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Counsels on Sabbath School Work
experiences. Show how, when you made grave mistakes, patience,
kindness, and helpfulness on the part of your fellow workers gave you
courage and hope.
Until the judgment you will never know the influence of a kind,
considerate course toward the inconsistent, the unreasonable, the un-
worthy. When we meet with ingratitude and betrayal of sacred trusts,
we are roused to show our contempt or indignation. This the guilty
expect, they are prepared for it. But kind forbearance takes them
by surprise, and often awakens their better impulses, and arouses a
longing for a nobler life.—
Testimonies on Sabbath-School Work, 117
.
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Tolerance for Others
Every association of life calls for the exercise of self-control, for-
bearance, and sympathy. We differ so widely in disposition, habits,
education, that our ways of looking at things vary. We judge differ-
ently. Our understanding of truth, our ideas in regard to the conduct of
life, are not in all respects the same. There are no two whose experi-
ence is alike in every particular. The trials of one are not the trials of
another. The duties that one finds light, are to another most difficult
and perplexing.
So frail, so ignorant, so liable to misconception is human nature,
that each should be careful in the estimate he places upon another. We
little know the bearing of our acts upon the experience of others. What
we do or say may seem to us of little moment, when, could our eyes
be opened, we should see that upon it depended the most important
results for good or for evil.—
Testimonies on Sabbath-School Work,
117
.
Self-improvement
Because there is so much cheapness of character, so much of
the counterfeit all around the youth, there is the more need that the
teacher’s words, attitude, and deportment should represent the elevated
and the true. Children are quick to detect affectation or any other
weakness or defect. The teacher can gain the respect of his pupils in
no other way than by revealing in his own character the principles
which he seeks to teach them....
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