will be fulfilled if we, who believe His word, combine to ask its fulfilment. The word, to prophesy, is best translated by the learned as “to show forth the mind of God” on any matter. What a high gift! What a holy endowment this, to be enabled to show or set forth to man the mind or thought of God! In order to attain to that gift, the soul must live habitually in the closest union with God, in Christ, so as to realise the prayer of the saint who cried, “Henceforth, O Lord, let me think Thy thought and speak Thy speech.” Many even of our holiest men and women live too active, too hurried a life, to be able to enter deeply into the thought of God, and thence to speak that thought to the thirsty multitudes who are dimly seeking after Him, and in their hearts crying, “Who will show us any good?”

That women as well as men were destined by God to be prophets was fully acknowledged by St. Paul, by his acts as well as his words. He gave careful directions as to how women were to appear as prophetesses, so as to avoid the malicious criticism of the enemies of the new-born faith, ever on the watch for some ground of accusation against the Christians. It is an astonishing and a melancholy thing that the churches and their ministers, and the Christian world in general through all these generations, should apparently have ignored or made light of the following blessed fact, the fact that on the day of Pentecost, the great day when the Holy Spirit was poured forth on that multitude of all peoples and nations gathered in Jerusalem, when the New Dispensation was inaugurated in which we now live, the Apostle Peter, in his magnificent first Pentecostal sermon, proclaimed the actual fulfilment on that day, and for all the days to come, of the promise of the prophet Joel, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out of my Spirit.”“This has come unto you,” said St. Peter, “which was spoken by the Prophet Joel.” Is it possible that the Church has ever fully believed this, has ever truly heard or understood this mighty utterance from heaven, recorded first in the Hebrew Scripture, and again at the great inauguration of the Dispensation under which we are now living, a Dispensation of Liberty, Life, Impartiality, Equality, and Justice, in which there is, or should be,“neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek”?

When Kepler, the great astronomer, was congratulated on the wonderful discovery he had made—in what are now called Kepler’s Laws, on which Newton based his own still greater discoveries—he (Kepler), full of Christian humility, replied, “I have only thought God’s thoughts after Him.” We need, and we ask of God, prophets and prophetesses, seers, who will see as God sees, and who will judge of all things in the light of God. They will be very unpopular, these seers, if they are faithful. Many of the humbler people will hear them gladly, but the world will not love them. Quite the contrary. Conventional morality does not like to be disturbed; the respectable as well as the disreputable prejudices of ages are hard to root up.

Never did the world and the Church need seers more than at the present time. Looking at any of the great questions before us now—the relations of nation to nation, and of the Anglo-Saxon race to the heathen populations of conquered countries; questions of gold-seeking, of industry, of capital and labour, of the influence of wealth, now so great a power in our country and its dependencies; questions of legal enactments, of the action of Governments, and innumerable social and economic problems—we may ask, How much of the light of heaven is permitted to fall on those questions? How many or how few are there among us who ask, and seek, and knock and wait, to know God’s thought on these matters? The few, who do so, cease to accept as a guide a daily newspaper, or the opinion of the Press generally, or the verdict of any class, theological, social, or political; nor even are they satisfied to set their minds at rest by an appeal to the best and wisest of the servants of God. But in their measure they follow in the steps of the prophets of old. It is in the solitude of the soul, alone with God, that His thoughts are revealed. It is in great humility, in separation from the spirit of the world, in asking and receiving His spirit, “the spirit of truth,” which “shall guide us into all truth,” that we learn to think His thoughts.

It requires much courage to be alone with God, to elect to retire for a time, and even for long times, and to listen to His voice only. It requires more courage than is needed to meet human opposition or to battle with an outward enemy, and is altogether different from worship in the congregation with others around us. Let anyone who doubts this make the trial, in humble determination, “I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me,” until Thou admittest me to the inner sanctuary of Thy presence, and speakest to me. For it is then that the keen searchlight of His presence reveals the innermost recesses of the soul, so that the creature who has been bold enough to seek such a solitary interview with the Creator shall fall on his face, as Daniel did, in self-abasement: “I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days.” It is then that all which is of self, all subtle egotism—the egotism which takes such a multitude of forms—is searched and hunted out of the soul. It cannot live in His presence. The praise of man becomes as dust beneath the feet, and the soul trembles even to receive any honour of men, or to be recognised in this world as of any worth.

