Beautiful YOUNG Geraldine Hooper Preached to Thousands
[ABOVE: Geraldine Hooper. Frontpiece from Mrs. Grattan Guinness, "She Spake of Him." London and Bristol, 1874. Public domain because of age.]
Geraldine Hooper came from a well-to-do family. Born in 1841, she grew into an attractive young woman. People in her home town of Bath expected her to become a social butterfly. However, a scandal among some trusted acquaintances disillusioned her. She went to spend a few months in France. She tried to live a godly life but found her own good works made her only a Pharisee.
After giving her life to Christ, she sought to do his work. She began by teaching a Sunday school and helping William Haslam, a local evangelist. Working with those who were converted in his meetings led her to hold early morning prayer with women workers. Soon men asked if they could join. One thing led to another and by the time she was twenty-one she was preaching the gospel to large audiences.
Although hundreds came to Christ through her sermons, others challenged her right to preach to mixed audiences. Had not Paul said “But I don’t permit a woman to teach, nor to exercise authority over a man, but to be in quietness” (1 Timothy 2:12 World English Bible). Her persistent refrain was “I am about my Father’s business, I am, in a very real sense, helping God to accomplish the work He has at heart.”
In December 1863, Hooper went to Norfolk for a rest. But Haslam was in the area and revival had broken out. Instead of rest, he gave Hooper increased responsibilities. Over the next eight years, she would preach 4,000 times in Norfolk and throughout England—eight or nine times a week. Her health often suffered. A doctor later warned her against overwork, “If you violate the laws of health you must suffer in mind as well as in body.”
Her messages were plain. We are sinners. We need a savior. If we choose sin over Christ, we face an eternity of woe. A true follower of Christ will turn from sin. Several of her sermons were printed as pamphlets.
One night in Norfolk, Haslam found her standing on a wagon preaching to hundreds who stood around her in the snow. She told the story of a lunatic who ordered a man to jump from a balcony. With presence of mind, the man told the lunatic he could show him a trick worth two of that, led him to the ground and urged him to jump up to the balcony. Her hearers laughed. But then she set her point home: “It is easy to jump down into sin and into hell [but just] try and jump up the other way; and if you can’t succeed even after doing your best, ask the Lord to lift you up.” So great was the impression she made, that many people wept on this evening, 16 February 1864, when she preached a final sermon at Buckenham near Norfolk. Eighteen hundred turned out to bid her farewell. “The last day of our happy meeting is come now,” she said, “perhaps the last opportunity of salvation for some of you;” and warned them that there would come a last day of grace, and a last day of life to each of them.
People never tired of hearing her. Sometimes the crowd was so great she could hardly get to the pulpit. In March 1868, when she preached at Kingsbridge, she had to promise a special morning service to accommodate the hundreds that had been turned away that evening. By 4:00 a.m. the meeting place was jammed. “Dear sinner!” she told her listeners, “If you will reject the Savior, if you will continue in sin, and set Him at nought, I tell you that Jesus will be glorified in you still; if He is not glorified in your salvation, He will be in your destruction.”
A Kingsbridge clergyman who had warned his flock that they ought not attend her sermons, changed his mind. Based on the response in his parish, he confessed himself “obliged to believe it a work of God.”
Hooper expected Christianity to bring practical change. She illustrated it by telling of a maid who was asked how she knew she was converted. The maid replied, “Well! for one thing, I always sweep under the mats now, and I never used to before!”
Those who opposed female preaching continued to snipe at her. A journalist in Exeter wrote, “We hope soon to hear that this zealous young woman has got a good husband. That is the best cure for teaching propensities.”
Hooper did get a good husband—a man as concerned about souls as herself. She and Henry Dening wed in October 1868 and redoubled their evangelistic efforts. Four years later, she was dead, having contracted erysipelas. Her body was too worn out to fight off the infection. It spread from her face into her eyes, blinding her, and from her eyes into her brain. She was just thirty-one years old. Six thousand crowded into the graveyard for a final farewell and many more could not get in.
For more on revival, search for "Desperate for More" at RedeemTV. or read Christian History's revival series, CH #149 Revival, the First 1,000 Years; CH #151, Awakenings; and CH #153 Global Outpouring.
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