Willing to lay down her life for them, a matchless
nurse in sickness, and in trouble revealing a tenderness perfectly
lovely, she was yet not the one to whom first either of the children was
ready to flee with hurt or sorrow: she was not yet all human, because
she was not yet at home with the divine.
Thousands that are capable of great sacrifices are yet not capable of
the little ones which are all that are required of them. God seems to
take pleasure in working by degrees; the progress of the truth is as the
permeation of leaven, or the growth of a seed: a multitude of successive
small sacrifices may work more good in the world than many a large one.
What would even our Lord's death on the cross have been, except as the
crown of a life in which he died daily, giving himself, soul, body and
spirit, to his men and women? It is the _Being_ that is the
precious thing. Being is the mother to all little Doings as well as the
grown-up Deeds and the mighty heroic Sacrifice; and these little Doings,
like the good children of the house, make the bliss of it. Hester had
not had time, neither had she prayed enough to _be_ quite yet,
though she was growing well towards it.
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