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?