Elizabeth Saunders

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.