LONDON, _May 26, 1875_.
MY DEAR FRIENDS,--This year my letter to you must needs be short, for I
am not able to write much. But good words are always short. The best
words that ever were spoken--Christ’s words--were the shortest. Would
that ours were always the echo of His!
First, then:
What is our one thing needful? To have high principles at the bottom of
all. Without this, without having laid our foundation, there is small
use in building up our details. That is as if you were to try to nurse
without eyes or hands. We know who said, If your foundation is laid in
shifting sand, you may build your house, but it will tumble down. But if
you build it on solid ground, this is what is called being _rooted and
grounded in Christ_.
In the great persecutions in France two hundred years ago (not only of
the Protestants, who came over here and settled in Spitalfields, but of
all who held the higher and more spiritual religion) a noble woman, who
has left her impress on the Christian Church, and who herself endured
two hard imprisonments for conscience’ sake, would receive no
Probationer into her Institution, which was, like ours, for works of
Nursing and for the poor, till the Probationer had well considered
whether she were really rooted and grounded in God himself, and not in
the mere habit of obeying rule and doing her work; whether she could do
without the supports of the example and fellowship of a large and
friendly community, the sympathy and praise of fellow-workers--all good
things in themselves, but which will not carry us through a life like
Christ’s. And I doubt whether any woman whom God is forming for Himself
is not at some time or other of her life tried and tested in this lonely
path.
A French Princess, who did well consider, and who was received into the
said Institution on these conditions, has left us in writing her
experience. And well she showed _where_ she was “rooted and grounded”
through ten after-years of prison and persecution.
We have not to endure these things. Our lot is cast in gentler times.
But I will tell you an old woman’s experience--that I can never remember
a time, and that I do not know a work, which so requires to be rooted
and grounded in God as ours.
You remember the question in the hymn, “Am I His, or am I not?” If I
_am_, this is what is called our “hidden life with Christ in God.” We
all have a “hidden life” in ourselves, besides our outward working life.
If our hidden life is filled with chatter and fancies, our outward
working life will be the fruits of it.
“By their _fruits_ ye shall know them,” Christ says. Christ knows the
good Nurse. It is not the good talker whom Christ knows as the good
Nurse.
If our hidden life _is_ “with Christ in God,” by its fruits, too, it
will be known.
What is it to live “with Christ in God”? It is to live in Christ’s
spirit: forgiving any injuries, real or fancied, from our
fellow-workers, from those above us as well as from those below (alas!
how small our injuries are that we should talk of forgiving!) thirsting
after righteousness, righteousness, _i.e._ doing completely one’s duty
towards all with whom we have to do, towards God above as well as
towards our fellow-nurses, our patients, our matron, home sister, and
instructors; fain to be holy as God is holy, perfect as our Father in
Heaven is perfect in our hospital and training school; caring for
nothing more than for God’s will in this His training; careful for our
sick and fellow-Nurses more than for ourselves; active, like Christ, in
our work; like Christ, meek and lowly in heart in our Wards and “Home”;
peacemakers among our companions, which includes the never repeating
anything which may do mischief; placing our spirits in the Father’s
charge. (“I am the Almighty’s charge,” says the hymn.) _This_ is to live
a life with Christ in God.
You may have heard of Mr. Wilberforce. He it was who, after a long life
of unremitting activity, varied only with disappointment, carried the
Abolition of the Slave Trade, one of England’s greatest titles to the
gratitude of nations. Slavery, as Livingstone said, is the open sore of
the world. (Mr. Clarkson and my grandfather were two of his
fellow-workers.) Some one asked how Mr. Wilberforce did this, and a man
I knew answered, “Because his life was hid with Christ in God.”
Never was there a truer word spoken. And if we, when the time comes for
us to be in charge of Wards, are enabled to “abolish” anything wrong in
them, it can only be in the same way, by our life being hid with Christ
in God. And no man or woman will do great things for God, or even small,
whose “hidden life” is employed in self-complacency, or in thinking over
petty slights, or of what other people are thinking of her.
