O! dear friends, let us learn, through grace to be kind, for I think if there is anything we are deficient in, it is just in that—kindness. I fear there is a solemn lack of it among Christians, a sorrowful want as to it somewhere. Indeed, some people seem to me to think that there is some sort of merit attached to being kind—where it is, I cannot understand. It requires no great effort or self-denial to be a stick or a stone. I doubt not it is more or less according to our nature: but, O to be like Jesus Christ! O to have the compassions and the tenderness of Himself in our souls, and to have been so touched by it ourselves, to have come so in contact with it ourselves, in our own histories, that we understand what it is to deal with others in the same way that we ourselves have been dealt with by Him.
Let us ponder these words: