What ! was there a time when he bungled and blundered ? I looked up in amazement.
" I mean it," he said, amused at my look.
I was an artist then — if never since. He had come down and back to me and was himself again the little awkward beginner, and I was lifted up and linked on to him. That was gentleness, and it made me great. Is not that the very Gospel of God? God hath made Himself one with us that He may make us one with Himself. He has come down to be little and weak and beset with our hindrances, that He may lift us up and set us on high amongst His heroes and conquerors.^
1 Charles Leach, Surrhiy Afternoons with IVorbing Men, 244.
2 M. G, Pearse, The Gospel for the Day, 51.
314 GOD'S GENTLENESS
4. When God corrects His children, He does so only that they may be stimulated to grow in grace ; and there is usually, in the concomitants of their trial, something to remind them of His love. " He stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind : " and, if the thorn of trial may not be extracted, there comes the precious assurance, " My grace is sufficient for thee ; for my strength is made perfect in weakness." How often have we had such experi- ences ! Even when we have been most sorely smitten, there has come to us some view of His character or some promise of His Word which has made us feel that He had not forgotten us. And when, under His chastening dispensation, we have turned to Him, how full of love was His reception of us. Thus, all through our lives, His gentleness is the background of all our discipline ; and when earth is exchanged for heaven, and we stand perfected in holiness before the throne, looking back upon the way by which He led us, and marking the infinite love which called us out of the world at the first, the unwearied patience which bore with all our follies and transgressions, the tenderness which cherished us in every emergency, and the grace which supported us through death, we shall be able to understand all that is implied in this beautiful text, and we shall sing, as we could never sing on earth, " Thy gentleness hath made me great." ^
^ As the eye of the cunning lapidary detects in the rugged pebble, just digged from the mine, the polished diamond that shall sparkle on the diadem of a king ; or as the sculptor in the rough block of marble, newly hewn from the quarry, beholds the statue of perfect grace and beauty which is latent there, and waiting but the touch of his hand, — so He who sees all, and the end from the beginning, sees oftentimes greater wonders than these. He sees the saint in the sinner, the saint that shall be in the sinner that is ; the wheat in the tare ; the shepherd feeding the sheep in the wolf tearing the sheep ; Paul the preacher of the faith in Saul the persecutor of the faith; Israel a prince with God in Jacob the trickster and the supplanter ; Matthew the Apostle in Levi the publican ; a woman that should love much in the woman that was sinning much ; and in some vine of the earth bringing forth wild grapes and grapes of gall, a tree which shall yet bring forth good fruit, and wine to make glad the heart ; so that when some, like those over-zealous servants in the parable, would have Him to pluck it up, and to cast it without more ado into
1 W. M. Taylor, The Limitations of Life, 354.
PSALM XVIII. 35 315
the wine-press of the wrath of Almighty God, He exclaims rather, " Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it," and is well content to await the end.^
5. By His gentleness God appeals to our whole personality, on its best and noblest side.
(1) The mind is gently disciplined and developed into maturity. God regulates His revelations to the requirements of individual reason. The sun shines mechanically and is unconscious of the influences which it emits. God is omniscient love, and never works automatically. The rays of the Supreme Intelligence are lovingly and wisely reined. Our earth is but the millionth part of the sun, yet it affects the gravitating power of that gigantic orb. The mind of man is but a spark, yet it modifies the effulgence of the Divine splendour. The beams of God's love warm and revive the latent capacities of the brain. The discordant strings of the reason are gently tuned into harmony with the Infinite. The extension of our mental horizon is graduated by unerring beneficence. Under God's wise and delicate treatment, man's mental mechanism becomes increasingly sensitive, and able to " think God's thoughts after Him."
^ There are many states of mind which are amenable only to gentleness. You cannot scold a man out of his grief ; if you wish a man to love you, you do not use violent language and insist on his loving you ; if you wish to bring a man over to your way of thinking, you deal gently with him and are careful not to offend his prejudices or ride roughshod over his feelings. Instinct tells us that in many cases nothing but gentleness will win.2