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SERA.
XXVIII.]
A
LOVELY CARRIAGE,
&C.
465
fellow-
creatures, and
waits
without clamour
till
the
pro-
per
season.
He
makes
wise
and kind allowances for
every incident
of
life
that
may
give
just
occasion to
a
delay,
and
gains the love
of
all
that are about
him by his
most engaging carriage.
How
lovely
is
it
to
see
a
teacher
waiting upon those
that
are
slow
of
understanding, and
taking due time
and
pains
to
make the
learner
conceive
what
he
means,.
with-
out upbraiding
him with his weakness,
or
reproaching
him
with the names
of stupid-and
senseless?
This
is
to
imitate God, the
God of
long
-
suffering
and patience,
"
Who
giveth wisdom
to
all
that
ask,
and
upbraideth
not," James
i.
5.
The patient
man
attends
and
waits
upon those
that
are
slow
of
speech,
and
hears an
argu-
ment
fully
proposed
before
he
makes
his
reply.
This is
an
honourable
and
lovely
character;
But
he
that
an-
swereth
a
matter
before
he
heareth
it,
it
is
folly
and
shame
unto
him,
Prov.
xviii.
13.
Perhaps
he
is
utterly
mistaken
in
the objection
which
his
friend
was
going
to
make,. then
he
is
justly put
to the blush
for
his folly
and
impatience.
The virtue of
patience teaches
us
.
to be
calm
and
easy
toward our
fellow-
creatures,
while
we
sustain sharp
and
continued
afflictions from
the hand
of
God.
It
is
the
unhappy conduct of
some
christians,
that
when
the
great
God
puts them under
any sore
trial or chastisement,
they
are
angry
with all
their
friends
around
them,
and
scatter abroad their discontents
in
the
family,
and
many
times
make them
fall
heaviest
upon their
most intimate
friends.
If
one were to search this
matter
to the
bottom,
we
should
find
the spring
of
it
is
an impatience
at
the
sovereign
hand
of God; but
because
their christianity
forbids
them to vent
their
uneasiness
at
heaven, they
divert the
stream
of
their
resentment, and make
their
fellow
-
creatures
feel
it
:
So
a piece
of unripe fruit press-
-
ed
with
a
heavy weight from above,
scatters
its
sour
'nice
on every thing
that
stands
near
it,
and
gives
a
just
emblem
of
the
impatient
christian.
.
But
what
a
lovely
sight
is
it
to behold
a,
person
bur-
dened
with
many
sorrows,
and perhaps
his
flesh
upon
him
has
pain and
anguish, while
his soul
mourns within
him
:
yet
his
passions are
calm,
he
possesses his
spirit
in
patience, he takes kindly
all
the
relief
that
his
friends
VOL.
I.
H