"And you know very well that I scourged myself hard enough." "That was quite right, for you deserved a flogging for a misconducted boy." Hermas looked defiantly at his reproving friend, the flaming color mounted to his cheek: for he remembered the shepherdess's words that he might go and complain to his nurse, and he cried out angrily: "I will not let any one speak to me so; I am no longer a child." "Not even your father's ?" asked Paulus, and he looked at the boy with such an astonished and enquiring air, that Hermas turned away his eyes in confusion.
"It is not right at any rate to trouble the last remnant of life of that very man who longs to live for your sake only." "I should have been very willing to be still, for I love my father as well as any one else." "You do not beat him," replied Paulus, "you carry him bread and water, and do not drink up the wine yourself, which the Bishop sends him home from the Lord's supper; that is something certainly, but not enough by a long way." "I am no saint!" "Nor I neither," exclaimed Paulus, "I am full of sin and weakness.

But I know what the love is which was taught us by the Saviour, and that you too may know.

He suffered on the cross for you, and for me, and for all the poor and vile.

Love is at once the easiest and the most difficult of attainments.

It requires sacrifice.