undertake the office are qualified to perform it? We think the latter question is more easily answered than the former. Popular opinion and private experience give us some insight into the true state of the case, and a very discouraging and unsatisfactory insight we fear it is. Yet there seems to be every motive that nature and humanity can suggest to encourage us all to a right performance of this duty. Not only is there the selfish motive that each one of us may at some time of our lives stand in need of help in seasons of sickness, but there is another, and that the very highest motive also. The care of the sick has been left us as a most sacred legacy by our Divine Master, in words which tell us that they are in some mysterious manner His representatives, and that in visiting and succouring them we are ministering to Himself. The question, then, for us is, how have we fulfilled this duty, which devolves upon us all as members of one Christian, social body? We will inquire.
Up to within a comparatively recent period no especial teaching was thought necessary for the office of nursing the sick; the term "hospital nurse" conveyed an idea of one of the lowest workers in the social community. It raised up in our minds the image of a woman who had fallen below other occupations, and was reduced to this office by necessity. How often drunken habits formed a part of her character we need not inquire; drinking, to some degree, was
