Well thank you again for having me here this morning. It's wonderful as I said to be able to
speak about a woman from history and actually particularly a woman from history who most
people don't know about. It's something I'm really passionate about telling some stories of some
unknown women and when Steve asked me to speak about a woman from history steadfast in faith
I immediately thought of Elizabeth Saunders. Now as I said she is a relatively unknown person
from the early history of the New South Wales Baptists. Now the reason why I chose her was
not because of my connections with the Baptist churches although I do think Baptist history is
pretty interesting but it was really because of the multiple ways in which her life
displayed the steadfast love, steadfast faithfulness of God. What I have in mind by that is partly the
way in which at various points in her life story she showed steadfast faithful love toward God and
others but also and perhaps even more so the ways in which she herself and her family experienced
God's steadfast love and kindness in their own lives. One of my favourite words from the Old Testament
is the Hebrew word hesed. It's the word that's sometimes translated as steadfast love.
Especially in situations where the person demonstrating it is in a covenant relationship
with another person and is steadfastly faithfully keeping that covenant of love. So it's the word that's used
over and over again to describe the steadfast love of God himself toward his people.
But it also gets used in situations where the love and mercy that's been shown spills over beyond
any covenant responsibilities. It exists where there isn't any covenant relationship at all in some
cases and for that reason in some translations like the NIV it's frequently translated not as steadfast
love but as mercy or kindness. And for most of this talk as we reflect together on the story of
Elizabeth Saunders it's that word kindness that I'll be using. And as I tell her story I want us to be
listening for some of the echoes that we will hear of one of the great Old Testament stories of hesed
of steadfast love and kindness. The story that we read in the Old Testament book of Ruth and we just heard
the first chapter of that read just before quite beautifully. You might want to go and read
the rest of it this afternoon. It's a short book and if you're already familiar with it you might see
the connections as I speak about Elizabeth Saunders's life today. I think there are a lot of parallels.
Twice exiled, vulnerable, widowed, living out the kindness and steadfast love of God in ways that
were costly and controversial at times. Her life really does remind me in multiple ways of Ruth and Naomi's
story. And that should not really be a surprise because the same kind and gracious God that they
worshipped was her God too. Elizabeth Saunders was born in England in 1801 and grew up in Aberdeen in the
north of Scotland. There's a picture of the place there. Her father was stationed as a lieutenant with the
Navy. She married her husband John in May 1834 after meeting him when he was in Edinburgh training to be a
Baptist missionary. Both had become strongly evangelical in their convictions during their formative years.
John had made the decision to follow Christ in the aftermath of his mother's death when he was still a
teenager. He left his family's congregational church and was baptised at Cold Harbour Lane Baptist Church or
Denmark Place Baptist Church in Camberwell in London. His family had set their hearts in entering Parliament
and he trained as a solicitor before leaving, becoming a Baptist pastor and starting to pursue the idea of
overseas missionary work. Elizabeth's faith was also strongly evangelical. She was probably influenced by
an evangelical revival in Scotland led by a man named Robert and James Holden in the early 19th century.
And she was attending one of the congregational churches they had planted in Edinburgh and that's where she and
John married. And this was a time when evangelicals were deeply concerned for the spread of the gospel into
all the world and they were involved in a host of charitable causes. Lots of causes aimed at promoting
justice and mercy. This was true for John and Elizabeth as well. So Elizabeth had been involved in various acts of
service. She was an active member of a philanthropic group called the British Lady Society for promoting the
reformation of female prisoners. They didn't go for short titles but did what it said. That was what they
were interested in. And that was a group organised by Elizabeth Fry who's a more well-known person in
history. A Quaker who was famous for her philanthropy and concerned for prison reform. And as a volunteer
with that society, Elizabeth Saunders regularly visited Newgate Prison in London and that had notoriously
bad living conditions for women and children. So volunteers like Elizabeth would bring in provisions
like food and clothes and teach the women basic skills like needlework. They established a school for
children who were living in prison with their mothers and lobbied the government for an improvement in the
conditions for women in prisons throughout the country. And they also visited convict women who were
being held in prison hulks on the Thames waiting to be transported to Australia.
