o be reddened.
We have to get down into the depths of the soul, before we understand
the meaning of non-resistance. It would have been better if the eager
controversy about the breadth of this commandment had oftener become a
study of its depth, and if, instead of asking, 'Are we ever warranted in
resisting?' men had asked, 'What in its full meaning is non-resistance?'
The truest answer is that it is a form of Love,--love in the face of
insults, wrongs, and domineering tyranny, such as are illustrated in
Christ's examples. This article of Christ's New Law comes last but one
in the series of instances in which His transfiguring touch is laid on
the Old Law, and the last of the series is that to which He has been
steadily advancing from the first--namely, the great Commandment of
Love. This precept stands immediately before that, and prepares for it.
It is, as suffused with the light of the sun that is all but risen,
'Resist not evil,' for 'Love beareth all things.'

It is but a shallow stream that is worried into foam and made angry and
noisy by the stones in its bed; a deep river flows smooth and silent
above them. Nothing will enable us to meet 'evil' with a patient
yielding love which does not bring the faintest tinge of anger even into
the cheek reddened by a rude hand, but the 'love of God shed abroad in
the heart,' and when that love fills a man, 'out of him will flow a
river of living water,' which will bury evil below its clear, gentle
abundance, and, perchance, wash it of its foulness. The 'quality of'
this non-resistance 'is twice blessed,' 'it blesseth him that gives and
him that takes.' For the disciple who submits in love, there is the gain
of freedom from the perturbations of passion, and of steadfast abiding
in the peace of a great charity, the deliverance from the temptation of
descending to the level of the wrong-doer, and of losing hold of God and
all high visions. The tempest-ruffled sea mirrors no stars by night, nor
is blued by day. If we are to have real communion with God, we must not
flush with indignation at evil, nor pant with desire to shoot the arrow
back to him that aimed it at us. And in regard to the evil-doer, the
most effectual resistance is, in many cases, not to resist. There is
something hid away somewhere in most men's hearts which makes them
ashamed of smiting the offered left cheek, and then ashamed of having
smitten the right one. 'It is a shame to hit him, since he does not
defend