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? 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.