We have three judges--our God, our neighbour, and ourselves. Our own
judgment of ourselves is, perhaps, generally too favourable: our
neighbour’s judgment of us too unfavourable, except in the case of close
friends, who may sometimes spoil each other. Shall we always remember to
seek _God’s_ judgment of us, knowing this, that it will some day find
us, whether we seek it or not? _He_ knows who is _His_ nurse, and who is
not.
_This_ is laying the “foundation”; _this_ is the “hidden life with
Christ in God” for us Nurses. “Keeping up to the mark,” as St. Paul
says; and nothing else _will_ keep us up to the mark in Nursing.
“Neglect nothing; the most trivial action may be performed to ourselves,
or performed to God.” What a pity that so many actions should be wasted
by us Nurses in our Wards and in our “Home,” when we might always be
doing common things uncommonly well!
Small things _are_ of consequence--small things are of _no_ consequence;
we say this often to ourselves and to each other.
And both these sayings are true.
Every brick is of consequence, every dab of mortar, that it may be as
good as possible in building up your house. A chain is no stronger than
its weakest link: therefore every link is of consequence. And there can
be no “small” thing in Nursing. How often we have seen a Nurse’s life
wrecked, in its usefulness, by some apparently small fault! Perhaps this
is to say that there can be no small things in the nursing service of
God.
But in the service of ourselves, oh! how small the things are! Of no
consequence indeed. How small they will appear to us all some day!
For what does it profit a Nurse if she gain the whole world to praise
her, and lose her own soul in conceit? What does it profit if the
judgment of the whole world is for us Nurses, and God’s is against us?
It is a real danger, in works like these, when all men praise us. We
must then see if we are “rooted and grounded in Christ Himself,” to
nurse as _He_ would have us nurse, as _He_ was in God, to do _His_
Saviour-work. Am I His, or am I not?
It is a real danger, too, if in works like these we do not uphold the
credit of our School. That is _not_ bearing fruit. Can we hope, may we
hope that, at least, some day, Christ may say even to our Training
School, as He did once to His first followers, “Ye are the salt of the
earth”? But oh! if we may hope this, let us never forget for one moment
the terrible conclusion of that verse.
If we can, in the faintest sense, be called “the salt “of God’s nursing
world, let us watch, watch, watch, that we may never lose our “savour.”
One woman, as we well know, may be honoured by God to be “the salt” to
purify a whole Ward. One woman may have lost her “savour,” and a Ward be
left without its “salt,” and untold harm done.
We ought to be very much obliged to our kind Medical Instructor for the
pains he has taken with us, and to show this by our careful attention.
Without this there can be no improvement.
There is a time for all things--a time to be trained, and a time to use
our training. And if we have thrown away the year we have here, we can
hardly recover it. Besides, what a shame it is to come here, as
Probationers, at considerable cost (to others, most of us), and then not
to make our improvement the chief business of our lives, so that at the
end of our year we go away not much better but rather worse than we
came! What account can we give of such a waste of time and
opportunities, of the best gifts of God, to ourselves and to Him? “For
God requireth that which is past.” If, when I was young, there had been
such opportunities of training for Hospital work as you have, how
eagerly I should have made the most of them!
Therefore, “whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy
might”: be earnest in work, be earnest also even in such things as
taking exercise and proper holiday. I say this particularly to future
Matrons and Sisters, for there should be something of seriousness in
keeping our bodies[7] too up to the mark.
Life is short, as preachers often tell us: that is, each stage of it is
apt to come to an end before the work which belongs to it is finished.
Let us
Act that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Let us be in earnest in work: above all, because we believe this life to
be the beginning of another, into which we carry with us what we have
been and done here; because we are working together with God (remember
the Parting Command!) and He is upholding us in our work (remember the
Parting Promise!); because, when the hour of death approaches, we should
wish to think (like Christ) that we have completed life, that we have
finished the work which was given us to do, that we have not lost one of
those, Patients or Nurses, who were entrusted to us.
What was the Parting Command? What was the Parting Promise?
We Nurses have just kept Ascension Day and Whit-Sunday. Shall we Nurses
not remember the Parting Command on Ascension Day--to preach the Gospel
to every creature? And the Parting Promise: “And lo I am with you
always, even unto the end of the world.”
