CHAPTER III.
FOREIGN TRAINING.
However strong and good our wishes may be, it is never safe to force on their accomplishment. They are never the losers who wait God's time, and the wisest course of all is the one which Agnes Jones pursued, of telling her wishes to God, and then, in perfect submission to His will, leaving the issue with Him.
It was not until seven years after her visit to Kaiserswerth that the way was made open for her to return there. This step had been suggested by her mother five years previously, but the filial spirit was so strong in her that, although she eagerly desired a more thorough training for God's service, she felt that her mother stood first, and refused to leave her alone. Now the case was different, and she gladly seized the opportunity. Still she was nervously fearful lest after all she should not be following the guiding pillar.
It was in the autumn of 1860 that she arrived at Kaiserswerth, where she immediately entered heartily into the work. Her intention was to stay for only a month, or at the most six weeks; but after she had been there but a short time, the pastor so strongly represented the great advantage it would be to her to spend the whole winter in the institution, that she felt constrained to write for her mother's permission to do so. As ever, she was full of prayer for God's guidance, and that whatever was done might be only for His glory. Her mother leaving the choice entirely with her, she decided to remain, believing that the training would be of inestimable use to her in her future work.
The Deaconesses' Institution at Kaiserswerth had a very small beginning. Pastor Fliedner, having heard of Mrs. Fry's work amongst female prisoners, was filled with longing to follow her example, and received two discharged prisoners, whose friends had refused them, with the object of giving them the chance of retrieving their character. He set them to work under the personal supervision of himself and his wife. The work soon increased, and assistance was needed. To the penitentiary were added an orphanage, a training-school, a hospital, and a lunatic asylum. More and more workers were drawn in, and at the time of Agnes Jones's first visit there were fifteen branches of the institution in different parts of the world. This number by the time of her second visit had increased to fifty.
The deaconesses as novices passed through every department of the work, and received a thorough training in both nursing and household work, the pastor wisely considering that if, when in visiting the poor, they could render them practical help, their words would prove far more effective. Much was made of Bible study, both public and private, and this, as well as the Stille Stunde (quiet hour), a half-hour daily set apart for prayer and meditation, could not but tend to give a spiritual tone to the whole work. Agnes revelled in all this, and found great happiness in the daily routine, in spite of much which was, perhaps, somewhat needless drudgery, such as sweeping and dusting her room, washing up after meals, and even black-leading stoves. She had, however, well learned the lesson that no action can be mean to the Christian if it come in the way of duty. Sometimes, indeed, it seemed a waste of strength to spend so much of the day in manual work, especially work which so injured her hands that for some time she was obliged to keep them poulticed, and was thus unable to assist in the hospital. Still she was, as she said herself, "as happy as the day is long, and it does not seem half long enough," in spite of a longing sometimes "for home sights and voices."
Soon after her arrival at Kaiserswerth, fourteen sick boys were given into her care for twelve hours a day. This was no easy task, particularly when she was left in sole charge of them, some being too far recovered to lie in bed, and needing to be kept at lessons or work. As the weeks rolled by, her work was changed, and in addition to other employment, she instructed a number of classes in English, both in the training-school and among the deaconesses. As for herself, she was daily becoming more proficient in German, and in a very short time was able easily to follow the sermon. This was a great enjoyment to her, as she much valued the truly evangelical teaching at Kaiserswerth.
At the end of three months of steady work, she spent a few days with an uncle and aunt who were staying at Bonn, but the gay boarding-house life contrasted so unfavourably with the happy Christian fellowship at Kaiserswerth, that she was thankful to return to her duties, playfully writing:—"The nun will not soon again leave her cell, for it was with very nun-like feelings she met the world again." Yet she was no misanthrope. She did not bring to God a heart which had tried earth's pleasures and had found them wanting, nor a life jaded with pursuing them. From the first, she had cast aside the love of worldly things, and had chosen to be wholly the Lord's.
During the latter part of her stay at Kaiserswerth, her duties lay entirely in the hospital. In January she wrote:—"My duties are in the children's hospital, all ages from two to twelve. It is a new life for me in a nursery of sick children, and a busy one too, for every moment they want something done for them."
A month or so later she was appointed superintendent of the boys' hospital, a post of peculiar responsibility and difficulty. It was one, too, from which she shrank, holding the mistaken idea that she possessed no powers of government. Certainly it was a position to tax the patience, for the children were not too ill to be noisy and disobedient, or even sometimes to unite in open rebellion, while the task was not rendered easier by the necessity of speaking in a foreign tongue.
Altogether she had a very busy life. She rose at 5.O A.M. every day, and kept hard at work, with the exception of the intervals for meals and the Stille Stunde (quiet hour), until night. "The cleaning and keeping my dominion in order is such a business," she writes. "Sweeping and washing the floor of the three rooms every morning, two stoves which must be black-leaded weekly, each taking an hour, weekly cleaning of windows, tins, dinner-chests, washing-up of bandages, &c., besides the washing-up after each of our five meals, keeps one busy." She must have been strong in those days, for she wrote:—"I come over from the other house every morning at six, the ground white and windows frozen over; often at three in the afternoon the water outside is still frozen, yet night or morning I never put on bonnet or handkerchief, unless when I go out for a walk."
