II

Awake, my soul, and with the sun,Thy daily stage of duty run.

Does the thought ever occur to us in the course of the day, that we will correct that particular fault of mind, or heart, or temper, whether slowness, or bustle, or want of accuracy or method, or harsh judgments, or want of loyalty to those under whom or among whom we are placed, or sharp talking, or tale-bearing or gossiping—oh, how common, and how old a fault, as old as Solomon! “He that repeateth a matter, separateth friends;” and how can people trust us unless they know that we arenot tale-bearers, who will misrepresent or improperly repeat what is said to us? Shall we correct this, or any other fault, not with a view to our success in life, or to our own credit, but in order that we may be able to serve our Master better in the service of the sick? Or do we ever seek to carry on the battle against light behaviour, against self-indulgence, against evil tempers (the “world,” the “flesh,” and the “devil”), and the temptations that beset us; conscious that in ourselves we are weak, but that there is a strength greater than our own, “which is perfected in weakness”? Do we think of God as the Eternal, into whose hands our patients, whom we see dying in the Wards, must resign their souls—into whose hands we must resign our own when we depart hence, and ought to resign our own as entirely every morning and night of our lives here; with whom do live the spirits of the just made perfect, with whom do really live,oughtreally as much to live, our spirits here, and who, in the hour of death, in the hour of life, both for our patients and ourselves, must be our trust and hope? We would not always be thinking of death, for “we must live before we die,” and life, perhaps, is as difficult as death. Yet the thought of a time when we shallhave passed out of the sight and memory of men may also help us to live; may assist us in shaking off the load of tempers, jealousies, prejudices, bitternesses, interests which weigh us down; may teach us to rise out of this busy, bustling Hospital world, into the clearer light of God’s Kingdom, of which, indeed, this Home is or might be a part, and certainly and especially this Hospital.

This is the spirit of prayer, the spirit of conversation or communion with God, which leads us in all our Nursing silently to think of Him, and refer it to Him. When we hear in the voice of conscienceHisvoice speaking to us; when we are aware that He is the witness of everything we do, and say, and think, and also the source of every good thing in us; and when we feel in our hearts the struggle against some evil temper, then God is fightingwithus against envy and jealousy, against selfishness and self-indulgence, against lightness, and frivolity, and vanity, for “our better self against our worse self.”

And thus, too, the friendships which have begun at this School may last through life, and be a help and strength to us. For may we not regard the opportunity given for acquiring friends as one of the uses of this place? and Christian friendship,in uniting us to a friend, as uniting us at the same time to Christ and God? Christ called His disciples friends, adding the reason, “because He had told them all that He had heard of the Father,” just as women tell their whole mind to their friends.

But we all know that there are dangers and disappointments in friendships, especially in women’s friendships, as well as joys and sorrows. A woman may have an honourable desire to know those who are her superiors in education, in the School, or in Nursing. Or she may allow herself to drop into the society of those beneath her, perhaps because she is more at home with them, and is proud or shy with her superiors. We do not want to be judges of our fellow-women (for who made thee to differ from another?), but neither can we leave entirely to chance one of the greatest interests of human life.

True friendship is simple, womanly, unreserved: not weak, or silly, or fond, or noisy, or romping, or extravagant, nor yet jealous and selfish, and exacting more than woman’s nature can fairly give, for there are other ties which bind women to one another besides friendship; nor, again, intrusive into the secrets of another woman, or curiousabout her circumstances; rejoicing in the presence of a friend, and not forgetting her in her absence.

Two Probationers or Nurses going together have not only a twofold, but a fourfold strength, if they learn knowledge or good from one another; if they form the characters of one another; if they support one another in fulfilling the duties and bearing the troubles of a Nursing life, if their friendship thus becomes fellow-service to God in their daily work. They may sometimes rejoice together over the portion of their training which has been accomplished, and take counsel about what remains to be done. They will desire to keep one another up to the mark; not to allow idleness or eccentricity to spoil their time of training.

But some of our youthful friendships are too violent to last: they have in them something of weakness or sentimentalism; the feeling passes away, and we become ashamed of them. Or at some critical time a friend has failed to stand by us, and then it is useless to talk of “auld lang syne.” Only still let us remember that there are duties which we owe to the “extinct” friend (who perhaps on some fanciful ground has parted company from us), that we should never speakagainst her, or make use of our knowledge about her. For the memory of a friendship is like the memory of a dead friend, not lightly to be spoken of.

And then there is the “Christian or ideal friendship.” What others regard as the service of the sick she may recognise as also the service of God; what others do out of compassion for their maimed fellow-creatures she may do also for the love of Christ. Feeling that God has made her what she is, she may seek to carry on her work in the Hospital as a fellow-worker with God. Remembering that Christ died for her, she may be ready to lay down her life for her patients.

“They walked together in the house of God as friends”—that is, they served God together in doing good to His sick. For if ever a place may be called the “house of God,” it is a Hospital, if it be what it should be. And in old times itwascalled the “house” or the “hotel” of God. The greatest and oldest Central Hospital of Paris, where is the Mother-house of the principal Order of Nursing Sisters, is to this day called the Hôtel Dieu, the “House of God.”

There may be some amongst us who, like St. Paul, are capable of feeling a natural interest inthe spiritual welfare of our fellow-probationers—or, if you like the expression better, in the improvement of their characters—that they may become more such as God intended them to be in this Hospital and Home. For “Christian friendship is not merely the friendship of equals, but of unequals”—the love of the weak and of those who can make no return, like the love of God towards the unthankful and the evil. It is not a friendship of one or two but of many. It proceeds upon a different rule: “Love your enemies.” It is founded upon that charity “which is not easily offended, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” Such a friendship we may be hardly able to reconcile either with our own character or with common prudence. Yet this is the “Christian ideal in the Gospel.” And here and there may be found some one who has been inspired to carry out the ideal in practice.

“To live in isolation is to be weak and unhappy—perhaps to be idle and selfish.” There is something not quite right in a woman who shuts up her heart from other women.

This may seem to be telling you what you already know, and bidding you do what you are already doing. Well, then, shall we put thematter another way? Make such friendships as you will look back upon with pleasure in later life, and be loyal and true to your friends, not going from one to another.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.

And do not expect more of them than friends can give, or weary them with demands for sympathy; and do not let the womanliness of friendship be impaired by any silliness or sentimentalism; or allow hearty and genial good-will to degenerate into vulgarity and noise.