That Command and that Promise were given, not to the Apostles or
Disciples only, but to each and every one of us Nurses: to each to
herself in her own Ward or Home.
Without the Promise the Command could not be obeyed. Without we obey the
Command the Promise will not be fulfilled.
Christ tells us what He means by the Command. He tells us, over and over
again: it is by ourselves, _by what we are in ourselves_, that we are
“to preach the Gospel.” _Not what we say, but what we do_, is the
Preacher. Not saying “Lord, Lord,”--for how many ungodly things are done
and said in the name of God--but “keeping his commandments,” this it is
which “preaches” Him; it is the bearing much “fruit,” not the saying
many words. God’s Spirit leads us rather to be silent than to speak, to
do good works rather than to say fine things or to write them.
Over and over again, and especially in His first and last discourses, He
insists upon this. He takes the sweet little child and places it in our
midst: it was as if He had said, “Ah! that is the best preacher of you
all.” And those who have followed Him best have felt this most.
The most successful preacher the world has probably seen since St.
Paul’s time said, some 300 years ago, it was by _showing an example_,
not by delivering a discourse, that the Apostles’ work was really done,
that the Gospel was really preached. And well did he show his own belief
in this truth. For when all was ready for his mission to convert China
to Christianity, and the plague broke out where he was, he stayed and
nursed the plague.
We can, every one of us here present, though our teaching may not be
much, by our _lives_ “preach a continual sermon, that all who see may
understand.” (These words were found in the last letter, left
unfinished, of a native convert of the “greatest missionary of modern
times,” Bishop Patteson, who was martyred in the South Sea Islands, in
September 1871, and this convert with him. Oh, how he puts us to shame!)
It has happened to me--I daresay it has happened to every one of us--to
be told by a Child-Patient, one who had been taught to say its prayers,
that it “was afraid” to kneel down and “say its prayers” before a whole
ward-full of people. Do we encourage and take care of such a little
child? Shall we, when we have Wards under our own charge, take care that
the Ward is kept so that none at proper times shall be “afraid” to kneel
down and say their prayers? Do we reflect on the immense responsibility
of a Nurse towards her helpless Sick, who depend upon her almost
entirely for quiet, and thought, and order? Do we think that, as was
once said, we are to no one as “rude” as we are to God?
I believe that one of our St. Thomas’ Sisters, who is just leaving us
after years of good work, is going to set up a “Home” for Sick Children,
where, under her, they will be cared for in _all_ ways. I am sure that
we shall all bid her “God speed.” And I know that many of those who have
gone out from among us, and who are now Hospital Sisters or Nurses--they
would not like me to mention their names--do care for their Patients,
Children and all, in _all_ ways. Thank God for it!
When a Patient, especially a child, sees you acting in all things as if
in the presence of God--and none are so quick to observe it--then the
names he or she heard at the Chaplain’s or the Sister’s or the Night
Nurse’s lips become names of real things and real Persons. There _is_ a
God, a Father; there _is_ a Christ, a Comforter; there _is_ a Spirit of
Goodness, of Holiness; there _is_ another world, to such an one.
When a Patient, especially a Child, sees us acting as if there were
_no_ God, then there but too often becomes no God to him. Then words
become to such a child mere words. And remember, that when such a
Nurse--“salt” which has lost its “savour”--speaks to her Patients of
God, she puts _a hindrance_ in their way to keep them _from_ God,
instead of helping them _to_ God. She had better not speak to them at
all.
It is a terrible thought--I speak for myself--that we may _prevent_
people from believing in God, instead of bringing them to “believe in
God the Father Almighty.”
What is it, “setting an example”? An example--_of what_? _Who_ is _our_
example, that we are to set? Christ is our example, our pattern: this we
all know and say. And when this was once said--a very common
word--before a very uncommon man, he said: “When you have your picture
taken, the painter does not try to make it rather like, or not very
unlike. It is not a good picture if it is not _exactly_ like.” Do we try
to be _exactly_ like Christ? If we do not, “are we His, or are we not?”
Could it be said of each one of us: “That Nurse _is_ (or is trying to
be) exactly what Christ would have been in her place”?
