Florence Nightingale to Her Nurses: A selection from Miss Nightingale's addresses to probationers and nurses of the Nightingale school at St. Thomas's hospitalNightingale, Florence
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Florence Nightingale to Her Nurses: A selection from Miss Nightingale's addresses to probationers and nurses of the Nightingale school at St. Thomas's hospital
Nightingale, Florence
Nursing -- Education -- 19th century; Nursing -- History -- 19th century; Nursing -- Vocational guidance -- 19th century
What is it, “setting an example”? An example--_of what_? _Who_ is _our_
example, that we are to set? Christ is our example, our pattern: this we
all know and say. And when this was once said--a very common
word--before a very uncommon man, he said: “When you have your picture
taken, the painter does not try to make it rather like, or not very
unlike. It is not a good picture if it is not _exactly_ like.” Do we try
to be _exactly_ like Christ? If we do not, “are we His, or are we not?”
Could it be said of each one of us: “That Nurse _is_ (or is trying to
be) exactly what Christ would have been in her place”?
Yet this is what every Nurse has to aim at. Aim lower: and you cannot
say then, “Christ is my example.” Aim as high: and, after this life, “we
shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness.”
But this aim cannot be carried out, it cannot even be entertained,
without the Parting Promise. The Parting Promise was fulfilled to the
disciples ten days afterwards, on Whit-Sunday, when the Holy Spirit was
given them--that is, when Christ came as He promised, and was with them.
Christ comes to each Nurse of us all: and stands at our little room-door
and knocks. Do we let Him in?
The Holy Spirit comes, no more with outward show but with no less inward
power, to each Ward and to each Nurse of us all, who is trying to do her
Nursing and her Ward work _in God_, to live her hidden Nurse’s life with
Christ in God.
When your Patient asks you for a drink, you do not give him a stone. And
shall not our Heavenly Father much more give His Spirit to each one of
us, His nurses, when she asks Him? (_Are_ we _His_ nurses?)
What is meant by the Spirit descending upon _us_ Nurses, as it did on
the first Whitsuntide? Is it not to put us in a state to nurse Him, by
making our heart and our will His? (He has really told us that nursing
our Patients is nursing Him.) God asks the _heart_: that is, that we
should consecrate _all_ our self to Him--within as well as without,
_within_ even more than without--in doing the Nursing work He has given
each one of us here to do.
Is it not to have the spirit of love, of courtesy, of justice, of right,
of gentleness, of meekness, in our Training School; the spirit of truth,
of integrity, of energy and activity, of purity, which He _is_, in our
Hospital? This it is to worship God in spirit and in truth. And we need
not wait to go into a church, or even to kneel down at prayer, for
_this_ worship.
Is it not to feel that we desire really nothing for ourselves in our
Nursing life, present and future, but only this, “Thy will be done,” as
we say in our daily prayer? Is it not to trust Him, that _His will_ is
really the best for each one of us? How much there is in those two
words, _His will_--the will of Almighty Wisdom and Goodness, which
always _knows_ what is best for each one of us Nurses, which always
_wills_ what is best, which always _can_ do what it wills for our best.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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