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 to God; 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 us all “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 that he 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.