. 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.

3. 'Is patient with the bad' is one of the tributes of praise that is
paid in the fine paraphrase to that heart that is full of the same love
that is in God. A patient love to the unjust and the evil is one of the
attributes and manifestations of the divine nature, as that na