Yet this is what every Nurse has to aim at. Aim lower: and you cannot
say then, “Christ is my example.” Aim as high: and, after this life, “we
shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness.”
But this aim cannot be carried out, it cannot even be entertained,
without the Parting Promise. The Parting Promise was fulfilled to the
disciples ten days afterwards, on Whit-Sunday, when the Holy Spirit was
given them--that is, when Christ came as He promised, and was with them.
Christ comes to each Nurse of us all: and stands at our little room-door
and knocks. Do we let Him in?
The Holy Spirit comes, no more with outward show but with no less inward
power, to each Ward and to each Nurse of us all, who is trying to do her
Nursing and her Ward work _in God_, to live her hidden Nurse’s life with
Christ in God.
When your Patient asks you for a drink, you do not give him a stone. And
shall not our Heavenly Father much more give His Spirit to each one of
us, His nurses, when she asks Him? (_Are_ we _His_ nurses?)
What is meant by the Spirit descending upon _us_ Nurses, as it did on
the first Whitsuntide? Is it not to put us in a state to nurse Him, by
making our heart and our will His? (He has really told us that nursing
our Patients is nursing Him.) God asks the _heart_: that is, that we
should consecrate _all_ our self to Him--within as well as without,
_within_ even more than without--in doing the Nursing work He has given
each one of us here to do.
Is it not to have the spirit of love, of courtesy, of justice, of right,
of gentleness, of meekness, in our Training School; the spirit of truth,
of integrity, of energy and activity, of purity, which He _is_, in our
Hospital? This it is to worship God in spirit and in truth. And we need
not wait to go into a church, or even to kneel down at prayer, for
_this_ worship.
Is it not to feel that we desire really nothing for ourselves in our
Nursing life, present and future, but only this, “Thy will be done,” as
we say in our daily prayer? Is it not to trust Him, that _His will_ is
really the best for each one of us? How much there is in those two
words, _His will_--the will of Almighty Wisdom and Goodness, which
always _knows_ what is best for each one of us Nurses, which always
_wills_ what is best, which always _can_ do what it wills for our best.
Is it not to feel that the care and thought of ourselves is lost in the
thought of God and the care of our Patients and fellow-Nurses and
Ward-Maids? Is it not to feel that we are never so happy as when we are
working _with Him_ and _for them_? And we Nurses can always do this, if
we will.
Is not this what Christ meant when He said, “The kingdom of heaven is
within you”? “The kingdom of heaven” consists not in much speaking but
in doing, not in a sermon but in a heart. “The kingdom of heaven” can
_always_ be in a Nurse’s blessed work, and even in her worries. Is not
this what the Apostle meant when he told us to “rejoice in the Lord”?
That is, to rejoice, whether Matrons, or Sisters, or Nurses, or Night
Nurses, in the service of God (which, with us, means good Nursing of the
Sick, good fellowship and high example as relates to our
fellow-workers); to rejoice in the right, whoever does it; to rejoice in
the truth, whoever has it; to rejoice in every good word and work,
whoever it is; to rejoice, in one word, in what God rejoices in.
Let us thank God that some special aids to our spiritual life have been
given us lately, for which I know many of us _are_ thankful; and some of
us have been able to keep this Whitsuntide as we never did before.
One little word more about our Training School. Training “consists in
teaching people to bear responsibilities, and laying the
responsibilities on them as they are able to bear them,” as Bishop
Patteson said of Education. The year which we spend here is generally
the most important, as it may be the happiest, of our lives.
Here we find many different characters. Here we meet on a common stage,
before we part company again to our several posts. If there are any rich
among us, they are not esteemed for their riches. And the poor woman,
the friendless, the lonely woman, receives a generous welcome. Every one
who has any activity or sense of duty may qualify herself for a future
useful life. Every one may receive situations without any reference,
except to individual capacity, and to a kind of capacity which it is
within the power of the most humble and unfriended to work out. Every
one who has any natural kindness or courtesy in her, and who is not too
much wrapped up in herself, may make pleasant friends.
