rising up and calling her blessed, what wounds she escapes in her own heart and memory by keeping her patient hands from ever wounding her children!  What peace she keeps in the house, just by having peace always within herself!  Paul can find no better figure wherewith to set forth God’s marvellous patience with Israel during her fretful childhood in the wilderness, than just that of such a nurse among her provoking children.  And we see the deep hold that same touching and instructive sight had taken of the apostle’s heart as he returns to it again to the Thessalonians:  ’We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children.  So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us.’  What a school of divine patience is every man’s own family at home if he only were teachable, observant, and obedient!

2.  Clever, quick-witted, and, themselves, much-gifted men, are terribly intolerant of slow and stupid men, as they call them.  But the many-talented man makes a great mistake here, and falls into a great sin.  In his fulness of all kinds of intellectual gifts, he quite forgets from Whom he has his many gifts, and why it is that his despised neighbour has so few gifts.  If you have ten or twenty talents, and I have only two, who is to be praised and who is to be blamed for that allotment?  Your cleverness has misled you and has hitherto done you far more evil than good.  You bear yourself among ordinary men, among less men than yourself, as if you had added all these cubits to your own stature.  You ride over us as if you had already given in your account, and had heard it said, Take the one talent from them and give it to this my ten-talented servant.  You seem to have set it down to your side of the great account, that you had such a good start in talent, and that your fine mind had so many tutors and governors all devoting themselves to your advancement.  And you conduct yourself to us as if the Righteous Judge had cast us away from His presence, because we were not found among the wise and mighty of this world.  The truth is, that the whole world is on a wholly wrong tack in its praise and in its blame.  We praise the man of great gifts, and we blame the man of small gifts, completely forgetful that in so doing we give men the praise that belongs to God, and lay on men the blame, which, if there is any blame in the matter, ought to be laid elsewhere.  Learn and lay to heart, my richly-gifted brethren, to be patient with all men, but especially to be patient with all stupid, slow-witted, ungifted, God-impoverished men.  Do not add your insults and your ill-usage to the low estate of those on whom, in the meantime, God’s hand lies so cold and so straitened.  For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?  Now, if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?  Call that to mind the next time you are tempted to cry out that you have no patience with your slow-witted servant.