II
And this brings me to something else. (I can always correct others though I cannot always correct myself.) It is about jealousies and punctilios as to ranks, classes, and offices, when employed in one good work. What an injury this jealous woman is doing, not to others, or not to others so much as to herself; she is doing it to herself! She is not getting out of her work the advantage, the improvement to her own character, the nobleness (for to be useful is the only true nobleness) which God has appointed her that work to attain. She is not getting out of her work what God has given it her for; but just the contrary.
(Nurses are not children, but women; and if they can’t do this for themselves, no one can for them.)
I think it is one of Shakespeare’s heroes who says “I laboured to be wretched.” How true that is! How true it is of some people all their lives; and perhaps there is not one of us who could not say it with truth of herself at one time or other: I laboured to be mean and contemptible and small and ill-tempered, by being revengeful of petty slights.
A woman once said: “What signifies it to me that this one does me an injury or the other speaks ill of me, if I do not deserve it? The injury strikes God before it strikes me, and if He forgives it, why should not I? I hope I love Him better than I do myself.” This may sound fanciful; but is there not truth in it?
What a privilege it is, the work that God has given us Nurses to do, if we will only let Him have His own way with us—a greater privilege to my mind than He has given to any woman (except to those who are teachers), because we can always be useful, always “ministering” to others, real followers of Him who said that He came “not to be ministered unto” but to minister. Cannot we fancy Him saying to us, If any one thinks herself greater among you, let her minister unto others.
This is not to say that we are to be doing other people’s work. Quite the reverse. The very essence of all good organisation is that everybody should do her (or his) own work in such a way as to help and not to hinder every one else’s work.
But this being arranged, that any one should say, I am “put upon” by having to associate with so-and-so; or by not having so-and-so to associate with; or, by not having such a post; or, by having such a post; or, by my Superiors “walking upon me,” or, “dancing” upon me (you may laugh, but such things have actually been said), or etc., etc.,—this is simply making the peace of God impossible, the call of God (for in all work He calls us) of none effect; it is grieving the Spirit of God; it is doing our best to make all free-will associations intolerable.
In “Religious Orders” this is provided against by enforcing blind, unconditional obedience through the fears and promises of a Church.
Does it not seem to you that the greater freedom of secular Nursing Institutions, as it requires (or ought to require) greater individual responsibility, greater self-command in each one, greater nobleness in each, greater self-possession in patience—so, that very need of self-possession, of greater nobleness in each, requires (or ought to require) greater thought in each, more discretion, and higher, not less, obedience? For the obedience of intelligence, not the obedience of slavery, is what we want.