The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir
History
The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2
Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir
Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910
submit, I resign myself," she wrote in one of hundreds of similar
meditations, "I accept with all my heart this stretching out of Thy hand
to save me: Deal with me as Thou seest meet: Thy work begin, Thy work
complete. O how vain it is, the vanity of vanities, to live in men's
thoughts, instead of God's." And again: "Wretch that I was not to see
that God was taking from me all human help in order to compel me to lean
on Him alone." She had little interest in rites and ceremonies as such,
and she interpreted the doctrines of Christianity in her own way; but
she found great comfort in the Communion Service, as an expression of
the individual believer's participation in the sufferings and the
triumph of the greatest of the Mystics. For some years she entered in
her diary a text from the mystical writers for each day. She took to
herself their devotion, their communion with God, their self-surrender;
she adjusted their doctrine to her own beliefs. "I believe," she wrote,
"in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. And in Jesus
Christ, His best son, our Master, who was born to show us the way
through suffering to be also His sons and His daughters, His handmen and
His handmaidens, who lived in the same spirit with the Father, that we
may also live in that Holy Spirit whose meat was to do His Father's will
and to finish His work, who suffered and died saying, 'That the world
may love the Father.' And I believe in the Father Almighty's love and
friendship, in the service of man being the service of God, the growing
into a likeness with Him by love, the being one with Him in will at
last, which is Heaven. I believe in the plan of Almighty Perfection to
make us all perfect. And thus I believe in the Life Everlasting."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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