Part 5

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 doing another 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”: that _is_ disorder, 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 inclined to 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 make _friends_ with _God_ each night?

The future Sister should be neither mistress nor servant, but the _friend_ of every woman under her. If she is mistress of others when she is not mistress of herself, her jealous, faithless temper grows 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 is best under the circumstances; not making a lament, but finding a cure; regarding _that_ only as “bettering” their situation which _makes 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.

III

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. She leaves 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 call _that_ practising 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, by her 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, _not_ as 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--such a 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 Nurse _is_ like 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. He _is_ one, 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 been suspected 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 the _every-day_ business 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,” _is_ a “Missionary,” even if she never speak a word. One who does not is a missionary for _evil_ and 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. _You_ must 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 moment for 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? _We_ are 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.

IV

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.