Seventhly, and lastly, It is the Doctor's duty to keep his time and his temper with you. Any man or woman who knows how longed for a doctor's visit is, and counts on it to a minute, knows how wrong, how painful, how angering it is for the Doctor not to keep his time. Many things may occur, for his urgent cases are often sudden, to put him out of his reckoning; but it is wonderful what method, and real consideration, and a strong will can do in this way. I never found Dr. Abercrombie a minute after or before his time (both are bad, though one is the worser), and yet if I wanted him in a hurry, and stopped his carriage in the street, he could always go with me at once; he had the knack and the principle of being true in his times, for it is often a matter of truth. And the Doctor must keep his temper: this is often worse to manage than even his time, there is so much unreason, and ingratitude, and peevishness, and impertinence, and impatience, that it is very hard to keep one's tongue and eye from being angry: and sometimes the Doctor does not only well, but the best, when he is downrightly angry, and astonishes some fool, or some insolent, or some untruth doing or saying patient; but the Doctor should be patient with his patients, he should bear with them, knowing how much they are at the moment suffering. Let us remember Him who is full of compassion, whose compassion never fails; whose tender mercies are new to us every morning, as his faithfulness is every night; who healed all manner of diseases, and was kind to the unthankful and the evil; what would become of us, if he were as impatient with us as we often are with each other? If you want to be impressed with the Almighty's infinite loving-kindness and tender mercy, his forbearance, his long-suffering patience, his slowness to anger, his Divine ingeniousness in trying to find it possible to spare and save, think of the Israelites in the desert, and read the chapter where Abraham intercedes with God for Sodom, and these wonderful "peradventures."
But I am getting tedious, and keeping you and myself too long, so good night. Let the Doctor and you be honest and grateful, and kind and cordial, in one word, dutiful to each other, and you will each be the better of the other.
I may by and by say a word or two to you on your Health, which is your wealth, that by which you are and do well, and on your Children, and how to guide it and them.
SERMON III.
CHILDREN, AND HOW TO GUIDE THEM.
OUR text at this time is Children and their treatment, or as it sounds better to our ears, Bairns, and how to guide them. You all know the wonder and astonishment there is in a house among its small people when a baby is born; how they stare at the new arrival with its red face. Where does it come from? Some tell them it comes from the garden, from a certain kind of cabbage; some from "Rob Rorison's bonnet," of which wha hasna heard? some from that famous wig of Charlie's, in which the cat kittled, when there was three o' them leevin', and three o' them dead; and you know the Doctor is often said to bring the new baby in his pocket; and many a time have my pockets been slyly examined by the curious youngsters,—especially the girls!—in hopes of finding another baby. But I'll tell you where all the babies come from; they all come from God; his hand made and fashioned them; he breathed into their nostrils the breath of life,—of his life. He said, "Let this little child be," and it was. A child is a true creation; its soul, certainly, and in a true sense, its body too. And as our children came from him, so they are going back to him, and he lends them to us as keepsakes; we are to keep and care for them for his sake. What a strange and sacred thought this is! Children are God's gifts to us, and it depends on our guiding of them, not only whether they are happy here, but whether they are happy hereafter in that great unchangeable eternity, into which you and I and all of us are fast going. I once asked a little girl, "Who made you?" and she said, holding up her apron as a measure, "God make me that length, and I growed the rest myself." Now this, as you know, was not quite true, for she could not grow one half-inch by herself. God makes us grow as well as makes us at first. But what I want you to fix in your minds is, that children come from God, and are returning to him, and that you and I, who are parents, have to answer to him for the way we behave to our dear children,—the kind of care we take of them.