It is then also, that the great enemy of souls essays to draw near, bringing all his forces to bear on that divinely bold but humbled creature, and seeking to wreck the blessing which he knows must come of such an interview between Christ and a human soul. It is then that he disputes every inch of the ground sought to be won on that day by the Saviour, and by the disciple whom His spirit has stirred up to draw thus awfully near to Him. Jesus was “led of the Spirit” into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil. It is in the very heart of this great dispute between our God and Satan, and in such a solitude, that some of the deepest truths are learned, and that God speaks. Then the enemy is defeated, and only the light is left, the light which was sought and which reveals God’s thought. And what is the sequel of such an encounter? There are many who can bear witness that the enemy, discouraged by the courage of the humble and determined soul, departs never to return, and then it pleases the Lord sometimes, in His great love and pity, to grant to His child, in a measure, that communion which the Hebrew saint had, with whom God spoke face to face as a man speaks with his friend.

We are not all called to be teachers, or to declare aloud the mind of God; not all called to prophesy. But all are invited to draw near to Him, to come nearer and nearer, and the humblest, the least gifted or least intelligent, who will elect to receive ever at first hand and from the fountain-head, and not only from secondary sources, light, life and knowledge, becomes, whether he knows it or not, a medium of spiritual life and true thoughts to others, in proportion to the grace given to him.

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” These words are frequently understood to be spoken of the other life beyond the grave, and of the beauties and glories of our heavenly home, which, as yet, no eye of those living on earth has ever seen. This limited interpretation is not warranted by the latter half of the announcement, “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” The illumination of the Spirit is not a promise of the future only; it is given here on earth to all who seek and wait for it in truth and singleness of heart. We are living to-day under the dispensation of the Spirit, and there is no limit to the fulness of the promise to those who ask.

Those things therefore, those hidden and deep things of God which we cannot apprehend by the natural eye or ear, and which cannot be conceived by the highest and purest flights of imagination of one whose thoughts do not yet flow in unison with God’s thoughts—those things may be revealed to us by His Spirit; and they are so revealed to those whom from time to time He draws aside for solitary communion with Him, and whom He may, if He wills, appoint to speak His speech to all who will hear. One needful condition for attaining to the seeing eye and the hearing ear in the things of God is soul-leisure, quietness, calm and concentration of spirit. Earth’s voices must be silenced for a time, that the voice of God—the“still small voice”—may be heard by the waiting soul. “In returning and rest shall ye be saved. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”

I seem to hear a deep sigh from the heart of many a true servant of God, “faint yet pursuing,” whose soul is athirst for the Living God and for the calm and the silence in which he may hear the Divine voice, but who sees no way of escape from the pressing claims of earthly duty. The case of such (which has also been my own) calls forth my deepest sympathy. “With God all things are possible.” Cease from conflict with circumstances, from this “toiling in rowing,” from this breathless swimming against the tide. Put the matter into His hands. “There was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” at His command; silence even of the angelic voices. He can create a silence around you, and trace a clear path for your feet to enter into the Holy of Holies, where you shall find Him and hear His voice.

But even then—perhaps you tell me—when the pressure of earthly claims is lightened, and a season is granted in which nothing from without holds you back, and you enter alone into His presence, even then it is found impossible to concentrate the mind, to shake off outward anxieties and the intrusion of restless thoughts concerning the work of your life. The well by which you rest is deep and full, but you have “nothing to draw with.” The opportunity is there, but the soul is dry, and the brain inexpressibly wearied. Again, “with God all things are possible,” and “all things are possible to him that believeth.” Put this also into His hands—this incapacity for rest, even when the hour of rest is granted. He knows the deep desire of your heart to draw near to Him. Your desire for communion with Him is prompted and created by His own desire to draw near to you, to grant you the anointed eyes of a humble seer, and to impart to you His own deep secrets of love.

But to many this thirst of the soul is unknown, or once known is suffered to rest unslaked. Many continue to postpone and to subordinate the claims of the spiritual life to the constantly pressing claims (sacred claims also) of their fellow creatures, and of the good works in which they are engaged. At the last, when earth’s claims are fading and the spirit is called into the presence of God, conscience will speak, and the poor soul may reproach itself in the spirit of the lament which Shakespeare put into the mouth of Wolsey in his last moments: “O Cromwell, Cromwell! had I but served my God with half the zeal that I have served my king!” In the clearer light of eternity all things assume their right proportion. We have worked, we have slaved for duty, we have worn ourselves out in the service of humanity. That is good, that is noble; yet an inward voice will tell us in some silent hour that we should have worked better and served humanity better had we possessed the moral force to withdraw at times from life’s crowded avenues, had we firmly refused some of the thousand claims which pressed upon us in order that our speech and our action might have possessed more of the Divine, more of “spirit and of life.”