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wide ranges into many curious barbarous and semi-barbarous communities, and among many thoughts, philosophies and beliefs, leave the excursionist and ranger with a deep sense of the underlying unity of the tenets of all who profess and call themselves Christians, and of the fundamental difference between Christian and heathen creeds. Miss Bird's travels made her a woman remarkable enough for men of science to elect her a fellow of many scientific societies. She was an authority beyond most on all matters of Eastern travel. At first her travels were conducted purely in the scientific spirit, but by and by the infinite need of the peoples of the globe called to the woman's heart in her. She recognized Indians, Chinese, Thibetans and all the uncivilized hordes she travelled among, as souls that sought a Saviour, and she determined to work by both direct and indirect methods to bring them to their Saviour.

At fifty years of age Miss Bird married Dr. John Bishop, a physician and surgeon of Edinburgh. Her husband died at Cannes, in March, 1886. They had been married five years. On the 13th of April, by his grave in the Cannes cemetery, she consecrated herself to those special labours for others which had been his delight, and to which Christ had called her.

When living in Maida Vale, in 1888, she wrote to Mrs. Blackie :

"The Church of my fathers has cast me out by means of inanities, puerilities, music and squabblings, and I go regularly to a Presbyterian Church where there is earnest praying, vigorous preaching and an air of reality."

This was the Marlborough Place Church, and Dr. Monroe Gibson was the minister. The same month, under what may almost be called the spell of the labours and sacrifices of the Baptist Missionary Society, she consecrated herself to the missionary cause by the ceremony immersion, performed by Mr. Spurgeon, but without joining the Baptist Church. Something of her condition of mind at the time is shown in a letter written three days after the ceremony, in which she said:

"It cost me a good deal to take this step, and the night and the chapel and the dress were all so fearfully cold, that it truly seemed 'burial.' To walk in newness of life is my great desire, but how to accomplish it I know not. I pray to Him to accomplish it for me."

There is something very curious in a woman of such independent mind and habit, as were Mrs. Bishop's, seeking so desperately for supports for her resolves and looking to symbols for help in times of trouble. All Mrs. Bishop's fervour and all her judgment were not proof against the poison of that drop of arrogance in her spirit, and that inclination to isolation in her soul, which made her resent so fiercely anything like direction in her religion. Her unwillingness to submit-in spite of inanities, puerilities and squabblings in some directions-to the system of the Church into which, as an infant, she had been baptized once and for all, left her, for happiness in her faith, too much at the mercy of her own sudden inclinations and too open to the empiric suggestions of Nonconformist creeds. Yet for all the defects of her faith as a Churchwoman, Mrs. Bishop was an individual of rare courage, devotion, discernment and understanding.

In the mysterious ruling of Providence, it would seem that the very fact of the dying down in Mrs. Bishop of her special enthusiasm for the English Church, and the rousing of her interest in the denominations, worked to make her testimony to the good work done by the agency of Church missionaries, the more valuable to the Church missionary societies. It was not as an interested Churchwoman supporting the societies called by the name she was in honour bound to uphold that Mrs. Bishop stood time and time again on the platforms of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, The Church Missionary Society and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society; it was Mrs. Bishop of the independent view, Mrs. Bishop the traveller, Mrs. Bishop the member of the British Association, whose opinion of the infinite need for mission efforts in all Christian bodies, was so grateful. And the recognition by this same Mrs. Bishop of the good work

done in heathen countries by Church agents, was the recognition that convinced many sceptical, of the good of missions, and encouraged subscribers to greater contributions and sacrifices to the missionary cause. In her many solitary wanderings in strange, far-off countries, Mrs. Bishop had seen and heard things few Europeans had seen and heard; she had seen and heard things also that no man-traveller or native-could ever see or hear. No argument in favour of medical missions for the women of India and China was ever, perhaps, as telling as that provided by the assertion of Mrs. Bishop that—as a medicine-womanshe had frequently been asked by Purdah ladies to give them drugs wherewith to destroy their rivals. Her great faith in the good being effected by the Women's Medical Mission of the S.P.G. was exemplified by her gifts of her money and her interest to an unusual degree, to different activities and establishments of the Medical Mission.

