It was with more than ordinary interest that we watched the march-in of these young women and young men this morning. They were marching not only to take their places in this chapel. We saw in it the march forward to take their places in the ranks of our worldwide army of graduate nurses, who are pressing on in the work of this advent movement in all parts of the earth.
It is a wonderful work—this advent movement. It has come in fulfillment of propbecy. On the Isle of Patmos the prophet John was shown the closing gospel work. He saw a movement rise, just before the second coming of Christ, carrying the message of the everlasting gospel to every nation, tongue, and people. It was a message preaching the judgment hour begun in heaven above, and preparing a people to meet the Lord.
The prophecy of Daniel 8, long before, had fixed the time of the opening of that judgment hour. It was to begin in the year 1844. Then it was that the great court of heaven, convened before the Ancient of days. And, then, according to John's vision in Revelation, a people were to arise on the earth, keeping the commandments of God, and carrying to the world the message, "Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the-hour of His judgment is come."
True to the prophecy, as the year 1844 brought the hour of the opening of the judgment work in heaven above, on earth there appeared a people keeping the commandments. In old New England they came, the first pioneers of this movement. And the angel's words in Revelation 14 came with true application: "Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." The time had come, the people of the prophecy appeared, and this movement began.
Another prophecy of the latter days, in the Old Testament, pictures this movement as bearing a message of healing to men: "Unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings." Mal. 4:2.
This advent movement bears a shining message of healing for soul and body. The class motto you have chosen, "Aiding the Great Physician," tells of the aim to go forth in the name of Jesus to people who need help. It is the determined aim, I know, of all this nurses' army of ours, in all the lands of earth.
I was present, years ago, at the dedication of our headquarters sanitarium in Shanghai, China. I saw numbers of beautiful mottoes on the walls—and the Chinese writing lends itself to picturesque motto decoration. One motto specially pleased me, as a Chinese nurse interpreted it for me: "To help the world and heal humanity." To this service our thousands of nurses are giving themselves, day and night. We thank God for this mighty influence for good in our work.
Preparations of Providence
In our survey of the rise of this advent movement as the appointed time came, we delight in noting how providential preparations of the way are seen in all the history of these times—the opening of all lands, the coming of special facilities, with the days of 1844 and after, for quickly carrying and publishing the message. These things were gifts of God to this gospel work.
So, too, as we look at the story of our medical missionary work, in which you nurses are called to act so great a part, we see the special leadings of providence. When this advent movement rose in 1844, there were but crude ideas of healthful living, and very dim appreciation generally of what the training of the skilled nurse was to be.
They tell us that the first home stationary bathtub, in America, for instance, was installed by a wealthy cotton and grain broker in his home in Cincinnati in 1842. It was large, had a frame of mahogany, and was lined with sheet lead. It created a sensation. A newspaper denounced it as an "undemocratic luxury," and some medical men called it a menace to health. That was in the forties, just as our work was to rise, in which the nurse was to bear so strong a part. The A-B-C essentials of sanitation and cleanliness which lie at the foundation of your ministry were little understood. Those were the times, and in the decade following, when a physician such as Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was ridiculed for writing a paper about disinfecting the hands in dealing with surgical and maternity cases. A physician in Vienna was dismissed for urging this kind of guard against infection in a maternity hospital, even though his reports showed that he had reduced fatalities from 13 to 3 per cent by those methods.
As to nursing: While the spirit of it and the effort to relieve the sick are as old as human suffering and human kindness, there was generally little idea of the scientific training that was to make nursing an honored profession, second to no art or calling. We are told that in New York City, in 1872, one hospital used what were called "ten-day nurses"—women convicted of petty offenses, who were given a choice, by the magistrate, of ten days in jail or ten days of work in the hospital. But swiftly the new order came to the world and to us. "Since 188o," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, the advance of knowledge has "revolutionized nursing." "The nurse is now looked upon as following a great vocation, for which she has qualified by years of training."
I must make reference to one milestone on the highway of progress toward the high standards of the medical ministry of our time. In his book, "Romance of Medicine," Doctor 1Vlacfie puts his finger on a date which means much to the nursing profession generally, and to us especially in this advent movement. "The first microbe of disease was caught and convicted in 1863."
At so late a date as that came the knowledge of the germ theory as a cause of disease—a truth that lies so firmly in the fundamentals of the methods into which we have been led. Before those times people generally had little idea of the relation of dirt to disease, little idea of the fact that cleanliness is, in a way, next to godliness.
"I want two of your island men to work for me," said a trader, to one of our missionaries in the South Seas. "Your converts are different. They are clean inside and out." Men of the world have come to expect that the advent message will bring forth this fruitage anywhere and everywhere. Brethren in Australia told me of the showing of a travel film of the remotest interior of Africa. A group of bewildered, degenerated tribespeople was shown in one scene, with the title below the picture, "Waiting for the Seventh-day Adventists to come and clean them up." How does it come that our message has borne this mark of cleansing, physically and spiritually, wherever it has gone? God helped our pioneer leaders into this way.
The year 1863 was mentioned by Doctor Macfie as the year of a great discovery that contributed marvelously to the healing art. The year 1863 is also a year of great moment in the development of the medical missionary side of our work. A bright, earnest Methodist missionary woman, traveling on the same ship with me on the China Sea, asked me, -How does it come that you Seventh-day Adventists are in this health work in a way in which the rest of us generally are not? How did you get into this way ?"
Well, the secret of it is providential leading through the Spirit of prophecy in 1863. Of that year Mrs. E. G. White once wrote: "It was at the house of Brother A. Hilliard, at Otsego, Michigan, June 6, 1863, that the great subject of health reform was opened before me in vision."—Review and Herald, Oct. 8, 1867.
Beginnings of the Health Message
The old farmhouse still stands where Mrs. White knelt at evening worship with good old Farmer Hilliard's family that night in 1863. As she prayed, she was taken off in vision. For forty minutes she was not conscious of her surroundings. But when she came to consciousness, the burden of the health work was pressing upon her heart. Her pen began soon after to write, write, write those early messages on health and healing, and how to help the sick and suffering, especially in teaching how to live and how to prevent disease.
Within three years these writings and urgings of the Spirit of prophecy had led our pioneers to the building of our first sanitarium, the old Health Reform Institute, of 1866. That was the parent health institution in our work. You know how our sanitariums and hospitals and dispensaries have spread since then through all the continents and the islands of the sea. And this teaching has enabled evangelists and missionaries everywhere to give help to sufferers in sickness.
In all our sanitarium centers the education of nurses has gone forward, sending forth armies of trained and consecrated nurses in service for the souls and bodies of mankind. These facilities have come to us as gifts of God. It is for you to accept the training as truly given by God's hand, to be used to glorify Him and to lead men and women to Christ and eternal life.
Truly in this gospel movement we can rejoice in the Sun of Righteousness who has risen, with healing in His wings. There are committed to you, as nurses, the light and truth that people need. You are given help for the needy as you go into this service to aid the Great Physician. I once heard a gramophone in North China singing this true and comforting message :
"There is a balm in Gilead To make the wounded whole, There is a balm in Gilead To heal the sin-sick soul."
God bless you as you face your call to this service.
* Excerpts from the baccalaureate sermon for the 1941 class at the Washington Sanitarium and Hospital School of Nursing,. Takoma Park, Maryland.
