One day news reached Kaiserswerth of the deplorable condition of one of the English hospitals in Syria.  Sick and well, it was stated, were crowded together in a place where rubbish of every kind was thrown, an insanitary condition anywhere, but especially so in an Eastern climate.  Helpers, they said, were much needed.  Agnes longed to step into the breach, and in a letter to her mother she says:—­“The English send plenty of money, but hands are wanting.  It is no new thought with me that mine are strong and willing; I would gladly offer them.  Could my own mother bear to think of her child for the next few months as in Syria instead of Germany?  It is but temporary, and yet an urgent case.  My favourite motto came last Sunday, ‘The Lord hath need;’ if He has need of my mother’s permission to her child He will enable her to give it.  This is but the expression of a wish, and if my own mother were to be made too anxious by the granting it, let it be as if unasked by her own Agnes.”

Her standard of filial obedience was indeed a high one, though no higher than the standard of God’s Word.  Before this, in asking permission to remain longer at Kaiserswerth, she had written to her mother:—­“Your wishes shall be my guide, now and for the future, as long as I am blessed with such a loving counsellor.  I trust my present training in obedience will not be lost in reference to home.”

Although she thought the whole training at Kaiserswerth invaluable she wrote long after:—­“I believe all I owe to Kaiserswerth was comprised in the lesson of unquestioning obedience.”  Those who would rule must first learn to obey, and certain it is that she would never have been fitted to be afterwards the head of a large institution hundreds to care for and govern, had she not so truly imbibed the spirit of obedience.

While she had a profound admiration for Kaiserswerth, she could still see that the life of a deaconess, shielded though it is from the world, is not exempt from danger.  Some fancy that the life of a deaconess, or of any one similarly set apart, must be much more free from temptation than that of any ordinary person.  “I think,” she wrote, “every one is as much called on as a deaconess is to work for Him who first loved us; but if this does not constrain us as Christians, neither will it as deaconesses, and certainly the ‘Anstalt’ (Institution) is a world in which the Martha-spirit may be found as well as in the outer world.  There are many most deeply taught Christians here, many whose faces shine, but I should say, comparing my home life (but few have such a home) with that of the deaconesses here, I should say that, in many positions here, there are more, not only daily but hourly temptations.”