And as was once truly said, friendship perhaps appears best, as it did in St. Paul, in his manner of rebuking those who had erred, “transferring their faults in a figure to Apollos and to himself.” “No one knew how to speak the truth in love like him.”

It has been said of Romans xii.: “What rule of manners can be better than this chapter?” “She that giveth, let her do it with simplicity”; that is, let us do our acts of Nursing and kindness as if we did not make much of them, as unto the Lord and not to men. “Like-minded onetowards another”; that is, we should have the same thoughts and feelings with others. “Rejoicing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that weep”; going out of ourselves and entering into the thoughts of others.

And have we St. Paul’s extraordinary regard for the feelings of others? He was never too busy to think of these. “If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no more meat while the world standeth,” he says, though he well knew such scruples were really superstitions. If the spirit of these words could find a way to our women’s hearts, we might be able to say, “See how these Christians (Nurses) love one another!”

Then the courtesy we owe, one woman to another: “for the happiness and the good” of our work and our School is not simply “made up of great duties and virtues, nor the evil of the opposite.” But both seem to consist also in a number of small particulars, which, small as they are, have a great effect on the tone and character of our School, introducing light or darkness into the “Home,” sweetness or bitterness into our intercourse with one another.

And, as to our Wards: Christ, we may be sure, did not lose authority, or dignity andrefinement, “even in the company of publicans and harlots,” just as we may observe in the Wards, that there are a few of us whose very refinement makes them do the coarsest and roughest things there with simplicity. A Sister of ours once remarked this of one of her Probationers (who was not a lady in the common sense of the word, but she was the truest gentlewoman in Christ’s sense), that she was too refined (most people would have said, to do the indelicate work of the Wards, butshesaid) to see indelicacy in doing the nastiest thing; and so did it all well, without thinking of herself, or that men’s eyes were upon her. That is real dignity—the dignity which Christ had—on which no man can intrude, yet combined with the greatest gentleness and simplicity of life.

And let me say a word about self-denial: because, as we all know, there can be no real Nursing without self-denial. We know the story of the Roman soldier, above fourteen hundred years ago, who, entering a town in France with his regiment, saw a sick man perishing with cold by the wayside—there were no Hospitals then—and, having nothing else to give, drew his sword, cut his own cloak in half, and wrapped the sick man in half his cloak.

It is said that a dream visited him, in which he found himself admitted into heaven, and Christ saying, “Martin hath clothed me with this garment”: the dream, of course, being a remembrance of the verse, “When saw we thee sick or in prison, and came unto thee?” and of the answer, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” But whether the story of the dream be true or not, this Roman soldier, converted to Christianity, became afterwards one of the greatest bishops of the early ages, Martin of Tours.

Weare not called upon to feed our patients with our own dinners, or to dress them with our own clothes. We are comfortable, and cannot make ourselves uncomfortable on purpose. But we can learn Sick Cookery for our Patients, we can give up spending our money in foolish dressy ways, and thus squandering what we ought to lay by for ourselves or our families.

On one of the severest winter days in the late war between France and Germany, an immense detachment, many thousands, of wretched Frenchprisoners were passing through the poorest streets of one of the largest and poorest German towns on the way to the prisoners’ camp. Every door in this poor “East End” opened; not one remained closed; and out of every door came a poor German woman, carrying in her hand the dinner or supper she was cooking for herself, her husband, or children; often all she had in the house was in her hands. And this she crammed into the hands of the most sickly-looking prisoner as he passed by, often into his mouth, as he sank down exhausted in the muddy street. And the good-natured German escort, whose business it was to bring these poor French to their prison, turned away their heads, and let the women have their way, though it was late, and they were weary too. Before the prisoners had been the first hour in their prison, six had lain down in the straw and died. But how many lives had been saved that night by the timely food of these good women, giving all they had, not of their abundance, but of their poverty, God only knows, not we. This was told by an Englishman who was by and saw it; one of our own “Aid Committee.”

And at a large German station, which almost all the prisoners’ trains passed through, a ladywent every night during all that long, long, dreadful winter, and for the whole night, to feed, and warm, and comfort, and often to receive the last dying words of the miserable French prisoners, as they arrived in open trucks, some frozen to the bottom, some only as the dead, others to die in the station, all half-clad and starving. Some had been nine days and nights in these open trucks; many had been twenty-four hours without food. Night after night as these long, terrible trainsful dragged their slow length into the station, she kneeled on its pavement, supporting the dying heads, receiving their last messages to their mothers; pouring wine or hot milk down the throats of the sick; dressing the frost-bitten limbs; and, thank God, saving many. Many were carried to the prisoners’ hospital in the town, of whom about two-thirds recovered. Every bit of linen she had went in this way. She herself contracted incurable ill-health during these fearful nights. But thousands were saved by her means.

She is my friend.[6]She came and saw me here after this; and it is from her lips I heard the story. Smallpox and typhus raged among theprisoners, most of whom were quite boys. Many were wounded; half were frost-bitten. Sometimes they would snatch at all she brought; but sometimes they would turn away their dying heads from the tempting hot wine, and gasp out, “Thank you, madam; give it tohim, who wants it more than I.” Or, “I’m past help; love to mother.”

Wehave not to give of our own tooursick. But shall we the less give them our all—that is, all our hearts and minds? and reasonable service?

Suppose we dedicated this “School” to Him, to the Divine Charity and Love which said, “Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these my brethren” (and He calls all our patients—all of us, His brothers and sisters) “ye do it unto me”—oh, what a “Kingdom of Heaven” this might be! Then, indeed, the dream of Martin of Tours, the soldier and Missionary-Bishop, would have come true!

May I take this opportunity of saying what I think really very much concerns us? First of all, that you have, or might have, directly andindirectly, a great deal to do with maintaining a supply of good candidates to this School. You know whether you have been happy here or not; you know whether you have had opportunities given you here of training and self-improvement. Many, very many of our old Matrons and Nurses have told me that their time as probationers with us was “the happiest time of their lives.” Itmightbe so with all, though perhaps all do not think so now.

It is in your power to assist the School most materially in obtaining fresh and worthy recruits. There is hardly one of you who has not friends or acquaintances of her own. Yououghtto advertise us. We ought not to have to put one advertisement in the newspapers. If you think this is a worthy life, why do you not bring others to it? I tried to do my part. When Agnes Jones died, though my heart was breaking, I put an article inGood Words, such as I knew she would have wished, in all but the mention of herself; and for years her dear memory brought aspirants to the work in our Schools, or others’ Schools.

