[We are on no account to despise our weaker bretliren, but to treat them with all imaginable condescension and kind- ness ; as the Apostle himself tells us : " We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, " The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me''." We should listen to their statements with an attentive ear : we should enter into their feelings, and sympathize with them in their troubles : we should deal tenderly with their mistakes, and should gladly give them the advantage of our superior knowledge and experience. We should come down, as it were, upon their ground : and endeavour to make their way plain before their face. We should " strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees ; and say to them that are of a fearful heart, Fear not; your God will come and save you'." This is particularly inculcated in the Epistle to the Hebrews: " Lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees ; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way ; but let it rather be healed™." This doubtless is the duty of ministers primarily ; because they are as fathers, who ought to feel for their children with parental tenderness ; and even, as mothers, to "travail in birth with them, till Christ be formed in them"." But it is also the duty of every true Christian : for it is said, " Bear ye one another's burthens, and so fulfil the law of Christ"."]
And " those who are offended, we should burn" with ardour to restore —
[Behold the state of the Galatian Church : see them when they were in danger of being turned aside through the influence of Judaizing teachei's : what zeal the Ajiostle mani- fested to keep them sound in the faith ! He hesitated not to reprove even Peter himself, and that before the whole Church P. See the Churches, both of Rome and Corinth, when they were in danger of being drawn to act contrary to the convictions of their own minds, in reference to the eating of meats, and the observing of certain days according to the Jewish law : he enjoined the more enlightened part, who understood the nature and extent of Christian liberty, to abstain from the use of that liberty in the presence of their weaker brethren, lest they should, by the indiscreet use of it, cast a snare and a stumbling-block before anyi; and as for himself, he determined not to eat meat so long as the
^ Rom. XV. 1, 3. 1 Isai.xxxv. 3,4. "" Heb. xii. 12,13.
n Gal. iv. 19. ° Gal. vi. 2. p Gal. ii. 14.
1 Rom. xiv. 1— G, 13—15. 1 Cor. viii. 4—12.