Excellent Women

by Various

CHAPTER I.

YOUTHFUL DAYS.

A chance visitor to the Liverpool Workhouse on Brownlow Hill might be lost in wonder at its vastness, as he looked at its streets of large buildings and was told of its more than four thousand inhabitants. He would scarcely imagine that those bare-looking groups of buildings possess an historic interest. Yet to the Christian philanthropist it is holy ground, for there, in willing sacrifice for others, were spent the last years of the life of that saintly woman who gave the death-blow to the old system of pauper nursing and all its attendant evils. But we are looking at the stream as it enters the limitless ocean of eternity. We can do that again by-and-by. Let us turn now rather to the beginning of that stream of life and trace it onwards.

Agnes Elizabeth Jones was born at Cambridge on the 10th of November, 1832, the 12th Regiment, of which her father was the lieutenant-colonel, having arrived there only a few days before.

When Agnes was about five years of age, her father's regiment, which had previously been quartered at Cork, was ordered to Mauritius. The wonderfully varied and beautiful scenery of this little island—a tiny gem set in the heart of the Indian Ocean—with its curiously shaped mountains, and tropical trees and plants, made a wonderful impression on the mind of the child, and although she was only eleven years old when she left, she always cherished the memory of it.

But it was not only that her mind was roused to a keen appreciation of the beauties around her during her residence in Mauritius. The higher part of her nature, chiefly through the faithful teaching of one of the French pastors on the island, was also touched, and in the young heart there arose the longing to be safely folded in the arms of the Good Shepherd. A sentence in one of his sermons haunted her night and day:—"And now, brethren, if you cannot answer me, how will you at the last day answer the Great Searcher of hearts?" An arrow shot at a venture, it pierced her heart, and although she did not yet yield herself fully to God, she never entirely lost the desire to be His, even when apparently outwardly indifferent. We may well thank God for His servant's earnest ministry, for had he been less faithful, the whole course of that life, which was to prove so valuable in the service of the Lord, might have been changed.

From Madagascar, five hundred and fifty miles from Mauritius, yet its next-door neighbour westwards in the silver sea, there came, when Agnes was yet but seven years old, the tidings of a fearful persecution of the Christians. The letters received at that time told of indescribably dreadful sufferings for Christ's sake, and the sight of the Malagasy refugees who fled to Mauritius, fired her young soul with the desire to become a missionary. This desire, however, in her exceeding reserve, she kept to herself. God had other purposes for her, and it was amongst her own country people, and not in the foreign field, that He called her to labour.

After the return of her parents from Mauritius, the greater part of four years was spent in a beautiful spot at the foot of the hills of the Donegal Highlands on the banks of Lough Swilly, one of the loveliest of the Irish lakes. This period is spoken of by her sister as one in which she appeared utterly indifferent to spiritual things, yet some entries in her journal indicate an intense longing after a higher life. They certainly show that she knew the sinfulness of her own heart and the weakness of her resolutions, and that, in common with so many reserved natures, while hiding the true state of her feelings from others, she was much given to introspection and inclined to magnify her faults. Such reserved natures do not "wear their heart on their sleeve," and it should be a comfort to parents and teachers who are anxiously watching children to know that "things are not always what they seem," and that many a child who seems altogether careless is in reality not far from the kingdom.

In January, 1848, when a little over fifteen, she was sent to school at Stratford-on-Avon, and remained there until her father's death in 1850. The good discipline of this school and the wise guidance of her teachers had a most wholesome effect on the development of her character, and the steady, indomitable perseverance in the face of difficulties which so marked her after-life distinguished her then. By her painstaking and close attention she made up for her want of quickness in learning. Hence she never forgot what she had once learned.

The actual time of her conversion seems to have been during the period that she resided with her mother and sister in Dublin. To the earnest man of God whose ministry they attended, the preparation of the younger members of his flock for admission to the Lord's Supper was no perfunctory task. He introduced her, with others of his candidates, to one of his helpers as "anxious inquirers." So shy and reserved was Agnes that she said but little, yet this lady remarked of her:—"In the class her intense appetite for the living bread was so apparent, that I often felt myself speaking to her only, her calm gentle eyes fixed on me, as God helped me to speak."