So for the first few months of their marriage, John served as a pastor in a Baptist church in
Shacklewell in London. But he was deep in conversation with the Baptist Missionary Society. He actually
wanted to be sent to India. But it wasn't long before someone else came to him and said,
look, there's a Baptist congregation in Sydney that's just lost its pastor. It's just been planted and
it doesn't, yeah, this is congregation. We need you. So just a few months into the marriage,
Elizabeth and John boarded a female convict ship called the George Hibbert. They did this actually
without financial support since New South Wales was not technically a missionary destination. So they
weren't sent as missionaries. So they had to find other ways to get out to Australia. And Elizabeth Fry
had pleaded earnestly with the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, to send Elizabeth Saunders as a matron to
the convicts on this ship. This was the first time such a request was made. Usually they were sent out
with any sort of care in that respect. And it's the first time it was granted and it meant that Elizabeth
could go out as the matron to these female convicts and they could have free passage. John was also the
chaplain to the female convicts. So this was their way to get to Australia. Now, it wasn't an easy
journey. It was a long journey. It was arduous. Elizabeth actually battled severe seasickness. For most of the
journey, she lost a worrying amount of weight. And on the same journey out, many others have come to
dysentery and they died on their way out to Australia. John painted a vivid picture of the voyage in a letter
home to his sister. There's a quote here, the rolling and pitching of the ship, the delay and heat
during calms, the perilous position during gales, the cluck of the women during the day, the howling of
the wind over a waste of waters during the night. Now added to those, then we may mention seasickness
and cockroaches. And to these, the pleasure of often having part of your dinner in your lap before it got
to your mouth. When Elizabeth became ill with seasickness, John actually performed the duties of
chaplain and schoolmaster and some of her duties as well. And he started school lessons for the women
and children on deck every morning, formed two Bible classes for the women and conducted two churches
services on Sundays. And the ship's captain actually wrote about both of them later on. He remembered that
many of the convict women weren't able to read and write when they boarded the ship. But by the end of
the journey, after being taught by John, they could do both. And he also spoke positively about Elizabeth
saying that she was very attentive and kind to these women. The Saunders' work, even on their journey
to the colony, was rated a huge success by people like Elizabeth Fry. She looked back on their efforts
saying, surely the result of our labours has hitherto been beyond our most sanguine expectations as to the
improved state of our prisons, female convict ships and the convicts in New South Wales.
So they arrived in Australia, but when they arrived in Sydney, things were even harder than the ship
journey. Elizabeth described the colony as a wilderness, like being in complete exile.
She struggled with the climate in Sydney and the vast array of vermin and bugs. She particularly hated
the mosquitoes. In another letter home, John described their comical bedtime routine,
which involved Elizabeth hopping into bed with the mosquito curtains drawn, with John on the outside
with the candle, and Elizabeth smashing as many as were visible. Her fear of mosquitoes was so great
that she would supplement the mosquito nets by sleeping with gloves and her head covered.
Arriving in summer in Sydney was also a huge shock to her, coming from England.
She continued to struggle with her health, telling her sister that her limbs were extremely weak and
she didn't expect to gain much strength while the weather remained so hot.
On arriving in Sydney, Elizabeth was also shocked by the realities of living in a penal colony.
At this stage, convicts and ex-convicts meet up over a third of the population.
They had a female convict living with them as a servant that they'd met on the way out.
And Elizabeth and John maintained contact with this Society for Female Prisoners,
sending back reports about various female convicts that the women back home in England were
interested in and concerned for, and particularly those who had already come to faith.
But as much as Elizabeth was interested in this cause and accustomed to poverty and the plight of
prisoners and their families, she still found the constant presence of convicts in chains
unsettling and disturbing.
She could hear prisoners passing by on the streets of Sydney, clanking their chains,
and she found the sound awful and heart-wrenching, she said.
She would wonder if they were bush rangers or whether they would soon be executed.