To reform the Nursing of all the Hospitals and Workhouse Infirmaries in the world, and toestablish District Nursing among the sick poor at home, too, as at Liverpool—is this not an object most worthy of the co-operation of all civilised people?

In the last ten years, thank God, numerous Training Schools for Nurses have grown up, resolved to unite in putting a stop to such a thing as drunken, immoral, and inefficient Nursing. But all make the same complaint; while the outcry of “employment for women” continues, why does not this most womanly employment for all good women become more sought after? I hope to hear that my old friends in St. Thomas’ have each done their part; and I feel quite sure that if it is once placed before them, as a thing they ought to do, they will be found in the front.

You who are assembled in this room, and who are each connected with some circle, directly or indirectly, may do a good work for the civilisation of the Workhouses and Hospitals of the world. If you inform yourselves on the subject, and if you set yourselves to work, to deal with it, as we do with any other great evil that tortures helpless people, you will be able to act directly upon your friends outside, and ultimately get up an amount of public opinion among women capable of becomingNurses, which will be of the greatest possible aid to our efforts in improving Hospital and Workhouse Nursing. Every one can help—every one—better than if she were a “newspaper,” better than if she were a “public meeting.” I believe that within a few years you can make it a thing that will be a disgrace to any Hospital or even Workhouse to be suspected of bad Nursing, or to any district (in towns, at any rate) not to have a good District Nurse to nurse the sick poor at home.

Those who have made the right use of all the training that came in their way in this School, if they would write to their own homes for the information of their friends outside, an immense help on its way could be given to the work we have all so much at heart. And I look upon it as a certainty that you will each be able, in one way or another, whether purposely or almost unconsciously, to take a great part in reforming the Hospital and Workhouse Nursing systems of our country, perhaps of our colonies and dependencies, and perhaps of the world.

May I pay ourselves even the least little compliment, as to our being a little less conceited than last year? Were we not as conceited in 1872 as it was possible to be? You shall tell. Are we, in 1873, rather less so? And, without having any one particularly in my head—for what I am going to ask is in fact a truism—is not our conceit always in exact proportion to our ignorance? For those who really know something know how little it is.

Would that this could be a “secret” among us! But, unfortunately, is not our name “up” and “abroad” for conceit? And has it not even been said (“tell it not in Gath”): “And these conceited ‘Nightingale’ women scarcely know how to read and write?”

Now let no one look to see our blushes. But shall we not get rid of this which makes us ridiculous as fast as we can?

But enough of this joke; let us be serious, remembering that the greatest trust which is committed to any woman of us all is,herself; and that she is living in the presence of God as well as of her fellow-women.

To know whether we know our Nursingbusiness or not is a great result of training; and to think that we know it when we donotis as great a proof of want of training.

The world, more especially the Hospital world, is in such a hurry, is moving so fast, that it is too easy to slide into bad habits before we are aware. And it is easier still to let our year’s training slip away without forming any real plan of training ourselves.

For, after all, all that any training is to do for us is: to teach us how to train ourselves, how to observe for ourselves, how to think out things for ourselves. Don’t let us allow the first week, the second week, the third week to pass by—I will not say in idleness, but in bustle. Begin, for instance, at once making notes of your cases. From the first moment you see a case, you can observe it. Nay, it is one of the first things a Nurse is strictly called upon to do: to observe her sick. Mr. Croft has taught you how to take notes; and you have now, every one of you, two leisure times a week to work up your notes.

But give but one-quarter of an hour adayto jot down, even in words which no one can understand but yourself, the progress or change of two or three individual cases, not to forget or confusethem. You can then write them out at your two leisure times. To those who have not much education, I am sure that our kind Home Sister, or the Special Probationer in the same Ward, or nearest in any way, will give help. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and “line upon line”—oneline every day—in the steady, observing, humble Nurse has often won the race over the smarter “genius” in what constitutes real Nursing. But few of us women seriously think of improving our own mind or characterevery day. And this is fatal to our improving in Nursing. We do not calculate the future by our experience of the past. What right have we to expect that, if we have not improved during the last six months, we shall during the next six? Then, we do not allow for the changes which circumstances make in us—the being put on Staff duty, when we certainly shall not have more time, but less, for improving ourselves, or the growing older or more feeble in health. We believe that we shall always have the same powers or opportunities for learning our business which we now have. Our time of training slips away in this unimproving manner. And when a woman begins to see how many things might have been better in her, she is too old to change, or it istoo late, too late. And she confesses to herself, or oftener she does not confess—“How all her life she had been in the wrong.”

We are all of us, as we believe, passing into an unknown world, of which this is only a part. We have been here a year, or part of a year. What are we making of our own lives? Are we where we were a year ago? Or are we fitter for that work of after-life which we have undertaken?

Do our faults, and weaknesses, and vanities, tend to diminish? Or are we still listless, inefficient, slow, bustling, conceited, unkind, hard judges of others, instead of helping them where we can? There is no greater softener of hard judgments than is the trying to help the person whom we so judge, as I can tell from my own experience; and in this you will tell me whether we have been deficient to each other. There is a true story told of Captain Marryat when a boy; that he jumped overboard to save an older midshipman who had made the boy’s life a misery to him by his filthy cruelties. And the boy Marryat wrote home to his mother “that he loved this midshipman now—and wasn’t it lucky that his life was saved—even better than his own darling mother.”

Do we keep before our minds constantly thesense of our duty here, of our duty to others—Nurses, Sisters, Matron—as well as to ourselves, our fellow Probationers, and our Home Sister, and to the whole School of which we are members?

If we thought of this more, we might hope to attain that quiet mind and self-control, which is the “liberty” spoken of by St. Paul. We might learn how truly to use and enjoy both our fellow Probationers, and this Home and our School, if we were more anxious about following the example of Christ than about the opinion of our “world.” “We are the ‘world,’ which we often seem to think includes every one butus.”

But few comparatively have the power of disengaging themselves, even in thought, from those about them. They take the view of their own set. If it is the fashion to conceal, they conceal; if to carry tales, they carry tales. There are a few who never allow themselves to speak against others, and exercise such a kind of authority as to prevent others being spoken against in their hearing. These are the “peacemakers” of whom Christ speaks. These are they who keep a Home or Institution together, and seem more than any others in this our little world to bear the image of Christ until His coming again.

