IN MEMORIAM.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 546, 9 November 1915, Page 4

IN MEMORIAM.

FOR THE MARQUETTE NURSES,

This morning a service of Holy Communion was held in St. Michael's and All Angels, in commemoration of the nurses who were lost in the -ffigean Sea while on active service, on October 23 — Margaret Rogers, Nona Hildyard, Isabel Clark, Helena Isdell, Mary Rae, Lorna Rattray, Marian Brown, Catherine Fox, Jamieson, and Ada Hawkins. There was a large congregation, the church being filled. About 200 nurses, representative of every nursing institution in the city, were present, as well as many past nurses, who came to pay their last tribute of love and respect to the memory of those who had.died nobly in the pursuit of their duty. Amongst the big congregation were a number of wounded soldiers—a mute reminder of those for whom the nurses had given up their lives. The service was very devout and beautiful, the Lord Bishop of the Diocese preaching a brief but touching sermon on the text: '' The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their departure is taken for utter mise'ry, and their going from us to utter destruction, but they are in peace. . . . For grace and mercy is to His saints, and he hath care for His elect."

"Most of you nurses know," commenced the Bishop, "how, in time of pain and siekness, strong man often turns back to the simplicity of childhood. The institutions of life take hold of him, and he rises into the pure, simpler life of childhood. So it is with the .Church and the nation. A little while ago there were many who scrupled to lift their voices in prayer for those who had departed. We followed them to the grave, and there we left them. It was because that we were old in experience—we knew how many corruptions had gathered round this thing, and so, like many who had lost their simplicity and purity, we stood to lose something, that was very beautiful and very pure. But now we had got back to the intuitions of early life, and we know that we could pray—we knew that we must pray for the dear departed. We; had gone back across the chasm of ages, when the names of the living and the dead were recited in the ehurches.

... Nurses, I speak to you especially, to you who have on your lips the names of those who were, and still are, dear to you—bound to you by ties of community and fellowship and training. Death is a very solemn thing —we have no right to make light of it. It is a passing into the Unseen —a passing from material things into -the Eternal \ r erities. But we have not come here to mourn and to be sad. We come for prayer. What, we ask, shall- we pray for? and so, at length, we turn to those simple prayers of the early days —we pray for rest, for peace, for refreshment for the souls of those Who have passed away. And it seems, as we pray, that the vain illusions of this world pass away, and We enter into a very real fellowship, more pure and more real than any we could otherwise find. And we know that as we pray we pass into those spiritual presences—we gain some insight into a real and abiding®* fellowship. You know what our dear Lord did for women in the early days—how they were lifted out of bondage, and were allowed to bring their special gifts to the service of the Master, in works of love and mercy. And then you know how, like men, they allowed their hold on these things to grow faint and relax. Even I am old enough to remember when it was not thought proper for women to take up nursing, but to-day all that is gone, and there has sprung up this splendid guild of service which nursing represents. We think to-day of those who Avent out on active service and laid down their lives in their following after duty. . . Dear nurses, don't be ambitious. Don't think, because you cannot go out on active service, and die the death of the martyr, that your work is of little worth. If the- call does not come, it is not meant for you. Do your daily work in the niche to which God calls you, and rest assured that thus you are doing His will. Sacrifice of life, of gifts, grace, and nobility and skill —that is what we are called to. My children, I don't think you have yet learned this lesson of sacrifice. I don't think any one of us has anything like learned it yet. .1 believe there is a greater sorrow coming to us than we know yet. We still go to our races and our pastimes while the whole world sorrows. New Zealand will never learn her lesson \uitil she has put away all her childish things, and has gone down to the deeps of sorrow —of sorrow and sacrifice."