Although we know how many and serious faults we have, ought we not also
to be able to find here some virtues which do not equally flourish in
the larger world?--such as disinterested devotion to the calling we
have chosen, and to which we can here fully give ourselves up without
anxiety; warm-hearted interest in each other, for no one of us stands
here in any other’s way; freedom from jealousy and meanness; a generous
self-denial in nursing our charges, and a generous sympathy with other
Nurses; above all, an interest in our work, and an earnestness in taking
the means given us to improve ourselves in what is to be so useful to
others.
And this is also the surest sign of our improvement in it. This is what
St. Paul calls: “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving
the Lord.”
Always, however, we must be above our work and our worries, keeping our
souls free in that “hidden life” of which it has been spoken.
* * * * *
Above all, let us pray that God will send real workers into this immense
“field” of Nursing, made more immense this year by the opening out of
London _District_ Nursing at the bedside of the sick poor at home. A
woman who takes a sentimental view of Nursing (which she calls
“ministering,” as if she were an angel), is of course worse than
useless. A woman possessed with the idea that she is making a sacrifice
will never do; and a woman who thinks any kind of Nursing work “beneath
a Nurse” will simply be in the way. But if the right woman is moved by
God to come to us, what a welcome we will give her, and how happy she
will soon be in a work, the many blessings of which none can know as we
know them, though we know the worries too! (Good Bishop Patteson used to
talk to his assistants something in this way; would we were like him!)
Nurses’ work means downright work, in a cheery, happy, hopeful, friendly
spirit. An earnest, bright, cheerful woman, without that notion of
“making sacrifices,” etc., perpetually occurring to her mind, is the
real Nurse. Soldiers are sent anywhere, and leave home and country for
years; _they_ think nothing of it, because they go “on duty.” Shall _we_
have less self-denial than they, and think less of “duty” than these
men? A woman with a healthy, active tone of mind, plenty of work in her,
and some enthusiasm, who makes the best of everything, and, above all,
does not think herself better than other people because she is a
“Nightingale Nurse,” that is the woman we want.
(Must I tell you again, what I have had to tell you before, that we have
a great name in the world for--conceit?)
I suppose, of course, that sound religious principle is at the bottom of
her.
Now, if there be any young persons really in earnest whom any of you
could wish to see engaged in this work, if you know of any such, and
feel justified in writing to them, you will be aiding materially in this
work if you will put it in their power to propose themselves as
Candidates.
My every-day thought is--“How will God provide for the introduction of
real Christianity among all of us Nurses, and among our Patients?” My
every-day prayer (and I know that the prayer of many of you is the same)
is that He will give us the means and show us how to use them, and give
us the people. We ask you to pray for us, who have to arrange for you,
as we pray for you, who have to nurse the Patients; and I know you do.
The very vastness of the work raises one’s thoughts to God, as the only
One by whom it can be done. That is the solid comfort--_He knows_. He
loves us all, and our Patients infinitely more than we can. He is, we
trust, sending us to them; He will bless honest endeavours to do His
work among them. Without _this_ belief and support, it seems to me, when
we look at the greatness of the work, and how far, far we fall short of
it, instead of being conceited, we should not have courage to work at
all.
And when we say the words in the Communion Service--“Therefore with
angels and archangels,” do we think whether we are fit company for
angels? It may not be fanciful to believe that “angels and archangels,”
to whom all must seem so different, may see God’s light breaking over
the Nursing Service, though perhaps in our time it may not attain the
perfect day. Only we must work on, and bring no hindrances to that
light. And that not one of us may bring hindrances to that light,
believe me, let us pray daily.
* * * * *
I have been longer than I intended or hoped, and will only say one more
word.
May we each and all of us Nurses be faithful to the end, remembering
this, that no one Nurse stands alone. May we not say, in the words of
the prophet, that it is “The Lord” who “hath gathered” us Nurses
“together out of the lands”? “It is because we do not _praise_ as we
proceed,” said a good and great man, “that our progress is so slow.”
Should not all this Training School be so melted into one heart and
mind, that we may with _one_ heart and mind act and nurse and sing
together our praise and thanksgiving, blessing and gratitude, for
mercies, every one of which seems to belong to the whole School? For
every Nurse alike belongs to the Mother School of which she is a part,
and to the Almighty Father, who has sent her here, and to whom alone we
each and all of us Nurses owe everything we have and are.