My Sisters in Christ, cultivate this habit of surrendering your will in trifling matters to God. You must know by experience that the discipline of an Institution like this is by no means a security against the little crosses and contradictions of daily life. A task falls to your lot which is not that which you like best, or think yourself most fit for. Or, a patient is discontented and hard to please, peevish in the course of convalescence, and apparently unmindful of the kindness you are showing her. Or, there is some collision of tempers between Sisters of very different characters. Or, there is some cause of anxiety connected with your absent family, which weighs heavily upon your mind, and tempts you to collapse into a mechanical performance of your duties. Now these and the like circumstances may all be accepted devoutly as the little cross—the cross exactly fitted to your stature and strength—which your Divine Master bids you take up and carry after Him. Pray and try to embrace it as His choice for you. Say in your heart, when the stress of the trial is painfully felt, “This is the Will of God in Christ Jesus concerning me;” and give God thanks for it, as for all the incidents of your lot. Not the Will of God simply, but the Will of God _in Christ Jesus_ concerning me; a Will therefore of infinite Love and Grace, reaching me as it does through the avenue of my Saviour’s Mediation. Practise this with prayer continually; and the gradual result will be a growing suavity and equableness of spirit, which cannot be disturbed even by great reverses. And there is no part of the Christian Example which tells more upon others than this suavity and equableness. A mind which (though all its susceptibilities are alive) cannot be thrown into disorder or robbed of its serenity by troubles, makes itself felt by all who come within the range of its influence as a heavenly mind. It is St. Peter’s shadow falling on a fever patient. * * * * *