She commented that the conditions of the female convicts in Sydney were worse than she had seen
in Newgate Prison on her visits there.
Her quote was,
You never beheld woman so degraded as she appears in Sydney streets.
Nothing really about their lives in Sydney during those early months seemed comfortable or easy
or familiar compared to the life that they'd left behind in London.
This was not a choice that they would have made if they were looking for their happiness in the comfort and the safety of their familiar world
or in the possessions that they could amass.
But they knew deep down that this was a choice that they were compelled to make,
that they were clear about why they had made it.
Reflecting on some of the daily difficulties they were encountering,
just a few months after their arrival,
John reassured his brother in a letter home that,
I am happy and so is Elizabeth.
For we came out for an object and God favours us.
But we put up with some things we should have no occasion to contend with at home.
I write not to complain, he said in another letter written a few weeks later,
for a kind God has made us and still keeps us happy.
But to convince you how much his support and consolations can make every situation comfortable.
But the way in which Elizabeth Saunders and her husband lived out the kindness of God
went far beyond the discomforts and inconveniences that they endured.
There was also frequently a sharp and risky edge of controversy to the kindness that they showed.
And numerous occasions when they took choices that put their reputation and respectability at risk.
And at a time in which reputation and respectability was everything,
this was no small thing.
The risk to reputation was there from the very beginning.
The original Baptist pastor in Sydney, John McCaig,
had been a figure of public ridicule and scorn.
When he baptised his first converts in Woolloomooloo Bay,
a crowd of cheering onlookers gathered around to hoot and laugh at him,
throw stones while he was trying to baptise,
and then they stole his shoes at the end of it.
And things only got worse from there as his ministry unravelled,
his life spiralled down into miserable drunkenness,
gambling addiction, debtors prison, and attempted suicide.
So that was the state of things when John was asked to come.
So throwing in lot in with the Baptists in the 1830s
was not a decision to join with the beautiful people.
And the causes that her husband John threw himself into,
alongside the work of pastoring,
the Bathurst Street Baptist Church,
and helping to plant a string of other ones,
were frequently controversial and disreputable as well.
The cause that John was best known for in his own time
was his involvement in the temperance movement,
a movement that sprang up in the 1830s and 1840s
in response to a growing concern at the social harm
caused by excessive consumption of alcohol,
particularly drinks like gin and rum.
Now, Elizabeth shared John's opinions
about the effects of the rum trade on the colony.
She was shocked at the level of street violence
and public drunkenness in Sydney,
writing home about it on multiple occasions.
And the temperance campaign
also was a joint effort between them.
So John and Elizabeth did this together
when she travelled with him, for example,
when he made his first trip out of Sydney in 1835.
He went and established temperance societies
in country outposts like Campbelltown and Liverpool.
Which were just tiny little towns at the time.
And, yeah, that was a big journey, actually.
And it was a big deal because it was at a time
when temperance campaigners were finding it desperately hard
to persuade the women of the colony
to give their support to the cause
because it was seen as being a cause.
It was not respectable.
It was not a good issue for ladies to involve themselves in.
Over time, the work of Saunders as a leader
of the temperance movement
ended up winning him enormous respect and recognition.
Public figures like Governor Gipps
and the Attorney General John Plunkett
were full of praise for him,
even if there were other people less than impressed.
But he was also outspoken on issues
that were less popular at the time.
And the most famous of these
was the way that he responded to the Mile Creek Massacre in 1838
when 28 Indigenous people were rounded up
and slaughtered by stockmen
at a property near Mile Creek
in northwestern New South Wales.
This was not the first time
that large-scale killings of Indigenous people
had taken place in New South Wales.
But it was the first time
that the perpetrators were held to account
and charged with murder.
In October, as the men were being tried,
Saunders preached a sermon
which caused a massive backlash in the press.
The text of the sermon was Isaiah 26, 21.
Behold, the Lord cometh out of his place
to punish the inhabitants of the earth
for their iniquity.
The earth shall disclose her blood
and shall no more cover her slain.
