O mild and holy Light, Beam on my inward sight,- Lo, in an equal line we see Thy saints of high and low degree 'Mong them no pride and strife appear; 54. Learn of Me, for E am meek and lowly. Wrath is so grim and wild a flame, And I with it all league disclaim. My son, at common fire you take alarm, But if it BURN ON ALTARS, dread no harm: MATT. v. 5. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." MATT. xi. 29. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” TITUS, iii. 2-5. "To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But S after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." ACRED in the view of every Christian soul stands the image of the Saviour's meekness. How often has it caused the towering waves raised by the storms of passion in the hearts of men to subside! How often have the arms that were lifted up in anger dropped at the sight of it! If there be any virtue which men generally expect to find in a disciple of the Lord, it is meekness. Like humility and charity, it is looked upon as a peculiarly Christian grace. Humility and meekness are twin sisters, and grow like buds on the common stalk of charity. "For," saith the apostle, "charity suffereth long, and is kind," and, consequently, is likewise humble and meek. Not only did the Saviour and His apostles frequently inculcate meekness by word of mouth-He did it much more forcibly by His actions and His sufferings. There is so great kindness and benignity, gentleness, and condescension, in His whole demeanour, that even if we had not been told, we might at once have divined that, according to His own affirmation, "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." And, in truth, he who proposes to save the world can come to it in no other garb save that of meekness and gentleness. And what is there that preaches this virtue so loudly as the cross? A crucifix appears a very simple object, and yet it may well be doubted whether these crucifixes have not done more to spread the Gospel than multitudes of preachers. For myself, I cannot look upon one but a wondrous throng of devout and holy thoughts rush through my heart: and what a crucifix preaches most of all is meekness and patient obedience, so that one might imagine that, with a cross before his eyes, 1 John, iii. 17. Y or a picture of Him who suffered upon it, it would be impossible for a Christian to utter a harsh or an injurious word. A gentle and meek spirit is one of the highest and holiest virtues with which a Christian can be endowed; nor is it, as many suppose, by any means a feminine virtue. On the contrary, when rightly understood, it is rather a strong, masculine, and heroic virtue. According to the words of Solomon: "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city." It requires greater strength of soul to endure aright protracted suffering, than to achieve some arduous enterprise of faith. For the latter, all that is needed is to collect the energies for a moment, and under circumstances that excite to action; whereas, for the former, as great a force of faith and submission must be opposed to suffering, and this must be done for years, and repeated every moment, without any stimulus from without. Meekness and patience are virtues of a noble class, and no one knows so well as I myself how much I need the daily teaching of the meek and patient Saviour, that in this way also I may learn to tread in His footsteps. At the same time, with all my heart I hate that kind of meekness which cannot be angry when there is a just cause for anger. Such meekness, I know, does not spring from a divine root. No doubt it is written, "The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God; "2 and elsewhere we are admonished not to let the sun go down upon our wrath. The proverb also says that "he who controls his anger conquers an enemy;" but, nevertheless, anger does not always come from the wicked one. The Holy One of Israel is said "to roar like a lion" 4 in His wrath; and there is also a wrath of the Lamb, before which the men of the world will tremble, and call to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb," 5 so terrible will be the anger of the Saviour when He appears in His 3 Eph. iv. 26. 1 Prov. xvi. 32. 2 James, i. 20. 5 Rev. vi. 16. kingly office. He was also, however, angry, when in His humiliation He sojourned among men; for it is written, "He looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts."1 Was He not angry when He plaited a scourge of cords and drove out those who had made His Father's house a den of thieves? Was He not angry when eight times in succession He pronounced a woe upon the hypocritical scribes who garnished the sepulchres of the righteous, and at the same time put righteous men to death? and again, when He said to them, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" 2 Besides, can any one love the Lord God with all his heart who does not hate those that hate Him, according to the ancient boast of the Psalmist: "Do not I hate them, O Lord, who hate Thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against Thee? I hate them with perfect hatred "?3 In my opinion, righteous anger is nothing but abhorrence of evil carried into action, and conscious of the grounds on which it rests. We are cause of For the And it is only when I reflect upon what righteous anger is, that I clearly see how greatly I sin in this way. angry, but in our anger what we look to is not the God, not His eternal law and truth, but ourselves. most part, human anger flows not from hatred of that which is evil, but from love of self. The consequence is, we do not know why we are angry, and therefore the proverb says with truth that anger is blind. It bewilders the head, and hence is always followed by repentance, of which it is said that "where wrath ends repentance begins." Holy anger, however, is well aware of its own reasons; for just as in his love, so likewise in his anger, does the Christian take his God and Saviour as a pattern. All that can be done by love he does, patiently waits where there is the hope of repentance, and does not suffer the flame of indignation to blaze until the measure of iniquity is full. Even when compelled to smite, he imitates his God, 1 Mark, iii. 5. 2 Matt. xxiii. 33. 3 Psalm cxxxix. 21, 22. who avers: "In my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee."1 Hence, when the Holy Scriptures so sharply forbid anger, a distinction must needs be drawn, because in these cases the anger is of the kind spoken of by the Lord when He says, "Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment." 2 And what kind of anger that is, not obscurely appears when he describes it as a transgression of the commandment, Thou shalt not kill; for this clearly intimates that he refers to an anger which has already, so to speak, begun to kill in the heart, and is seeking revenge solely in its own behalf, and not from a regard to God, or in order that righteousness and equity may be established on the earth, and a wall of defence raised against the transgressor. What would have become of the Church if the Lord's servants and prophets had at all times done nothing else but spread salves upon sores and walk softly? In selecting instruments for His work, has He not always preferred those who had fortitude enough to feel a just and noble indignation at the ungodliness of the world? Take, for example, our own Luther. No doubt he often carried his wrath somewhat too far and cried too loud, of which he never failed humbly to repent; still, upon the whole, he showed great boldness and confidence that he was right in the indignation with which he combated the enemies of the Gospel. On one occasion, when asked by the Margrave Joachim, 2d, Why he wrote against the princes? he returned the beautiful answer: "When God intends to fertilise the ground He must needs send first of all a good thunder-storm, and afterwards a slow and gentle rain, and thus make it thoroughly productive." Elsewhere he says, "A willow branch may be cut with a knife and bent with a finger, but for a great and gnarled oak we must use an axe and a wedge ;" and again, "If my teeth had been less sharp, the Pope would have been more voracious." "Of what use is salt," he exclaims, in another passage, "if it do not bite the 1 Isa. lx. 10. 2 Matt. v. 22. |