of offices, in God’s kingdom.  God sets one man to do one work, and another to do another:  but it is the same Lord who puts each man in his place, and shows him his work, and gives him power to do it.  And there are diversities of operations, that is, of ways of working; so that if you put any two men to do the same thing, they will most probably do it each in a different way, and yet both do it well.  But it is the same God, who is working in them both; the God who works all in all, and has his work done by a thousand different hands, by a thousand different ways.

And it is right and good that people should be so different from each other.  ’For the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.’  To profit, to be of use.  If all men were alike, no one could learn from his neighbour.  If all mankind were as like each other as a flock of sheep, there would be no more work, no more progress, no more improvement in mankind, than there is in a flock of sheep.  Now each man can bring his own little share of knowledge or usefulness into the common stock.  Each man has, or ought to have, something to teach his neighbour.  Each man can learn something from his neighbour:  at least he can learn this—­to have patience with his neighbour.  To live and let live.  To bear with what in him seems odd and disagreeable, trusting that God may have put it there; that God has need of it; that God will make use of it.  God makes use of many things which look to us ugly and disagreeable.  He makes use of the spider and of the beetle.  How much more of our brethren, members of Christ, children of God, inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.  Shall they be to us, even if they be odd or disagreeable in some things—­shall they be to us as the beetle or the spider, or any other merely natural things?  They are men and women, in whom is the Spirit of the living God.  And my friends, if they are good enough for God, they are good enough for us.  Think but one moment.  God the Father adopts a man as his child, God the Son dies for that man, God the Holy Ghost inspires that man; and shall we be more dainty than God?  If, in spite of the man’s little weaknesses and oddities, God shall condescend to come down and dwell in that man, making him more or less a good man, doing good work; shall we pretend that we cannot endure what God endures?  Shall we be more dainty, I ask again, than the holy and perfect God?  Oh my friends, let us pray to him to take out of our hearts all selfishness, fancifulness, fastidiousness, and hasty respect of persons, of all which there is none in God.  Let us ask for his Spirit, the Spirit of Charity, which sees God in all, and all in God, and therefore sees good in all, and sees all in love.