And to nurse--that is, under Doctor’s orders, to cure or to prevent
sickness and maiming, Surgical and Medical,--is a field, a road, of
which one may safely say: There is no end-no end in what we may be
learning every day.[2]
I have sometimes heard: “But have we not reason to be conceited, when we
compare ourselves to ... and ...?” (naming drinking, immoral, careless,
dishonest Nurses). I will not think it possible that such things can
ever be said among _us_. Taking it even upon the worldly ground, what
woman among us, instead of looking to that which is higher, will of her
own accord compare herself with that which is lower--with immoral women?
Does not the Apostle say: “I count not myself to have apprehended: but
this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, _and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward_ the
mark for the prize of the _high calling_ of God in Christ Jesus”; and
what higher “calling” can we have than Nursing? But then we must “press
forward”; we have indeed _not_ “apprehended” if we have not
“apprehended” even so much as this.
There is a little story about “the Pharisee” known over all Christendom.
Should Christ come again upon the earth, would He have to apply that
parable to us?
And now, let me say a thing which I am sure must have been in all your
minds before this: if, unless we improve every day in our Nursing, we
are going back: how much more must it be, that, unless we improve every
day in our conduct as Christian women, followers of Him by whose name we
call ourselves, we shall be going back?
This applies of course to every woman in the world; but it applies more
especially to us, because we know no one calling in the world, except it
be that of teaching, in which _what we can do_ depends so much upon
_what we are_. To be _a good Nurse_ one must be _a good woman_; or one
is truly nothing but a tinkling bell. To be a good woman at all, one
must be an improving woman; for stagnant waters sooner or later, and
stagnant air, as we know ourselves, always grow corrupt and unfit for
use.
Is any one of us a _stagnant woman_? Let it not have to be said by any
one of us: I left this Home a worse woman than I came into it. I came in
with earnest purpose, and now I think of little but my own satisfaction
and a good place.
When the head and the hands are very full, as in Nursing, it is so easy,
so very easy, if the heart has not an earnest purpose for God and our
neighbour, to end in doing one’s work only for oneself, and not at
all--even when we seem to be serving our neighbours--not at all for them
or for God.
I should hardly like to talk of a subject which, after all, must be very
much between each one of us and her God,--which is hardly a matter for
_talk_ at all, and certainly not for me, who cannot be among you (though
there is nothing in the world I should so dearly wish), but that I
thought perhaps you might like to hear of things which persons in the
same situation, that is, in different Training Schools on the Continent,
have said to me.