And its climax was on the collective guilt
of the whole colony
for the shedding of innocent blood.
More than that,
he went on to set the massacre
in the even larger context
of the wrongs that had been done
in invading the continent,
stealing the land,
and destroying communities
by introducing a whole new set
of European vices and addictions.
Now, this was far beyond
what almost anyone else was prepared to say
at a time when even the decision
to prosecute the perpetrators of the massacre
was viewed as a controversial one.
And the sermon
and a follow-up speech he gave
a few days later
led to enormous controversy.
There were threats of legal action,
vicious public criticism,
so particularly from the editor
of the City Morning Herald.
He attacked Saunders
in a series of furious editorials
accusing him of malicious falsehood
and maniacal fury
before going on to say,
let him keep to his pulpit
and attend to the narrow circle
of his own congregation.
For should he persist
in assuming such airs of importance
as he has lately assumed
in denouncing and libeling the colonists,
he may rest assured
that we will drive him back
to his proper position in society.
Now, this could hardly have been
a comfortable time for Elizabeth
as she watched her husband
stick his neck out repeatedly
for a cause that he believed in,
knowing that he would end up
himself attacked so violently
and relentlessly in response.
John and Elizabeth's marriage
was clearly the kind of relationship
in which they travelled side by side
and talked things through together.
In the letters that they wrote back home,
they frequently echo
one another's thoughts.
And John repeatedly mentions
ways in which his prudent wife
had advised him on various issues.
On this issue, however,
it seems that prudence,
as they understood it,
did not stand in the way
of doing what was right and just,
motivated by compassion and kindness
and driven by conviction
by the word of God.
Now, the kindness that Elizabeth
and John showed to others in Sydney
was deeply costly.
It affected them emotionally
and it affected them physically as well.
Elizabeth married relatively late
at the age of 34
and struggled to have children.
They waited a long time
before they welcomed a baby
into their family.
And finally, when the time came,
their baby boy, Edmund,
was stillborn.
Now, who knows how things
would have worked out
if they'd stayed back in London
and had the better medical care
that would have been available
to them back there.
But it must have been a terrible time.
Her sister came out the following year
to join them.
Her name was Sarah.
And it was just in time
to help Elizabeth
through labour a second time.
And this time,
she gave birth
to a healthy little girl
whom they named Elizabeth
or Bessie.
By this time,
Elizabeth Saunders was in her 40s
and this would be
their only living child.
The time in Sydney
also affected John's health.
John worked hard.
The sheer number of societies
he was involved in running
would have added up
to a really heavy workload,
especially his role
in the temperance society.
And if you add to this
the burden of pastoring a church,
which was in the initial stages
of being established
and overseeing a major building project,
he must have been constantly
on the edge of exhaustion.
His letters home in the first year
indicate that he always struggled
with his health
even from the very beginning.
Over his 13 years in Sydney,
it became even worse.
It seems that no diagnosis
was ever made.
But most people who knew him
seemed to agree
that whatever the complaint was,
the excessive zeal
in his labours of usefulness,
is the quote,
his excessive zeal
certainly exacerbated it.
And by 1847,
it was decided
he would need to go back home
to England.
And after a large farewell,
the family,
Elizabeth,
John,
Bessie,
their daughter,
and Elizabeth's sister,
Sarah,
all sailed out from Sydney
in January 1848.
After returning to England,
they settled back in London.
John worked for some time
as a solicitor
and officiated
as a past congregation
in the suburbs.
His health continued to decline
and while he tried
to conduct
occasional religious services,
he ended up
unable to do anything.
Elizabeth described him
as being incapacitated
by utter prostration.
And he died in 1857.
Up until his last weeks,
he was still hoping
to return to Australia,
wanting to at least
be put to rest
in what he called
that bright land.
The knowledge
that he would never return
was,
as Elizabeth described it,
his death blow.
His gravestone
in England
expressed the extent
to which his time
in Australia
was the most significant
of his life.