Do we ever do things because they are right, without regard to our own credit? When we ask ourselves only “What is right?” or (which is the same question), “What is the will of God?” then we are truly entering His “kingdom.” We are no longer grovelling among the opinions of men and women. We can see God in all things, and all things in God, the Eternal Father shining through the accidents of our lives—which sometimes shake us more, though less conspicuous, than the accidents we see brought into our Surgical Wards—the accidents of the characters of those under whom we are placed, and of our own inner life.

One of the greatest missionaries that ever was, wrote more than 300 years ago to his pupils and fellow-missionaries:

“Self-knowledge”—(the knowledge by which we see ourselves in God)—“self-knowledge is the nurse of confidence in God. It is from distrust of ourselves that confidence in God is born. This will be the way for us to gain that true interior lowliness of mind which, in all places, and especially here, is far more necessary than you think. I warn you also not to let the good opinion which men have of you be too much of a pleasure to you, unless perhaps in order that you may be the moreashamed of yourselves on that account. It is that which leads people to neglect themselves, and this negligence, in many cases, upsets,as by a kind of trick, all that lowliness of which I speak, and puts conceit and arrogance in its place. And thus so many do not see for a long time how much they have lost, and gradually lose all care for piety, and all tranquillity of mind, and thus are always troubled and anxious, finding no comfort either from without or within themselves.”

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” says our Lord, “and I will give you rest.” But He adds immediately who those are to whom He will give this “rest” or quietness of mind—namely those, who, like Himself, are “meek and lowly of heart.”

These words may seem in a Hospital life “like dreams.” But they are not dreams if we take them for the spirit of our School and the rule of our Nursing. “To practise them, to feel them, to make them our own,” this is not far from the “kingdom of Heaven” in a Hospital.

Pray for me, as I do for you, that “piety” and a “quiet mind”—but these always and only in the strenuous effort topress forwards—may be ours.

Florence Nightingale.

July 23rd, 1874.

Anotheryear has passed over us, my dear friends. There have been many changes among us. We have each of us tasted somewhat more of the discipline of life. To some of us it may have been very bitter; to others, let us hope, not so. By all, let us trust, it has been put to heroic uses.

“Heroic?” I think I hear you say; “can there be much of ‘heroic’ in washing porringers and making beds?”

I once heard a man (he is dead now) giving a lesson to some poor orphan girls in an Orphan Asylum. Few things, I think, ever struck me so much, or them. It was on the “heroic virtues.” It went into the smallest particulars of thrift, of duty, of love and kindness; and he ended by asking them how they thought such small people as themselves could manage to practise those great virtues. A child of seven put up its little nib andchirped out: “Please, my lord, we might pick up pins when we don’t like to.” That showed she understood his lesson.

His lesson was not exactly fitted to us, but we may all fit it to ourselves.

This night, if we are inclined to make a noise on the stairs, or to linger in each other’s rooms, shall we go quietly to bed, alone with God? Some of you yourselves have told me that you could get better day sleep in the Night Nurses’ Dormitory than in your own “Home.” Is there such loud laughing and boisterous talking in the daytime, going upstairs to your rooms, that it disturbs any one who is ill, or prevents those who have been on night duty from getting any sleep?

Is that doing what you would be done by—loving your neighbour as yourselves, as our Master told us?

Do you think it is we who invent the duty “Quiet and orderly,” or is it He?

If our uniform dress is not what we like, shall we think of our Lord, whose very garments were divided by the soldiers? (But I always think how much more becoming is our uniform than any other dress I see.)

If there is anything at table that we don’t like,shall we take it thankfully, remembering Who had to ask a poor woman for a drink of water?

Shall we take the utmost pains to be perfectly regular and punctual to all our hours—going into the wards, coming out of the wards, at meals, etc.? And if we are unavoidably prevented, making an apology to the Home Sister, remembering what has been written about those who are in authority over us? Or do we think a few minutes of no consequence in coming from or going to the wards?

Do we carefully observe our Rules?

If wearewhat is printed at the top of our Duties, viz.:

Trustworthy,Punctual,Quiet and orderly,Cleanly and neat,Patient, cheerful, and kindly,

we scarcely need any other lesson but what explains these to us.

Trustworthy: that is, faithful.

Trustworthy when we have no one by to urge or to order us. “Her lips were never opened but to speak the truth.” Can that be said of us?

Trustworthy, in keeping our soul in our hands, never excited, but always ready to lift it up toGod; unstained by the smallest flirtation, innocent of the smallest offence, even in thought.

Trustworthy, in doing our work as faithfully as if our superiors were always near us.

Trustworthy, in never prying into one another’s concerns, but ever acting behind another’s back as one would to her face.

Trustworthy, in avoiding every word that could injure, in the smallest degree, our patients, or our companions, who are our neighbours, remembering how St. Peter says that God made usall“stewards of grace one to another.”

How can we be “stewards of grace” to one another? By giving the “grace” of our good example to all around us. And how can we become “untrustworthy stewards” to one another? By showing ourselves lax in our habits, irregular in our ways, not doing as we should do if our superiors were by. “Cripple leads the way.” Shall the better follow the worse?

It has happened to me to hear some of you say—perhaps it has happened to us all—“Indeed, I only did what I saw done.”

How glorious it would be if “only doing what we saw done” always led us right!

A master of a great public school once said thathe could trust his whole school, because he could trust every single boy in it. Oh, could God but say that He can trust this Home and Hospital because He can trust every woman in it! Let us try this—every woman to work as though success depended on herself. Do you know that, in this great Indian Famine, every Englishman has worked as if success depended on himself? And in saving a population as large as that of England from death by starvation, do you not think that we have achieved the greatest victory we ever won in India? Suppose we work thus for this Home and Hospital.

Oh, my dear friends, how terrible it will be to any one of us, some day, to hear another say, that she only did what she saw us do, if that was on the “road that leadeth to destruction”!

Or taking it another way, how delightful—how delightful to have set another on her journey to heaven by our good example; how terrible to have delayed another on her journey to heaven by our bad example!

There is an old story—nearly six hundred years old—when a ploughboy said to a truly great man, whose name is known in history, that he “advised” him “always to live in such a way that those whohad a good opinion of him might never be disappointed.”

The great man thanked him for his advice, and—kept it.

If our School has a good name, do we live so that people “may never be disappointed” in its Nurses?

Obedient: not wilful: not having such a sturdy will of our own. Common sense tells us that no training can do us any good, if we are always seeking our own way. I know that some have really sought in dedication to God to give up their own wills to His. For if you enter this Training School, is that not in effect a promise to Him to give up your own way for that way which you are taught?

