One day, at a Quakers' meeting, she had earnestly "besieged the Throne of Grace" during the silence of prayer, imploring God to manifest Himself to her spirit. So earnestly did she "besiege the Throne of Grace" in this silent intercession of soul that at last she was physically exhausted and could frame no further words of entreaty. At that moment she heard a voice in her soul, and this voice said to her, "Yes, I have something to say to you, _when you stop your shouting_." From this experience Miss Royden learned to see the tremendous difference between physical and spiritual silence. She cultivated, with the peace of soul which is the atmosphere of surrender and dependence, silence of spirit; and out of this silence came a faith against which the gates of hell could not prevail; and out of that faith, winged by her earliest; sympathy with all suffering and all sorrow, came a desire to give herself up to the service of God. She had found the secret, she could use the power. Her first step towards a life of service was joining a Women's Settlement in Liverpool, a city which has wealth enough to impress and gratify the disciples of Mr. Samuel Smiles, and slums enough to excite and infuriate the disciples of Karl Marx. Here Miss Royden worked for three years, serving her novitiate as it were in the ministry of mercy, a notable figure in the dark streets of Liverpool, that little eager body, with its dragging leg, its struggling hips, its head held high to look the whole world in the face on the chance, nay, but in the hope, that a bright smile from eyes as clear as day might do some poor devil a bit of good. She brought to the slums of Liverpool the gay cheerfulness of a University woman, Oxford's particular brand of cheerfulness, and also a tenderness of sympathy and a graciousness of helpfulness which was the fine flower of deep, inward, silent, personal religion. It is not easy for anyone with profound sympathy to believe that individual Partingtons can sweep back with their little mops of beneficence and philanthropy the Atlantic Ocean of sin, suffering, and despair which floods in to the shores of our industrialism--at high tide nearly swamping its prosperity, and at low tide leaving all its ugliness, squalor, and despairing hopelessness bare to the eye of heaven. Miss Royden looked out for something with a wider sweep, and in the year 1908 joined the Women's Suffrage Movement. It was her hope, her conviction, that woman's influence in politics might have a cleansing effect in the national life. She became an advocate of this great Movement, but an advocate who always based her argument on religious grounds. She had no delusions about materialistic politics. Her whole effort was to spiritualise the public life of England.