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?”