It said,
this memorial
is erected
by his widow,
sister,
and child,
and may perhaps
guide some old
Australian friend
to the last
resting place
of one whose energies
were devoted
to the best interests
of that bright land.
Now, John's death
left Elizabeth
destitute.
The evening
before the funeral,
John's law firm
partner
sat her down
and informed her
that there were
no funds left,
not even enough
to pay the funeral
expenses.
She lamented
that,
kind and generous
as he was to others,
he had not been able
to save anything
for his family
and said that,
I felt stupefied
and horror-stricken,
and what to do
I knew not,
nor do I now.
Now,
the poor law
in Victorian England
was a fragile
and rickety
safety net,
and there was
a very real
possibility
she would end up
with no home
and no means
of support.
Her only option
was to cast herself
on the kindness
of others.
So she asked
some influential
friends in Sydney
if they would
consider raising
a small subscription
for her.
May the law
direct our kind
friends in Sydney,
she said.
I put my cause
in their hands,
the cause of the
fatherless and the
widow.
There was an
overwhelming response.
Her letter was
published in multiple
Sydney newspapers,
and an enormous
amount was raised
in response to her
appeal.
Despite the fact
they'd been gone
for 11 years,
the Saunders family
had not been
forgotten.
Over 200 donations
were made,
adding up to
over £650
in total.
Now, that was
a lot of money
at the time
when a house
made would earn
about £21 a year.
Overwhelmed
by this kindness,
Elizabeth returned
to Australia.
The following year,
she came with
her daughter,
Bessie,
and her sister,
Sarah.
And the three
women started
a small school
in Pitt Street,
Redfern.
It's pictured there
and some terraces
in Pitt Street.
Elizabeth's daughter,
Bessie,
ended up a good deal
wealthier than her
mother.
In 1868,
she married
Arthur Rennick,
whom she met
through the Redfern
Congregational Church.
Arthur went on
to become a doctor
and member
of parliament.
He was knighted
and so she would
later become known
as Lady Elizabeth
Rennick.
But even in their
wealth and respectability,
the Rennicks
carried with them
something of the
kindness
that Bessie
had seen modelled
by her parents
and the lessons
that they had
been taught,
she'd been taught
by them
about the God
who cares
for widows
and orphans.
Arthur,
her husband,
was responsible
for introducing
the old age pension
in New South Wales.
He also introduced
legislation that
outlawed
commercial baby farming
and protected
the right of women
to keep their children
if they were widowed
or deserted.
They were both
prominent supporters
of the Benevolent Society
and a host
of other charitable
institutions,
particularly those
which helped
women and children.
Bessie
continued to care
for her mother
Elizabeth
and her aunt Sarah
until their deaths.
Elizabeth died
in 1878
in their home
near Hyde Park
in Sydney.
Sarah
continued to live
with them
and died
ten years later
in 1888.
All three women
are buried
in the same plot
at Rookwood Cemetery.
You can still go
and visit today.
A few months
after he arrived
in the colony,
John Saunders
wrote home
to his sister.
You may think
religion a hard
service when it
calls a man
to leave his home,
his country
and his friends.
So far from it.
I can truly say
my joys have been
more regular,
tranquil and intense
than in a secular
occupation
and that with
some little trials
I have had
greater consolations.
Our family
is much tried
but God will
out of this
I trust
adduce some
excellence of character.
May his glorious
hand transmute
our sordid metal
to lustrous
gold wear.
Happy here
and under the
kind guardianship
of our heavenly
father,
I trust you will be
blessed at home.
Pray the spirit
of truth
be with you.
May the same
spirit of truth
be with us
and the same
kind guardianship
of our heavenly
father watch over
our ways
and may we know
the same joy
in his service.
Let's pray together.
Lord, we thank you
for the life
of Elizabeth Saunders.
We thank you
for her faithfulness
to you
and we thank you
for the way
that your steadfast
love and kindness
was so just clearly
demonstrated in her life.
We thank you
that you
also care for us
in the same way
you show us
the same faithfulness
and kindness
day by day.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.