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.