"If any one wishes to realize what the need is abroad, let him read Mrs. Bishop's books and addresses, or the delightful biography of her lately published," said Mr. Eugene Stock in a lecture to a conference of ladies at the Church Missionary House in January 1907.

In spite of the aberration of intelligence and faith in which she presented herself for baptism by Mr. Spurgeon, although with no intention of joining Mr. Spurgeon's sect, it is impossible to call such a supporter as she of the work of three great Church societies, by any other name than that of Churchwoman. Words that were almost the last Mrs. Bishop uttered, seem to indicate a sense of having been constantly baulked in the search for some new thing. In the end she found that there is nothing new for any of us-only "the old, old story."

"There are very few," she murmured, "who manage their life on Evangelical lines for Evangelical destinies. I have tried, but it is very difficult. There can be nothing new for any of us; all has been revealed, all done, all written." She died on Monday, October 10, 1904; her cousin, the Rev. James Grant Bird, the Rector of Staleybridge, with her friend, Canon Cowley Brown, read her

funeral service. She was laid in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, and over her grave some members of the Medical Mission (S.P.G.) sang the hymn Now the labourer's task

is o'er.

Among other women of a separate distinction, whose interest in and help towards missionary work has been remarkable, is Mrs. Ashley Carus-Wilson (Isabella Petrie), B.A., London, the foundress and president of the College by Post, which boasts six thousand members. Not alone by her memoir of Irene Petrie, the missionary to Kashmir of ever holy memory, but by her writings, such as Clews to Holy Writ and Unseal the Book, and by her eloquent and picturesque missionary addresses, Mrs. Ashley CarusWilson has proved herself a true missionary in spirit.

All true missionary work is educational, and no people more clearly than English Churchwomen, have shown how fallacious is the very general idea that missions to the heathen are only undertaken by persons of narrow mind and limited intelligence. On the contrary, no women are more alive to the necessity of missionizing by the method of education than the most highly educated women; and none see more clearly than the devout missionary the need of instructing in a higher learning than that of the three "r's," the converts to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER XI

INITIATORS OF REFORM, FOUNDERS OF INSTITUTES, LEADERS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, PHILANTHROPISTS

SARAH MARTIN, ELIZABETH GILBERT, MRS. DANIELL, DR. WESTON, VISCOUNTESS CANNING, LOUISA MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD, MRS. WIGHTMAN, LADY HENRY SOMERSET, MRS. NASSAU SENIOR, BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS, LADY WIMBORNE, MRS. JOSEPHINE BUTLER, THE HON. MAUD STANLEY, MISS CARLILE, MRS. BARNETT

QUEEN VICTORIA, QUEEN ALEXANDRA, THE ROYAL PRINCESSES

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COULD I canonize Sarah Martin, I would," were words spoken by the Bishop (Stanley) of Norwich in 1843.

The question springs: Who was Sarah Martin?

She was a poor dressmaker of Yarmouth, who did what she could in intervals of carrying on her humble trade. A stained-glass window is erected to her memory in Yarmouth Church. She rests from her labours, but her works do follow her. These works were teaching a Sundayschool class in Yarmouth Church, teaching a Monday evening school of workhouse children, teaching a factory girls' school in the vestry of Yarmouth Church, and this the crown of her labours-visiting and teaching in Yarmouth gaol.

It was as visitor of the gaol that she displayed her peculiar saintliness-a saintliness after the heart of Bishop Stanley, who was ever eager for reality in religion. Not only did Sarah Martin instruct and pray with the roughest and most degraded prisoners, but she kept a careful record of their names, ages and employments, and-so far as she was able followed them up in after life. She had an

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