How many have an unholy pleasure in finding a brother in the wrong--blazing abroad his failings; administering rebuke, not in gentle forbearance and kindly expostulation, but with harsh and impatient severity! How beautifully did Jesus unite intense sensibility to sin, along with tenderest compassion for the sinner, showing in this that "He knoweth our frame!" Many a scholar needs gentleness in chastisement. The reverse would crush a sensitive spirit, or drive it to despair. Jesus tenderly "considers" the case of those He disciplines, "tempering the wind to the shorn lamb." In the picture of the good shepherd bearing home the wandering sheep, He illustrated by parable what He had often and again taught by His own example. No word of needless harshness or upbraiding uttered to the erring wanderer! Ingratitude is too deeply felt to need rebuke! In silent love, "He lays it on His shoulders rejoicing." Reader! seek to mingle gentleness in all your rebukes; bear with the infirmities of others; make allowance for constitutional frailties; never say harsh things, if kind things will do as well; do not unnecessarily lacerate with recalling former delinquencies. In reproving another, let us rather feel how much we need reproof ourselves. "Consider thyself," is a searching Scripture motto for dealing with an erring brother. Remember thy Lord's method of silencing fierce accusation--"Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." Moreover, anger and severity are not the successful means of reclaiming the backslider, or of melting the obdurate. Like the _smooth_ stones with which David smote Goliath, _gentle_ rebukes are generally the most powerful. The old fable of the traveller and his cloak has a moral here as in other things. The genial sunshine will effect its removal sooner than the rough tempest. It was said of Leighton, that "he rebuked faults so mildly, that they were never repeated, not because the admonished were afraid, but ashamed to do so." "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND." Fourteenth Day. ENDURANCE IN CONTRADICTION. "Who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself."-- Heb. xii. 3. What endurance was this! Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross provocation--"oppressed and afflicted, He opened not His mouth!" "For my love" (in return for my love), "they are mine adversaries; _but_" (see His endurance!--the only species of revenge of which His sinless nature was capable) "_I give myself unto prayer!_" (Ps. cix. 4.)