'He that believeth shall not make haste,' he said. 'There is plenty of
time. You must not imagine that the result depends on you, or that a
single human soul can be lost because you may fail. The question, as
far as you are concerned, is, whether you are to be honoured in having a
hand in the work that God is doing, and will do, whether you help him
or not. Some will be honoured: shall it be me? And this honour gained
excludes no one: there is work, as there is bread in his house, enough
and to spare. It shows no faith in God to make frantic efforts or
frantic lamentations. Besides, we ought to teach ourselves to see, as
much as we may, the good that is in the condition of the poor.'

'Teach me to see that, then,' I said. 'Show me something.'

'The best thing is their kindness to each other. There is an absolute
divinity in their self-denial for those who are poorer than themselves.
I know one man and woman, married people, who pawned their very
furniture and wearing apparel to procure cod-liver oil for a girl dying
in consumption. She was not even a relative, only an acquaintance of
former years. They had found her destitute and taken her to their own
poor home. There are fathers and mothers who will work hard all the
morning, and when dinner-time comes "don't want any," that there may be
enough for their children--or half enough, more likely. Children will
take the bread out of their own mouths to put in that of their sick
brother, or to stick in the fist of baby crying for a crust--giving only
a queer little helpless grin, half of hungry sympathy, half of pleasure,
as they see it disappear. The marvel to me is that the children turn
out so well as they do; but that applies to the children in all ranks
of life. Have you ever watched a group of poor children, half-a-dozen of
them with babies in their arms?'

'I have, a little, and have seen such a strange mixture of carelessness
and devotion.'

'Yes. I was once stopped in the street by a child of ten, with face
absolutely swollen with weeping, asking me to go and see baby who was
very ill. She had dropped him four times that morning, but had no idea
that could have done him any harm. The carelessness is ignorance.
Their form of it is not half so shocking as that of the mother who will
tremble at the slightest sign of suffering in her child, but will hear
him lie against his brother without the smallest discomfort. Ah! we
shall all find, I fear, some day, that we h