---

These words look back to the pasture lands of Bethlehem; to the fights with the bear and the lion; to the valley of Elah, where he met Goliath; to the palace of Saul, where his friendship with Jonathan grew, and to the caves and fastnesses where he hid from Saul, and to Ziglag and Hebron. They look back over all his. troubles, and upon all the deliverances which the Lord wrought out for him, and over all the way by which the Lord had brought him. They gather up into their brief utterance all the song of the great King David, when he recounted his greatness, and reveal at once the secret of his greatness and the heart of his song. The "gentleness" of God: that was the secret of his greatness. "Thy gentleness hath made me great": that was the heart of his song. David was well acquainted with God. He knew Him as few human souls have done. He knew Him out to the length and breadth of what the human soul can grasp of God. He knew Him as the Judge who doeth terrible things in righteousness. He knew Him as the Creator, by whose might the heavens were built, and the everlasting mountains rooted to the earth. In this very psalm he refers to powers and manifestations of God which make man tremble: "There went up a smoke out of his nostrils and fire out of his mouth devoured. He thundered. He. sent out arrows and lightnings. The channels of the sea appeared. The foundations of the world were discovered at the rebuke of the Lord." David knew all that. He had seen all that. But when he comes to consider his own life, and all the way he had been led, it is to the gentleness of God he turns. His gentleness, not his strength; his gentleness, not his terrors, had made him what he was.

I. THE GENTLENESS OF GOD! It is the secret spring of all the worth to which the great ones of God's kingdom have ever reached. It nourished the life of Abraham in all his wanderings, and was in his thoughts when he told how the God of heaven took him from his father's house, and promised the land in which he was a stranger, to his seed. It sustained Moses in his, mighty enterprise, and was in his teaching when be told the Israelites that "God was the Rock of their salvation," and when he recited in their hearing the beneficent wonders which had been wrought for their deliverance. And, long centuries after, it is to the same rich spring the peerless life of the Apostle Paul is traced: "I am what I am by the grace of God." Great Paul! Great David! Great lawgiver of Israel! Great father of the faithful! Great as men, great as ministers of God; great in thought and word and deed! But, lo! they cast their crowns at the feet of God. The summing up of the life of each is this: "Thy gentleness hath made me great." In our studies of saintly life we are apt to think that we have come on the secrets of spiritual greatness when we find faith, or prayer, or zeal for God, or deep acquaintance with His Word, or lips eloquent in His Gospel, or self-denial, or love. But these very qualities are results. Above them and underneath them all are the clews and fountain springs of the gentleness of God. Consider also the greatness of the men whose names are associated with the mighty developments of thought and life in the Church — men like , Bernard, Huss, and Luther; in our own country, like Anselm, Wicliffe, Knox, and Wesley — and the thousand thousands, whose names were never named on earth for greatness, who yet were as great in God's sight as these. What faith in God, what love for souls, what perseverance in tasks for which there was no praise on earth, what unquailing courage, what hoping against hope, as fellow-workers sank exhausted at their side; and, greater than all, what lowliness and meekness of heart! What was the secret of such manifold greatness? Not one would say: "My genius, or my learning, or my eloquence, or my creed." But one and all, with an irrepressible throb of gratitude, would exclaim, "Worthy is the Lamb!" And for souls truly great, whether as workers on earth, or worshippers in heaven, this is and must be the everlasting song. For it is this gentleness of God, this mercy He shows to men, this generosity, pity, forbearance, and love of the Divine heart, which is the source of all the excellence, worth calling great, to which human beings have ever reached. It is, indeed, the very beginning and possibility of spiritual life itself. Not one of all that multitude could have risen into the Divine presence, or attained the position of a worshipper, if God had marked iniquity against him. He had to bear with them, pardon them, again pardon them, thousands of times pardon each one of them. He had to fence them in by ordinances, laws, and spiritual helps. But do I require to appeal to the histories of the redeemed in heaven, or to the lives of saintly thinkers and workers in former centuries, to illustrate this fact?

II. I SHALL APPEAL TO THE EXPERIENCE AND TESTIMONY OF CHRIST'S PEOPLE. To be what you arc Christian men and women — is the greatest attainment of human life. Except Christ's own, there is no greatness to be named by its side. And in a sense it is Christ's greatness. Can you reveal the mystery of your possession of it? What force separated you from the world and the life of the world, and drew you to the side of Christ, and filled you with that life in Him in which you are rejoicing now? The very instincts of Christian life within you make you impatient to say: "Not unto us, O Lord: to Thee be all the glory: in Thee are the springs of our life: it is Thy gentleness which has made us great." Can you ever forget, that hour when the fact first flashed in upon your spirit that you were a lost soul? You recollect the horror of great darkness which fell upon you then. But you also remember the vision of gentleness in the cross, and how, little by little, it was borne in upon your spirit that there was forgiveness with God, forgiveness even for you. Speak next, you who have been smitten by great affliction. What is your testimony respecting the mystery of Christian life? No one knows better than you how near despair the human heart can be driven by sorrow; nor how unbelief, black and terrible, can come on the wings of a great despair. You have felt the cold touch of that despair. Who shall describe the black thoughts, or the rebellious impulses of despair like that? Shadows of spiritual death, ghastly fancies from the pit, rising, swelling, spreading over the whole life and darkening and eating it up, as clouds of locusts darken and eat up the joy of harvest! You felt all that: you gave way to all that. And vet — here is the gentleness of God to you — you are still on God's side; you are still believers in his love. The evil thoughts were not permitted to triumph over you: the black despair was not allowed to suck out your life. A healing hand was laid on your wounds. Your very sorrows have made you cleave more closely to his love. By the very things you have suffered you have climbed higher into his kingdom, and from the height to which his mercy has raised you, your daily song is, "O Thou Helper of the helpless: Thy gentleness hath made us great."

