God's Gentleness.
1. The term rendered "gentleness" seems to have puzzled the early translators. Luther translated the text, "When thou humblest me thou dost make me great," and the older English version, which survives in the Prayer Book, conveys something of the same meaning. " Thy loving correction shall make me great." But recent scholarship confirms the rendering of our Authorized Version — " thy gentleness " — or " thy condescension," as the Eevisers' marginal reading has it. And, after all, is not this more in accord with what we know of God's dealings with man ? He does indeed bring down the high looks of the proud; but with those whom He is leading from lowliness to greatness He deals differently. He does not humble them, but Himself. He empties Himself that He may make them full. And David, looking back over God's dealing with him, seizes a great truth — the great truth of God's dealing with man, that truth which we Christians con- template in all its fulness as we bow before the Mystery of the Incarnation — God is love.
\ This life, broken off from its immortal whole, has no mean- ing— like a fragment broken off from a statue — like a few bars cut out of the best piece of music. Por the anthem, in its movement through the earthly bars, is full of minor passages and discords imperfectly resolved ; but to him who hears it further on, these shall only bring in, with a richer harmony of all chords on the
PSALM XVIII. 35 301
original key, the chorus and refrain of " God is love." And well for him that can seize on that governing key and keep it in sight and recognize its presence, though unheard, all through the music, through the most shattering discords and departures out of it. He has found that which gives it all a unity and meaning and interprets to his heart (if it should not be to his understanding, in technical terms of sharps and flats) what seems to others mere chaos and confusion of noise ; and if he too lose it for a little while, though never altogether, shall not this only bring it back more grandly, more sonorously, when it returns — when the golden morning breaks with a chorus of all voices singing, " God is love ! " ^
2. The gentleness of God, like that of one of ourselves, is not a single but a complex attribute. Its base is that quality of nature which we call goodness. The aspects and operations of gentleness are manifold. It will appear in fellow-feeling towards the suffering and the sorrowmg. Gentle natures are always sympathetic. It will beget consideration for men in their mis- takes, follies, and sins. Gentleness is incapable of wholesale and indiscriminate condemnation. It remembers the weaknesses and temptations of even the evil-doer. Gentleness will be patient with the dull learner, and with the feeble in limb who would fain walk uprightly. It will not grow sick and tired of the slow and the infirm, and will not cast them off in disgust and turn away with loathing. A soul of gentleness will be forbearing with men, even in their waywardness, their wilfulness, and their wrong- doing. Behind the perverse and evil demeanour there is often the beginning of a better mind. The effect must be waited for. To wax hot and consume the delinquent, is to annihilate all hopeful possibilities. The gentle are generous. Their interpreta- tions of conduct are not heated and rash, and always lean to charity and virtue. Gentle natures are calm, because neither easily provoked nor harsh in their resentments. Gentleness is tender towards all men — abounding in sympathy for the tempted, compassionate towards the suffering, and filled with grief by the sins and the sorrows of the polluted and the guilty. The gentle- ness of God is substantially the same as the gentleness of man, varied only by the difference between the imperfect and sinful creature and the all-holy and ever-blessed Creator.
^ Life of W. B. Iioh»iison of Irvine (by Dr. James Brown), 252.
302 GOD'S GENTLENESS
^ What it cost Archbishop Benson to conquer his masterful- ness of temper comes out in a touching note to his wife (July 14, 1878) : " So this is my birthday. ... I think the most grave and altogether best lesson which I have learned in nine-and-forty years is the incalculable and infinite superiority of gentleness to every other force, and the imperious necessity of humihty as a foundation to every other virtue. Without this it appears to me the best characters and noblest have to be taken to pieces and built up again with the new concrete underlaid — and without gentleness things may be done, but oh, at what needless cost of tears and blood too ! " ^
Let no man predicate That aught the name of gentleness should have,
Even in a king's estate, Except the heart there be a gentle man's.
The star- beam lights the wave, — Heaven holds the star and the star's radiance.^
3. Gentleness is not a quality which men have commonly ascribed to God. It certainly has not occupied a prominent place in the thoughts of human beings, and has by no means dwelt in their reflexions. The religions of men, which are the sum of their ideas of God, are not only silent as to the Divine gentleness, but irreconcilable with it. Power and anger represent the chief characteristics of the Deity in the minds of all nations. The tumultuous forces of creation have commonly brought the micrht and the wrath of God into contact with the sensibilities of men. Nature in her gentler aspects and in her more restful moods has not exerted so effective an influence over religious thought and feeling. The vast conflagration; the overwhelming flood ; the raging and resistless sea ; the sweep of the wild hurricane; the blinding glare of lightnings and the crash and roll of thunder; the earthquake which sends its shock to the very foundations of the globe, which makes every inch of ground feel insecure, for the time, annihilates faith in the stability of nature, and summons terror to every face; — these things constrain human impotence to tremble before almighty power.