The following day Fletcher and his wife set out for Madeley.
On the first Sunday after bringing his wife to her new home, Fletcher took her into the kitchen, where, according to hospitable custom, a number of poor people were taking dinner between the morning and afternoon services, and introduced her to them, saying, "I have not married a wife for myself only, but for your sakes also." This was true, both in his intention and in the result.
In marrying Miss Bosanquet, and bringing her to Madeley, Fletcher conferred upon his parish a benefit second only to that of his own life-devotion to its welfare. During the remainder of his ministry he was sustained and supplemented in his labours by one whose qualifications were, in their sphere, little inferior to his own. She had been accustomed for many years to the direction of a large household, to the training of children and young people, to ministering to the sick and suffering. She understood the wants and ways of the poor. In these and similar respects she was exceptionally fitted to be the wife of a clergyman. The vicarage was no longer a hermitage; it was a home, a centre to which many came for help and guidance, spiritual and temporal, and from which innumerable ministries of kindness flowed out on every side. But it was in the very highest aspects of her husband's work that Mrs. Fletcher's co-operation was at once the most complete and the most valuable. Her ministry could not confine itself to the bodily and temporal welfare of the people. She too had a deep and passionate longing for the salvation of souls. To lead her poor and suffering to Christ was the one philanthropy, to which all other charities were as nothing. Toward all kinds of need her heart was full of pity, and her hand quick in bounty; but it was for the soul in each, the soul redeemed by the infinite love of God, and called to the possession of an unspeakably glorious salvation in Christ, that she was most profoundly moved. Sin was the one evil; salvation the one blessing; Christ the one Saviour. This conviction, burning with a pure, steady light and heat, ruled her work from first to last. Fletcher found in her, not only a loving wife, but a kindred spirit. They viewed personal religion under the same aspects; they were likeminded in their belief concerning the "salvation to the uttermost" that is procured by Christ, and administered by the Holy Spirit. The instinct that speaks of "the saintly Fletcher" gives the same designation to his wife. With her, as with him, Christian perfection--a term which many theological systems will not admit, and the majority of Christians persistently shun--was a chosen watchword. Their letters, journals, and devotional writings, and the lives they were enabled to live, show that for them "death unto sin and life unto God in Jesus Christ" was, not merely "forensic," an "imputation," with nothing corresponding to it in the sphere of experience, but included entire consecration to God, and the unhindered indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In aspiration, profession, life, the same high utterance was repeated in different but harmonious notes--"perfect in Christ"; always laying more stress upon "in Christ" than upon "perfect," yet not shrinking from that term, as having New Testament authority and significance.