Women of Faith

It gathers the writing and life-stories of Christian women who prayed, suffered and dared — mothers, missionaries and mystics, from Guyon's prison cell to a freed slave's pulpit. Its keynote is Proverbs 31:30, "Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised" — worth measured by devotion to God rather than by appearance or acclaim.

Among them are Jeanne Guyon, the French mystic imprisoned for her teaching on prayer; Amanda Berry Smith, born a slave and become an evangelist on four continents; Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles; Hannah Whitall Smith, author of "The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life"; and Amy Carmichael, missionary to India — a range of centuries, nations and callings.

They include Jeanne Guyon's "A Short and Easy Method of Prayer," Amanda Berry Smith's "Autobiography," Hannah Whitall Smith's "The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life," "The God of All Comfort" and "The Unselfishness of God," and Amy Carmichael's "Things as They Are" — works of prayer, testimony and missionary witness that have shaped readers far beyond their own day.

She was born into slavery in Maryland in 1837 and became one of the most widely travelled evangelists of the holiness movement, preaching across the United States, Britain, India and West Africa. A washerwoman by trade and largely self-taught, she went as an independent missionary trusting God for her needs, and her "Autobiography" is a classic record of faith, hardship and joy.

She was the mother of John and Charles Wesley and, through them, a formative influence on the evangelical revival. Raising a large family in a country parsonage, she gave each child ordered instruction and personal spiritual attention, and her disciplined, praying household is often remembered as a seedbed of the awakening that her sons would carry across two nations.

She was a missionary to south India who founded the Dohnavur Fellowship and gave her life to rescuing children from temple servitude. Her book "Things as They Are" told the hard truth of the mission field when readers preferred romance, and "If" distilled her searching vision of Calvary love — the cost of caring for others as Christ cares.

Because the faith of these women — their prayer, endurance and daring — has shaped the church as surely as any preacher's, and their voices are worth hearing together. From the mystic's cell to the mission compound to the family hearth, they show the life of Proverbs 31:30 lived out across centuries and continents: a worth grounded in the fear of the Lord.

Hannah Whitall Smith's "The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life" is a warm and accessible starting point on the life of trust; Amanda Berry Smith's "Autobiography" offers gripping testimony; and Amy Carmichael's "Things as They Are" carries the honest cost of the mission field for those ready to be stirred. Together they open the shelf's range from settled peace to costly devotion.