These four graces are followed by a group of three, which may be
regarded as being more private, as not pointing to permanent offices
so much as to individual acts. They are 'giving,' 'ruling,' 'showing
pity,' concerning which we need only note that the second of these
can hardly be the ecclesiastical office, and that it stands between
two which are closely related, as if it were of the same kind. The
gifts of money, or of direction, or of pity, are one in kind. The
right use of wealth comes from the gift of God's grace; so does the
right use of any sway which any of us have over any of our brethren;
and so does the glow of compassion, the exercise of the natural human
sympathy which belongs to all, and is deepened and made tenderer and
intenser by the gift of the Spirit. It would be a very different
Church, and a very different world, if Christians, who were not
conscious of possessing gifts which made them fit to be either
prophets, or teachers, or exhorters, and were scarcely endowed even
for any special form of ministry, felt that a gift from their hands,
or a wave of pity from their hearts, was a true token of the movement
of God's Spirit on their spirits. The fruit of the Spirit is to be
found in the wide fields of everyday life, and the vine bears many
clusters for the thirsty lips of wearied men who may little know what
gives them their bloom and sweetness. It would be better for both
giver and receiver if Christian beneficence were more clearly
recognised as one of the manifestations of spiritual life.