Let us not question so much. Youmustknow that things have been thought over and arranged for your benefit. You are not bound to think us always right: perhaps you can’t. But areyoumore likely to be right? And, at all events, you know youareright, if you choose to enter our ways, to submit yours to them.

In a foreign Training School, I once heard a most excellent pastor, who was visiting there, say to a nurse: “Are youdiscouraged?—say rather, you aredisobedient: they always mean the same thing.” And I thought how right he was. And,what is more, the Nurse thought so too; and she was not “discouraged” ever after, because she gave up being “disobedient.”

“Every one for herself” ought to have no footing here: and these strong wills of ours God will teach. If we do not let Him teach us here, He will teach us by some sterner discipline hereafter—teach our wills to bend first to the will of God, and then to the reasonable and lawful wills of those among whom our lot is cast.

I often say for myself, and I have no doubt you do, that line of the hymn:

Tell me, Thou yet wilt chide, Thou canst not spare,O Lord, Thy chastening rod.

Let Him reduce us to His discipline before it is too late. If we “kick against the pricks,” we can only pray that He will give us more “pricks,” till we cease to “kick.” And it is a proof of His fatherly love, and that He has not given us up, if He does.

For myself, I can say that I have never known what it was, since I can remember anything, not to have “prickly” discipline, more than any one knew of; and I hope I have not “kicked.”

To return toTrustworthiness.

Most of you, on leaving the Home, go first onnight duty. Now there is nothing like night duty for trying our trustworthiness. A year hence you will tell me whether you have felt any temptation not to be quite honest in reporting cases the next morning to your Sister or Nurse: that is, to say you have observed when you have not observed; to slur over things in your report, which, for aught you know, may be of consequence to the patient: to slur over things in your work because there is no one watching you: no one but God.

It has indeed been known that the Night Nurse had stayed in the kitchen to talk; but we may trust such things will not happen again.

And, for all, let usallsay this word for ourselves: everything gets toppled over if we don’t make it a matter of conscience, a matter of reckoning between ourselves and our God. That is the only safeguard of realtrustworthiness. If we treat it as a mere matter of business, of success in our career in life, never shall we give anything but eye-service, never shall we be really trustworthy.

Orderly: Let us never waste anything, even pins or paper, as some do, by beginning letters or resolutions, or “cases,” which they never take the trouble to finish.

Cheerful and Patient: Let us never wish formore than is necessary, and be cheerful when what we should like is sometimes denied us, as it may be some day; or when people are unkind, or we are disregarded by those we love: remembering Him whose attendants at His death were mocking soldiers.

I assure you, my friends, that if we can practise those “duties” faithfully, we are practising the “heroic virtues.”

Patient,cheerful,and kindly: Now, is it being patient, cheerful, and kindly to be so only with those who are so to us? For, as St. Peter tells us, even ungodly people do that. But if we can do good to some one who has done us ill, oh, what a privilege that is! And even God will thank us for it, the Apostle says. Let us be kindest to the impatient and unkindly.

Now let me tell you of two Nurses whom we knew.

One was a lady, with just enough to live upon, who took an old widow to nurse into her house: recommended to her by her minister. One day she met him and reproached him. Why? Because the old widow was “too good”; “anybody could nurseher.” Presently a grumbling old woman, never contented with anything anybody did,who thought she was never treated well enough, and that she never had “her due,” was found. And this old woman the lady took into her house and nursed till she died; because, she said, nobody else liked to do anything for her, andshedid. That was something like kindness, for there is no great kindness in doing good to any one who is grateful and thanks us for it.

But my other story is something much better still.

A poor Nurse, who had been left a widow, with nothing to live upon but her own earnings, inquired for sometedious childrento take care of. As you may suppose, there was no difficulty in finding this article. And from that day, for twenty years, she never had less than two, three, or four orphans with her, and sometimes five, whom she brought up as her own, training them for service. She taught them domestic work, for she herself went out to service at nine years old. She never had any difficulty in finding places for them, and for twenty years she had thus a succession of children. But she taught them something better.

She taught them that they had “nothing but their character to depend upon.” “I tell them,” she said, “it was all I had myself; God helps girlsthat watch over themselves. If a girl isn’t made to feel this early, it’s hard afterwards to make her feel it.”

These girls, so brought up, turned out much better than those brought up in most large Union schools, for asylums are not like homes. Of the children whom Nurse took in, one was a girl of such bad habits and such a mischief-maker that no one else could manage her. But Nurse did. She soon found she could not refuse boys. One was a boy of fourteen, just out of prison for bad ways, whom she took and reclaimed, and who became as good a boy as can be. These are only two specimens.

They called her “Mother.” And God, she used to say, gave them to her as her own. You will ask how she supported them. The larger number of them she supported by taking in washing, by charing one day a week, and bye and bye, by taking in journeymen as lodgers. Now and then a lady would pay for an orphan. Once she took in a sailor’s five motherless children for 5s. a week from the father: but she has taken in apprentices as lodgers, whose own fathers could not afford to keep them for their wages.

All this time she washed for a poor sick Irishwoman, who never gave her any thanks but that“the clothes were not well washed, nor was anything done as it ought to be done.” Yet she took in this woman’s child of two years old as her own, till the father came back, when he gave up drink and claimed it.

Every Friday she gave her earnings to some poor women, who bought goods with the money, which they sold again in the market on Saturday, and returned her money to her on Saturday night. She said she never lost a penny by this: and it kept several old women going.

She must have been a capital manager, you will say. Well, till she took in lodgers, she lived in a cellar which she painted with her own hands, and kept as clean as a new pin. Afterwards she let her cellar for 2s. a week, though she might have got 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week for it, because, she said, “the poor should not be hard on one another.” Milk she never tasted; meat seldom, and then she always stewed, never roasted it. She lived on potatoes, and potato pie was the luxury of herself and children.

On Sundays she filled her pot of four gallons and made broth: sometimes for six or eight poor old women besides her own family, as she called her orphans.Thesemust be satisfied with what sheprovided, little or much. She never let them touch what was sent her for her patients. Sometimes good things were sent her, which she always gave to sick neighbours; yet she has been accused of keeping for herself nice things sent to her care for others. She never owed a penny, for all her charity.

If this Nurse has not practised the “heroic virtues,” who has?

