With what desires and prayers the mother of this _Wunderkind_ followed such a career is indicated by her letters. "Oh, it seems to me that if I were in your place—young—no cares or anxieties—with such a start, such influence, and such a prospect, I should not be able to contain myself for joy. I should indeed aspire to be ’the bride of the Lamb,’ and to follow Him in conflict for the salvation of poor, lost and miserable man.... I don’t want you to make any vows (unless, indeed, the Spirit leads you to do so), but I want you to set your mind and heart on winning souls, and to leave everything else with the Lord. When you do this you will be happy—oh, so happy! Your soul will then find perfect rest. The Lord grant it you, my dear child.... I have been ’careful about many things.’ I want you to care only for the _one_ thing.... Look forward, my child, into eternity—_on_, and ON, and ON. You are to live _for ever_. This is only the infancy of existence—the school-days, the time. Then is the grand, great, glorious eternal harvest." Whatever gifts were the dower of the young evangelist, she refused to regard herself as different in God’s sight from the poorest and meanest of sinners. If God loved her, He loved all with an equal love. That conviction was the motive-power of all her evangelism. A limited atonement was to her unthinkable. How often she has made vast audiences sing her father’s great hymn, "O boundless salvation, so full and so free!" When she was conducting a remarkable campaign in Portsmouth, she found herself one day among a number of the ministers of the town, one of whom in his admiration of her and her work persisted in calling her one of the elect. This led to an animated discussion on election. Katie listened for a while, but lost patience at last, and, rising, delivered herself thus: "I am not one of the elect, and I don’t want to be. I would rather be with the poor devils outside than with you inside." Having discharged this bombshell she flew upstairs to her mother. "Oh!" she cried, "what have I done?" When she repeated what she had said, her mother, whose laugh was always hearty, screamed with delight. Election as commonly taught was rank poison to the Mother of the Army. The doctrine that God has out of His mere good pleasure elected _some_ to eternal life made her wild with indignation. When her son Bramwell was staying for a time in Scotland, she wrote him: "It seems a peculiarity of the awful doctrine of Calvinism that it makes those who hold it far more interested in and anxious about its propagation than about the diminution of sin and the salvation of souls.... It may be God will bless your sling and stone to deliver His servant out of the paw of this bear of hell—Calvinism."