I love the following piece about how a godly person lovingly rebukes and encourages another who has failed. The tenderness and hope he describes is very touching to me; wish I could be, will try to be, more like that.

  "Rebuke itself acquires a solemn weight where it falls with impersonal gentleness, spoiled by no heats of fluttered egotism, and tinged only with the sorrow of disappointed trust...... The very light of his eye kindles into life the spot on which it falls: he looks for the conscience, and it is there. All who come into his presence learn to feel that they have more than justice done to them; that the best they have is seen in them, and the best they can be is expected from them; and under this warmth of appreciation every promise of good hastens its growth, opens the upper air, and is nourished into strength. Yet, even if they fail, they know it is a part of the same faith which led him to expect the good, that he will make tender allowance for the ill, and not surrender the hope baffled for the moment, but true for ever." Martineau.

I love the line where one who is truly godly in their rebuke, hastens the growth of the one rebuked, "opens the upper air," and nourishes them to strength.