Preface [5-6]
“There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.” – 1 Cor. Xii. 4.
The reader of the ensuing papers – who will find among the Christian heroines therein commemorated a remarkable diversity in character, hardly two individuals resembling each other very closely in natural gifts or natural disposition – can scarcely, I think, help remarking at the same time a singular and beautiful resemblance in the moral dignity and the enthusiastic self-devotion exemplified by all. In the extent and the permanence of their usefulness they differed almost as widely as in position. But princess and peasant, mother and maiden, matron and nun, however unlike in other points, are one in that impassioned devotion to their common Lord, through which the likeness of His heavenly self-sacrificing love passed upon them, impelling them to spend strength and life in toils beyond all earthly recompense. [6] The likeness, strangely stamped on individualities so unlike, tells of the superhuman power that wrought it; and it is a truer and more convincing miracle than any superstitiously attributed to the canonised saints, whose real, and not mythical, saintliness has determined their position in our list.
Contents
The Mother of AugustineMonnica – Born, A.D. 331; Died, A.D. 387 11
A Teacher of Great Men
St. Hilda, Abbess of Whitby – Born, probably, A.D. 614; Died, A.D. 680 41
Saint and Civiliser
St. Margaret of Scotland – Died, A.D. 1093 59
The Heroine of “The Saint’s Tragedy”
St. Elizabeth of Hungary – Born, probably, 1205; Died, 1231 77
The Peasant Patriot-Martyr
The Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc (Jeanne Darc) – Born, 1411; Died, 1431 109
A Reforming Queen
Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre – Born, 1528; Died, 1572 149
A Lily among Thorns
Lady Jane Gray – Born, 1573; Died, 1554 183
An Elect Lady
Selina, Countess of Huntingdon – Born, 1707; Died 1791 209
The Angel of the Prisons
Elizabeth Fry – Born, 1780; Died 1845 227
A Friend of the Friendless
Mary Carpenter – Born, 1807; Died, 1877 247
A Sister of Mercy in the Nineteenth Century
Amélie de Lasaulx (Sister Augustine) – Born, 1815; Died 1872 263