foolish as to expect
perfection in return for such imperfection. You have your own share of
what causes fireside silence, aversion, disappointment, and dislike; and,
with God's help, say that you will patiently submit to what may not now
be mended. And then, the sterner the battle the nobler will the victory
be; and the lonelier the fight, the more honour to him who flinches not
from it. In your patience possess ye your souls.

What a beautiful, instructive, and even impressive sight it is to see a
nurse patiently cherishing her children! How she has her eye and her
heart at all their times upon them, till she never has any need to lay
her hand upon them! Passion has no place in her little household,
because patience fills all its own place and the place of passion too.
What a genius she displays in her talks to her children! How she cheats
their little hours of temptation, and tides them over the rough places
that her eye sees lying like sunken rocks before her little ship! How
skilfully she stills and heals their impulsive little passions by her
sudden and absorbing surprise at some miracle in a picture-book, or some
astonishing sight under her window! She has a thousand occupations also
for her children, and each of them with a touch of enterprise and
adventure and benevolence in it. She is so full of patience herself,
that the little gusts of passion are soon over in her presence, and the
sunshine is soon back brighter than ever in her little paradise. And,
over and above her children 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!

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