From the first the hospital patients with their varied needs were a great interest to her. Now it is a dying man, beside whom she has to watch, longing to minister words of comfort, yet unable to do so, fearing that her then want of fluency in the language might trouble him in his weakness. Yet as she heard the poor man's cry, "Lieber Heiland, hilf mir" (Dear Saviour, help me), her prayers, too, rose for him to the compassionate Saviour. Now it is a little boy with a bad back, terrible sores, and a racking cough, who would let no one else touch him. "Every night," she says, "I used to pray with Otto after they were all in bed, and he used to put his poor little arm round my neck as I knelt beside him; but last night (the night before he died) he said of himself, 'I will only now pray that Jesus may take me to heaven, and that I may soon die,' and as I had put my face near him to hear, he said, 'Lay your cheek on mine, it does me so much good.'"
We have seen quite enough of Agnes Jones by this time to know that she never shrank from a duty, however repulsive. Her love for her Master, and her desire to serve others for His sake, preserved her from any fastidiousness. In spite of her sensitive and sympathetic nature she could bear to witness the most painful operations without flinching, for she kept before her mind the ultimate good which would accrue from the present suffering.
One day news reached Kaiserswerth of the deplorable condition of one of the English hospitals in Syria. Sick and well, it was stated, were crowded together in a place where rubbish of every kind was thrown, an insanitary condition anywhere, but especially so in an Eastern climate. Helpers, they said, were much needed. Agnes longed to step into the breach, and in a letter to her mother she says:—"The English send plenty of money, but hands are wanting. It is no new thought with me that mine are strong and willing; I would gladly offer them. Could my own mother bear to think of her child for the next few months as in Syria instead of Germany? It is but temporary, and yet an urgent case. My favourite motto came last Sunday, 'The Lord hath need;' if He has need of my mother's permission to her child He will enable her to give it. This is but the expression of a wish, and if my own mother were to be made too anxious by the granting it, let it be as if unasked by her own Agnes."
Her standard of filial obedience was indeed a high one, though no higher than the standard of God's Word. Before this, in asking permission to remain longer at Kaiserswerth, she had written to her mother:—"Your wishes shall be my guide, now and for the future, as long as I am blessed with such a loving counsellor. I trust my present training in obedience will not be lost in reference to home."
Although she thought the whole training at Kaiserswerth invaluable she wrote long after:—"I believe all I owe to Kaiserswerth was comprised in the lesson of unquestioning obedience." Those who would rule must first learn to obey, and certain it is that she would never have been fitted to be afterwards the head of a large institution hundreds to care for and govern, had she not so truly imbibed the spirit of obedience.
While she had a profound admiration for Kaiserswerth, she could still see that the life of a deaconess, shielded though it is from the world, is not exempt from danger. Some fancy that the life of a deaconess, or of any one similarly set apart, must be much more free from temptation than that of any ordinary person. "I think," she wrote, "every one is as much called on as a deaconess is to work for Him who first loved us; but if this does not constrain us as Christians, neither will it as deaconesses, and certainly the 'Anstalt' (Institution) is a world in which the Martha-spirit may be found as well as in the outer world. There are many most deeply taught Christians here, many whose faces shine, but I should say, comparing my home life (but few have such a home) with that of the deaconesses here, I should say that, in many positions here, there are more, not only daily but hourly temptations."
The fact that nursing was her vocation had for a long time been dawning on her mind, but the way to go to Syria did not seem open, and the Lord had other work for her. Almost by the same post there arrived two letters, one from Mrs. Ranyard, so well known as the originator of the London Bible Mission, suggesting that she should go and help her in the great work of superintending and training the Bible women, the other from a philanthropic gentleman, unfolding a plan for a proposed nurses' home in connection with an infirmary, and asking if she, after a few months' special training, would become its superintendent. Thus, while one door was shut, two others unexpectedly opened to her.
But which should she enter? This was the question which she prayerfully debated. She wished to lay out her life to the best interest for God, and both schemes had special attractiveness to her; the one, because of its intensely spiritual work; the other, because of her love for nursing, and the boundless possibilities for good there might be in training nurses. She feared, however, that as superintendent of the nurses' home she might be fettered in more definite Christian work. She felt she must be left in no uncertainty on this point. In her letter replying to the gentleman who had written to her, she said:—"You sent me the ground plan of the building, but I would ask, is its foundation and corner stone to be Christ and Him crucified, the only Saviour? Is the Christian training of the nurses to be the primary, and hospital skill the secondary object? I ask not that all should be of one Christian denomination, but what I do ask is that Jesus, the God-man, and His finished work of salvation for all who believe on Him, should be the basis, and the Bible the book of the institution. If this be your end and aim, then will I gladly pass through any course of training to be fitted to help in your work."
Soon after writing this letter she bade farewell to Kaiserswerth. Her plan was to go first to London to consult with Miss Nightingale and other friends as to her future. The seven months in Germany had been most happy ones, and she was ever thankful for the time she had spent there. She fully saw the great need of Christian training institutions. In those days the Evangelical Protestant churches, unlike the Romanists, who for many centuries had largely availed themselves of it, were not alive to the importance of the ministry of women. There were no institutions in England where Christian women could be trained to work for Christ, that work of all others the most important, and some, to secure the training they longed for, and could not get elsewhere, had even entered Roman Catholic sisterhoods. Times are changed now, thank God, and although there is still the need of more, there are many institutions where Christian women can be thoroughly and efficiently trained for service of different kinds at home and abroad.