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Go tell a mother of the faults of her absent son. You must adduce the clearest evidence before she will yield her reluctant credence: and even then it is not yielded without many misgivings and conjectural qualifications in favour of her child. She demands whether you yourself witnessed the things of which you speak, or whether your informant were a truthful and unprejudiced person, or whether the report may not have originated in some unfriendly motive, or whether there be not some circumstance in connection with the facts that would give them a different aspect, or whether after all it were not some other child instead of her own. Rather than credit the report of her darling's culpability, she would believe a dozen persons in error, or even guilty of malicious falsehood. But, on the other hand tell her of the good and noble conduct of her boy; unexceptional deportment, his studious habits and proficiency in learning; and instantly you see the glad conviction beaming in her eye, and mantling all her features with sunny joy; and perhaps she adduces many confirmations of your encomium, and tells you the finest things concerning her son, and expatiates enthusiastically upon his rare and noble qualities. What is it but love that renders her so incredulous to what is said against him, and so ready to receive without abatement or qualification all that is uttered in his praise? And Christian love, operating in another sphere, differs nothing in this respect from natural maternal affection, powerfully inclining the heart to faith in the moral excellence of its object. The apostle tells us that "faith worketh by love "; is it not equally true that love worketh by faith?

(J. Cross, D.D.)

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KJV: Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

WEB: bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.