Psalm 23:2 He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters. God's chosen ways of working in the physical world are not wholly of the sudden and violent sort. Storm and earthquake and flood have undoubtedly played their part; but God seems to work, by preference, slowly and in silence. The same is true in the moral world. It is indeed difficult to overestimate the force of a great soul. It is well to remember that not all dislocating and disturbing spirits put forth any true claim to greatness. One indeed speaks what the many feel; but his word is with power because of the dumb aspirations stirring in many breasts, and a universal emotion which has not yet found expression. And this is even more the case with regard to moral operations of a quieter and less signal, though hardly less important kind; forces which do not so suddenly change the world, as keep it sweet and pure, and perhaps, in the course of ages, urge it a little nearer the throne of God. A father's integrity; a mother's sweet goodness; the quiet air of a happy home; a domestic courage and patience, at which you have looked very closely, and whose every line and lineament you know; some ancestral saintliness, which is a household tradition, and no more, but which has never withered in the fierce light of public estimate, — these things have inspired and nourished your nobler part. They are the refreshing dew and the fertilising rain, the restful night, and the kindling day of God's moral world. We insist too much on our own estimate of small and great in the moral world, forgetting that any single fact or individual life is but one link in an endless chain of causes and consequences, of which we ought to know the whole before we can rightly estimate a part. No mistake can be greater than to suppose that all the world's best work is done by the eloquent tongue and the busy hand. God Himself provides a diversity of work for His own purposes; but God tempers His weapons in His own way. (C. Beard, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.WEB: He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. |
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