I mentioned this Nurse merely as an instance of one who literally fulfilled the precept to “do good” to them that “despitefully use you”: to be “patient, cheerful, and kindly.” There is no time to tell you how she was left a widow with two infants and a blind and insane mother, whom she kept till doctors compelled her to put her mother into a lunatic asylum: how one of her sons was a sickly cripple, whom she nursed till he died, working by day and sitting up with him at night for years: how the other boy was insane, and ran away: how, to ease her broken mother’s heart, she returned to sick-nursing, chiefly among the poor, nursed through two choleras, till her health broke down, and, by way of taking care of herself, then took up the “tedious” orphan system, which she never ceased. She felt, she said, as ifshe were doing something then for her “own dear boy.” As soon as she lived in a poor house of four rooms and an attic, she has had as many as ten carpenters’ men of a night, who had nowhere but the public-house to go to. She gave them a good fire, borrowed a newspaper for them, and made one read aloud. They brought her sixpence a week, and she laid it all out in supper for them, and cooked it. She gave the only good pair of shoes she had to one of these, because “he must go to work decent!”

She was a famous sick cook, often carrying home fish-bones to stew them for the sick, who seldom thanked her; and the remains of damsons and currants, to boil over again as a drink for fever patients: who sometimes accused her of keeping back things sent for them.

“How much more the Lord has borne from me,” she used to say.

And of children she used to say: “We never can train up a child in the way it should go till we take it in our arms, as Jesus did, and feel: ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven’; and that there is a ‘heavenly principle’ (a ‘little angel,’ I think she said) in each child to be trained up in it.”

She said she had learnt this from the master in a factory where she had once nursed.

(How little he knew that he had been one means of forming this heroic Nurse.)

And now I have a word for the Ladies, and a word for the Nurse-Probationers. Which shall come first?

Do the ladies follow up their intellectual privileges? Or, are they lazy in their hours of study? Do they cultivate their powers of expression in answering Mr. Croft’s examinations?

Ought they not to look upon themselves as future leaders—as those who will have to train others? And to bear this in mind during the whole of their year’s training, so as to qualify themselves for being so? It is not just getting through the year anyhow, without being blamed. For the year leaves a stamp on everybody—this for the Nurses as well as the Ladies—and once gone can never be regained.

To the Special Probationers may I say one more word?

Do we look enough into the importance ofgiving ourselves thoroughly to study in the hours of study, of keeping carefulNotes of Lectures, of keeping notes of all type cases, and of cases interesting from not being type cases, so as to improve our powers of observation—all essentialif we are in future to have charge? Do we keep in view the importance of helping ourselves to understand these cases by reading at the time books where we can find them described, and by listening to the remarks made by Physicians and Surgeons in going round with their Students? (Take a sly note afterwards, when nobody sees, in order to have a correct remembrance.)

So shall we do everything in our power to become proficient, not only in knowing the symptoms and what is to be done, but in knowing the “Reason Why” of such symptoms, andwhysuch and such a thing is done; and so on, till we can some dayTRAIN OTHERSto know the “reason why.”

Many say: “We have no time; the Ward work gives us no time.”

But it is so easy to degenerate into a mere drudgery about the Wards, when we have goodwill to do it, and are fonder of practical work than of giving ourselves the trouble of learning the“reason why.” Take care, or the Nurses, some of them, will catch you up.

Take ten minutes a day in the Ward to jot down things, and write them out afterwards: come punctuallyfromyour Ward to have time for doing so.It is far better to take these ten minutes to write your cases or to jot down your recollections in the Ward than to give the same ten minutes to bustling about.I am sure the Sisters would help you to get this time if you asked them: and also toleavethe Ward punctually.

And do you not think this a religious duty?

Such observations are a religious meditation: for is it not the best part of religion to imitate the benevolence of God to man? And how can you do this—in this your calling especially—if you do not thoroughly understand your calling? And is not every study to do this a religious contemplation?

Without it,May you not potter and cobble about the patients without ever once learning the reason of what you do, so as to be able to train others?

(I do not say anything about the “cards,” for I take it for granted that you can read them easily.)

Our dear Matron, who is always thinking ofarranging for us, is going to have a case-paper with printed headings given to you, and to keep this correctly ought to be a mere every-day necessity, and a very easy one, for you.

2. And for the Nurses:

They are placed, perhaps here only, on a footing of equality with educated gentlewomen. Do they show their appreciation of this by thinking, “We are as good as they”? Or, by obedience and respect, and trying to profit by the superior education of the gentlewomen?

Both we have known; we have known Nurse-Probationers who took the Ladies “under their protection” in saving them the harder work, and the Ladies have given them the full return back in helping them in their education.

And we have known—very much the reverse.

Also, do the Nurse-Probationers take advantage of their opportunities, in the excellent classes given them by the Home Sister, in keeping diaries and some cases?

Very few of the Nurse-Probationers have taken notes of Mr. Croft’s Lectures at all; it is not fair to Mr. Croft to give him people who do not benefit by his instruction.

3. And I have another word to say:

Are there parties in our Home?

Could we but benotso tenacious of our own interests, but look at the thing in a larger way!

Is there a great deal of canvassing and misinterpreting Sisters and Matron and other authorities? every little saying and doing of theirs? talking among one another about the superiors (and then finding we were all wrong when we came to know them better)?

We must all of us know, without being told, that we cannot be trained at all, if in training this will of our own is not kept under.

Do not question so much. Does not a spirit of criticism go with ignorance? Are some of you in all the “opposition of irresponsibility”? Some day, when you are yourselves responsible, you will know what I mean.

Now could not the Ladies help the Nurse-Probationers in this: (1) in never themselves criticising; and (2) in saying a kindly word to check it when it is done?

Let me tell you a true story about this.

In a large college, questions—about things which the students could but imperfectly understand in the conduct of the college—had become too warm. The superintendent went into the hallone morning, and after complimenting the young men on their studies, he said: “This morning I heard two of the porters, while at their work, take up a Greek book lying on my table; one tried to read it, and the other declared it ought to be held upside down to be read. Neither could agree whichwasupside down, but both thought themselves quite capable of arguing about Greek, though neither could read it. They were just coming to fisticuffs, when I sent the two on different errands.”

Not a word was added: the students laughed and retired, but they understood the moral well enough, and from that day there were few questions or disputes about the plans and superiors of the college, or about their own obedience to rules and discipline.

Do let us think of the two porters squabbling whether the Greek book was to be read upside down, when we feel inclined to be questioning about “things too high for us.”

We are constantly making mistakes in our judgment of our little world. We fancy that we have been harshly treated or misunderstood. Or we cannot bear our fellow-Probationers to laugh at us.