III. OF THIS GENTLENESS WHICH MAKETH GREAT, CHRIST IS THE MANIFESTATION TO US. He is that very gentleness itself. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." He is a God so gentle that He would not leave the sin-filled world to perish. Out of His gentleness He gave us Christ. What men first saw in Him was "the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sin of the world." The very symbol by which He was revealed is one which at once expresses His gentleness, and the depths into which that gentleness led Him for our sakes. The work Christ came to accomplish was the bestowal of gentleness on a world, which had lost the very elements of it. He came to put away a life of pride and unbelief and hatred from the human heart, and put his own life of humility, faith, and love in its place. Christ's coming into the world, therefore, was the advent of gentleness. It was heaven stooping to the earth to heal the wounds which sin had made. It was the great God taking up His home among the creatures who had rebelled against Him, that He might raise them and bring them back to His love. It is this quality of gentleness which makes Christ's earthly life so beautiful. The death of Christ is the most touching exhibition of gentleness the world has ever known. The light, which shines from the cross is the gentleness of God. One of the gentlest deeds recorded in the Old Testament is David's dirge over the dead Saul. He folded in beautiful words the memory of the man who sought his death, and taught the people to remember him as "the beauty of Israel." But the gentleness of Jesus sounded a profounder deep. In the yearning pity of His heart He wrapped His living enemies in His prayers, and carried them up and laid them on the breast of mercy: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." A poor prodigal once went out into the glooms of evil and made himself base with the base, and vile with the vile, and hateful, and irreverent, and cruel. And all the world turned from him, and put his name, away from their lips. All but one. She still clung to his name, she still interested herself in his life. She followed him into the darkness. She went in and down into the deepest, thickest, foulest darkness, and owned him there, and laid her hands on him, and her lips to his lips, and her heart to his heart, that she might lead him back. Oh, the gentleness of a mother! But the gentleness of Jesus transcends even that of a mother. The prodigal He came to save would have none of His love. His sins were an insult to Him: his merciless speeches stabbed Him: he filled the air with the cruel demand to "Crucify Him." It lay in the work Christ came to fulfil, that it could only be finished in the shadow of death. Into that shadow, therefore, He passed. Through the insults, through the hatred, through the shame and the agony, through the very jaws of hell, into the fires of a most painful death. He passed; — and there, with the gentleness of a Divine mother, laid His hand on the hand, His heart on the heart, of the very race which crucified Him, that He might overcome their enmity and bring them back to God.

IV. AND THIS IS STILL THE GREATNESS OF CHRIST AS A SAVIOUR, AND HIS POWER OVER THE HEARTS OF MEN. He is strong to save because he is long-suffering and merciful and generous. We are surprised when we read, "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us;" but it is the same wonder of mercy, the same manifestation of gentleness, that lie still lives to save His enemies. Christ is still the same in His gentleness. On the throne as on the cross, He is the gentleness of God towards men. His reign is the reign of gentleness. His intercession within the veil is the appeal of gentleness. It is because He is the gentle Jesus that He intercedes with God for man and with man for God. Exalted though Christ now is, His works as a Saviour are still the same in their gentleness as when He ministered on earth. Still, by the ministries of His Word and Spirit, and by the hands and lives of His people, He works those works of healing and mercy which made his life on earth sublime. I saw a picture once which went to my very heart. It was the interior of a humble cottage on a lonely wild. A poor old man, a travelling pedlar, worn with exhaustion, ghastly pale and cold, is seated in the centre. You can see that he has had the very narrowest escape from death. The father of the house, casting anxious glances towards the stranger, is pouring out some cordial to revive him; the mother is bringing warm wraps, and doing it with the prompt energy of one who knows that life may depend on the haste she makes. It is only a moment since the poor man entered. The door is not yet closed. The children are peering out awe-struck into the night. The snow-flakes, falling through the light, reveal and measure back the terrible gloom outside. A wild night is upon the earth; a night of blackness and blinding snow! And this old man had been caught in the storm, and had to fight, with death in the darkness, and, at the very eleventh hour of the conflict, exhausted and utterly worn, had sunk against the door of this hospitable home. "He was a stranger, and they took hint in." It was the picture of a gentle deed. But the gentleness of Jesus, in saving the souls of men, no human picture could portray. He goes out into the darkness, out into the snows and wastes and storms of sin, to seek the wanderers and the lost, to lift them, in his arms and bring them in. It is this gentleness which has been laid on the heart of the Church in the command. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." What are all the ministries of mercy in Christian life, but the outflow of this gentleness? The gentle Saviour still lives, and in His gentleness is the very life and mercy of God to men. He is near to each of us. O hearts of men and women, Christ is the Saviour for you! Open wide your doors, and let the King of Glory in. He is the gentlest, lovingest, helpfulest Friend we can have. He will not break the bruised reed; He will not quench the smoking flax!

(A. Macleod, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy gentleness hath made me great.

WEB: You have also given me the shield of your salvation. Your gentleness has made me great.