The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2 by Sir Edward Tyas Cook
PART VII
WORK OF LATER YEARS
(1872-1910)
I ask no heaven till earth be Thine,
Nor glory-crown, while work of mine
Remaineth here. When earth shall shine
Among the stars,
Her sins wiped out, her captives free,
Her voice a music unto Thee,
For crown, New Work give Thou to me.
Lord here am I.
I found this in an intensely evangelical Baptist American's work--a
lecture he had delivered upon me. Now these lines appear to me
exactly true, and an extraordinary advance in the way of truth on
English Evangelicalism which banishes work, like sin, from heaven,
and has no idea that heaven is to be made out of earth by
us.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (from a letter to her father, 1869).