Believe me, there will come a time when all such troubles will simply seem ridiculous to us, and we shall be unable to imagine how we could ever have been the victims of them. (One of your number told me this herself. She has left St. Thomas’ for another post.) Let us not brood or sentimentalise over them. They should be met in a common-sense way. How much of our time has been spent in grieving over these trifles, how little in the real sorrow for sin, the real struggle for improvement.

4. As for obedience to rules and our superiors: “True obedience,” said one of the most efficient people who ever lived, “obeys not only the command, but also the intention” of those who have a right to command us. Of course, this is a truism: the thing is,how to do it. As it is a struggle, it requires a brave and intrepid spirit, which helps us to rise above trifles and look to God, and His leadings for us. Oh, when death comes, how sorry we shall be to have watched others so much and ourselves so little; to have dug so much in the field of others’ consciences and left our own fallow! What should we say of a “Leopold” Nurse who should try to nurse in “Edward” Ward, and neglect her own “Leopold”?Well, that is what we do. Or who should wash her patients’ hands and not her own?

It is of ourselves and not of others that we must give an account. Let us look to our own consciences as we do to our own hands, to see if they are dirty.

We take care of our dress, but do we take care of our words?

It is a very good rule to say and do nothing but what we can offer to God. Now we cannot offer Him backbiting, petty scandal, misrepresentation, flirtation, injustice, bad temper, bad thoughts, jealousy, murmuring, complaining. Do we ever think that we bear the responsibility of all the harm we do in this way?

Look at that busybody who fidgets, gossips, makes a bustle, always wanting to domineer, always thinking of herself, as if she wanted to tell the sun to get out of her way and let her light the world in its place, as the proverb says.

And when we might do all our actions and say all our words as unto God!

So many imperfections; so many thoughts of self-love; so many selfish satisfactions that we mix with our best actions! And when we might offer them all to God. What a pity!

5. One word more for the Ladies, or those who will have to train and look after others.

What must she be who is to be a Ward or “Home” Sister?

We see her in her nobleness and simplicity: being, not seeming: without name or reward in this world: “clothed” in her “righteousness” merely, as the Psalms would say,notin her dignity: often having no gifts of money, speech, or strength: but never preferring seeming to being.

And if she rises still higher, she will find herself, in some measure, like the Great Example in Isaiah 1iii., bearing the sins and sorrows of others as if they were her own: her counsels often “despised and rejected,” yet “opening not her mouth” to be angry: “led as a lamb to the slaughter.”

She who rules best is she who loves best: and shows her love not by foolish indulgence to those of whom she is in charge, but by taking a real interest in them for their own sakes, and in their highest interests.

Her firmness must never degenerate into nervous irritability. And for this end let me advise you when you become Sisters, always totake your exercise time out of doors, your monthly day out, and your annual holiday.

Be a judge of the work of others of whom you are in charge, not a detective: your mere detective “is wonderful at suspicion and discovery,” but is often at fault, foolishly imagining that every one is bad.

The Head-Nurse must have been tested in the refiner’s fire, as the prophets would say: have been tried by many tests: and have come out of them stainless, in full command of herself and her principles: never losing her temper.

She never nurses well till she ceases to command for the sake of commanding, or for her own sake at all: till she nurses only for the sakes of those who are nursed. This is the highest exercise of self-denial; but without it the ruin of the nursing, of the charge, is sure to come.

Have we ever known such a Nurse?

She must be just, not unjust.

Now justice is the perfect order by which every woman does her own business, and injustice is where every woman is doing another’s business. This is the most obvious of all things: and for that very reason has never been found out. Injustice is the habit of being a busybody and doinganother woman’s business, which tries to rule and ought to serve: this is the unjust Nurse.

Prudence is doing your nursing most perfectly: aiming at the perfect in everything: this is the “seeking God and His righteousness” of the Scriptures.

And must not each of us be a Saviour, rather than a ruler: each in our poor measure? Did the Son of God try to rule? Oh, my friends, do not scold at women: they will be of another mind if they are “gently entreated” and learn to know you. Who can hate a woman who loves them? Or be jealous of one who has no jealousy? Who can squabble with one who never squabbles? It is example which converts your patients, your ward-maids, your fellow-Nurses or charges: it is example which converts the world.

And is not the Head-Nurse or Sister there, not that she may do as she likes, but that she should serve all for the common good of all? The one worst maxim of all for a future Matron, Sister, or Nurse is “to do as I like”: thatisdisorder, not rule. It is giving power to evil.

Those who rule must not be those who are desirous to rule.

She who is best fitted is often the least inclinedto rule: but if the necessity is laid upon her, she takes it up as a message from God. And she must no longer live in her own thoughts, making a heaven or hell of her own. For if she does not make a heaven for others, her charge will soon become something else.

She must never become excited: and therefore I do impress upon you regularity and punctuality, and never to get hurried. Those often get most excited who are least in earnest. She who is fierce with her Nurses, her patients, or her ward-maid, is not truly above them: she is below them: and, although a harsh ward-mistress to her patients or Nurses, has no real superiority over them.

There is no impudence like that of ignorance. Each night let us come to a knowledge of ourselves before going to rest: as the Psalm says: “Commune with your own heart upon your bed,and be still.” Is it possible that we who live among the sick and dying can be satisfied not to makefriendswithGodeach night?

The future Sister should be neither mistress nor servant, but thefriendof every woman under her. If she is mistress of others when she is not mistress of herself, her jealous, faithless tempergrows worse with command (oh, let not this be the case with any of us!)—wanting everything of everybody, yet not knowing how to get it of anybody. Always in fear, confusion, suspicion, and distraction, she becomes more and more faithless, envious, unrighteous, the cause of wretchedness to herself and others. She who has no control over herself, who cannot master her own temper, how can she be placed over others, to control them through the better principle? But she who is the most royal mistress of herself is the only woman fit to be in charge.

For this is the whole intention of training, education, supervision, superintendence: to give self-control, to train or nurse up in us a higher principle; and when this is attained, you may go your ways safely into the world.

But she who nurses, and does not nurse up in herself the “infant Christ,” who should be born again in us every day, is like an empty syringe—it pumps in only wind.

The future Sister must be not of the governessing but of the Saviour turn of mind.

Let her reason with the unjust woman who is not intentionally in error. She must know how to give good counsel, which will advise what isbest under the circumstances; not making a lament, but finding a cure; regardingthatonly as “bettering” their situation whichmakes them better. She must know and teach “how to refuse the evil and choose the good,” as Isaiah says.

She must have an iron sense of truth and right for herself and others, and a golden sense of love and charity for them.

