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'Female Ministry - Woman's right to Preach the Gospel'
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In a letter to her pastor; Dr. David Thomas in 1853, Catherine Booth replied to a sermon preached by him, supporting the doctrine of woman's intellectual and moral inferiority to man:
"Permit me, my dear sir; to ask whether you have ever made the subject of woman's equality as a being the matter of calm investigation and thought? If not, I would, with all deference suggest it as a subject well worth the exercise of your brain, and calculated amply to repay any research you may bestow upon it.
"So far as Scriptural evidence is concerned, did I but possess ability to do justice to the subject, I dare take my stand on it against the world in defending her perfect equality... That woman is in consequence of her inadequate education, generally inferior to man intellectually, I admit. But that she is naturally so, as your remarks seemed to imply, I see no cause to believe...
"Never yet in the history of the world has woman been placed on an intellectual footing with man. Her training from babyhood even in this highly favoured land, has hitherto been such as to cramp and paralyze rather than to develop and strengthen her energies, and calculated to crush and wither her aspirations after mental greatness rather than to excite and stimulate them.
"The day is only just dawning with reference to female education and therefore any verdict on woman as an intellectual being must be premature and unsatisfactory. Thank God we are not without numerous and noble examples of what she may become, when prejudice and error shall give way to light and truth, and her powers be duly appreciated and developed.
..... A brighter day is dawning and ere long, woman will assume her true position, and rise to the full height of her intellectual stature. Then shall the cherished... dogma of 'having a cell less in her brain,' with all kindred assumptions be exploded and perish before the spell of her developed and cultivated mind."
For their honeymoon, William and Catherine Booth spent a few days in the Channel Islands. Before leaving Guernsey, Mrs. Booth wrote the following in a friend's autograph album:
"The woman who would serve her generation according to the will of God, must make moral and intellectual culture the chief business of life. Doing this she will rise to the true dignity of her nature, and find herself possessed of a wondrous capacity for turning the duties, joys and sorrows of domestic life into the highest advantage both to herself and to all those within the sphere of her influence."
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/booth/ministry.html
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