we are truly
meek, masters of ourselves and calm and equable, and so are blessed in
ourselves. Meekness makes no claims upon others. Plenty of people are
sore all over with the irritation caused by not getting what they
consider due respect. They howl and whine because they are not
appreciated. Do not expect much of men. Make no demands, if for no
better reason than because the more you demand the less you will get;
and the less you seem to think to be your due, the more likely you are
to receive what you desire.

But that is a poor, shallow ground. The true exhortation is, 'Be ye
imitators of God, as dear children.'

Ah, what a different world we should live in if the people that say,
'Oh, the Sermon on the Mount is my religion,' really made it their
religion! How much friction would be taken out of all our lives; how all
society would be revolutionised, and earth would become a Paradise!

But there is another thing to be taken into account in the description
of meekness. That grace, as the example of our Lord shows, harmonises
with undaunted bravery and strenuous resistance to the evil in the
world. On our own personal account, there are to be no bounds to our
patient acceptance of personal wrong; on the world's account, there are
to be no bounds to our militant attitude against public evils. Only let
us remember that 'the wrath of men worketh not the righteousness of
God.' If contending theologians, and angry philanthropists, and social
reformers, that are ready to fly at each other's throats for the sacred
cause of humanity, would only remember that there is no good to be done
except in this spirit, there would be more likelihood of the errors and
miseries of mankind being redressed than, alas! there is to-day.
Gentleness is the strongest force in the world, and the soldiers of
Christ are to be priests, and to fight the battles of the Kingdom,
robed, not in jingling, shining armour or with sharp swords, nor with
fierce and eager bitterness of controversy, but in the meekness which
overcomes. You may take all the steam-hammers that ever were forged and
batter at an iceberg, and, except for the comparatively little heat that
is developed by the blows and melts some smell portion, it will be ice
still, though pulverised instead of whole. But let it get into the
silent drift of the Arctic current, and let it move quietly down to the
southward, then the sunbeams smite its coldness to death, and it is
dissipated in the