When a future Sister unites the power of command with the power of thought and love, when she can raise herself and others above the commonplaces of a common self without disregarding any of our common feelings, when she can plan and effect any reforms wanted step by step, without trying to precipitate them into a single year or month, neither hasting nor delaying: that is indeed a “Sister.”

The future Sister or Head must not see only a little corner of things, her own petty likes and dislikes; she must “lift up her eyes to the hills,” as David says. She must know that there is a greater and more real world than her own littlenesses and meannesses. And she must be not only the friend of her Nurses, but also, in her measure, the angel whose mission is to reconcile her Nurses to themselves, to each other, and to God.

Now let us not each of us think how this fits on to her neighbour, but how it fits on to oneself.

Shall I tell you what one of you said to me after I last addressed you?—“Do you think we are missionaries?”

I answer, that you cannot help being missionaries, if you would. There are missionaries for evil as well as for good. Can you help choosing? Must you not decide whether you will be missionaries for good, or whether for evil, among your patients and among yourselves?

And, first, among your patients:

Hospital Nurses have charge of their patients in a way that no other woman has charge; in the first place, no other woman is in charge really of grown-up men. Oh, how careful she ought to be, especially the Night Nurse, to show them what a true woman can be! The acts of a nurse are keenly scrutinised by both old and young patients. If she is not perfectly pure and upright, depend upon it, they know.

Also, a Hospital Nurse is in charge of people in their sick and feeble, anxious and dying hours, when they are singularly alive to impressions. Sheleaves her stamp upon them, whether she will or no. And this applies almost more to the Night Nurse than to the Day Nurse.

Lastly, if she have children-patients, she is absolutely in charge of these, who come, perhaps for the first and the last time of their lives, under influence.

So many pass by a child without notice. A whole life of happiness or wretchedness may turn upon an act of kindness to it—a good example set it. A poor woman once said of a child of hers under just these circumstances: “The Sister set its face heavenwards: and it never looked back.” Do we ever set their faces the other way? The child she spoke of when it was dying actually gave its halfpence, which it had saved for something for itself, for another dying child “who had nobody.” I callthatpractising the “heroic virtues,” if ever there were such. And that was done under just such an influence as we have been speaking of.

On the other hand, do you know anything in its way more heinous than a Nurse, who to the sick and tiresome child might be like an angel “to set its face heavenward” by her sympathy with it, and who, by her own bad habits or bad temper, by her unfairness, by her unkindness or injustice, byher coarseness or want of uprightness, sets it the other way?

A very good man once said that in each little Hospital patient, he saw not only a soul to be saved, but many other souls that might possibly be committed to this one: for the poor can do so much among one another: do what no others going among them can do. Every child is of the stuff out of which Home Missionaries may be made, such as God chooses from the ranks that have furnished his best recruits.

The Apostles were fishermen and workmen.

David Livingstone was a cotton-mill piecer. In each little pauper waif he saw one destined to carry a godly example (or the reverse) where none but they could carry it—into godless and immoral homes.

We will not repeat here, because we are so fully persuaded of it, that a woman, especially a Nurse, must be a missionary,notas a minister or chaplain is, but by the influence of her own character, silent but not unfelt.

It was this, far more than any words, that gave his matchless influence to David Livingstone, whose body, brought upwards of 1500 miles through pathless deserts by his own negro servants—sucha heroic feat as Christians never knew before—was buried this spring in Westminster Abbey. Some of us knew him: one of our Probationers was with him and his wife, who died in 1862, and Bishop Mackenzie, at their Mission Station in Africa. He was such a traveller and missionary as we shall never see again perhaps. But what he was in influence each of us may be, if we please, in our little sphere.

A Nurseislike a traveller, from the quantity of people who pass before her in the ever-changing wards. And she is like a traveller also in this, that, as Livingstone used to say, either the vices or the virtues of civilisation follow the footsteps of the traveller, and he cannot help it. So they do those of the Nurse. And missioning will be, whether she will or no, the background of her nursing, as it is the background of travelling. The traveller may call himself a missionary or not, as he likes. Heisone, for good or for evil. So is the Nurse.

Livingstone used to say that we fancy a missionary a man with a Bible in his hand and another in his pack. He then went on to say what a real missionary must be in himself to have influence. And he added: “If I had once beensuspected of a single act of want of purity or uprightness the negroes would never have trusted me again. No, not even the least pure or the least upright of the negroes. And any influence of mine would have been gone for ever.” What his influence was, even after his death, you know.

Then you must be missionaries, whether you will or no, among one another.

We need only think of the friendships that are made here. Will you be a missionary of good or of evil to your friend? Will you be a missionary of indifference, selfishness, lightness of conduct, self-indulgence? Or a missionary—to her and to your patients—of religious and noble devotion to duty, carried out to the smallest thing?

Will you be a “hero” in your daily work, like the dying child giving its hard-saved halfpence to the yet poorer child?

Livingstone always remembered that a poor old Scotchman on his death-bed had said to him: “Now, lad, make religion theevery-daybusiness of your life, not a thing of fits and starts; for if you do not, temptation and other things will get the better of you.”

Such a Nurse—one who makes religion the “every-day business of her life,”isa “Missionary,”even if she never speak a word. One who does not is a missionary foreviland not for good, though she may say many words, have many good texts at the end of her tongue, or, as Livingstone would say, a Bible in her hand and a Bible at her back.

Believe me, who have seen a good deal of the world, we may give you an institution to learn in, but it is You must furnish the “heroic” feeling of doing your duty, doing your best, without which no institution is safe, without which Training Schools are meat without salt.Youmust be our salt, without which civilisation is but corruption, and all churches only dead establishments.

Shall I tell you what one of the most famous clergymen that ever lived said? That, in order to manage people, and especially children, well, it was necessary to speak more of them to God than of God to them. If a famous preacher said that, how much more must a woman?

Another learned clergyman, who was also the best translator of the Bible (in a foreign language), said: “Prayer, rather than speech must be relied upon for the reform of any little irregularities: for only through prayer could the proper momentfor speech become known.” If a great leader of mankind said that, how much more should a Nurse?

I must end: and what I say now I had better have said: and nothing else.

What are we without God? Nothing.

“Father, glorify Thy name!” How is His name glorified?Weare His glory, when we follow His ways. Then we are something.

What is the Christian religion? To be like Christ.

And what is it to be like Christ? To be High Church, Low Church, Dissenter, or orthodox? Oh, no. It is: to live for God and have God for our object.

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