At a “Congregational Conference,” held in Brooklyn, in the course of a discussion on Woman’s Work in the Church, Henry Ward Beecher said: “We shall never have a church in its full power until the women take part in the devotional meetings. I know I go against the Puritan fathers, whom I revere, but do not feel bound to follow blindly. If there is anything which distinguishes a woman from a man, it is the depth of her moral feeling, the very thing that makes prayer powerful. We put into the office of prayer those who are least fitted for it, and exclude those who are adapted by God for it. I had a godly father, and my mother, an excellent Christian woman, died before I knew what she was. I was brought up by a prayerful woman, full of Christian piety. I have often heard my father pray with great fervency and exultation, for he had great flights over into the millennium, but he never shook me. But when my mother kneeled down by me and prayed, I felt as if the veil would fall the next moment.”