Excerpts
From a Discourse on Meekness
By
Matthew Henry; Edited by Doktor Riktor Von Zhades
Growth
and Proficiency in His Grace
Be
often examining your growth and proficiency in this grace. Inquire
what command you have gained over your passions, and what
improvements you have made in meekness. Provocations recur every day,
such as have been wont perhaps to throw you into a passion; these
give you an opportunity to make the trial. Do you find that you are
less subject to anger, and when angry, that you are less transported
by it, than formerly; that your apprehension of injuries is less
quick, and that your resentments are less keen than usual? Is the
little kingdom of your mind more quiet than it has been, and the
discontented party weakened and kept under? It is well if it be so,
and a good sign that the soul prospers and is in health. We should
examine every night whether we have been quiet all day. We shall
sleep the better if we find we have. Let conscience keep up a grand
inquest in the soul, under a charge from the Judge of heaven and
earth to inquire and due presentment make of all riots, routs, and
breaches of the peace within us; and let nothing be left unpresented
for favor, affection, or self-love; nor let any thing presented be
left unprosecuted according to law. Those whose natural temper, or
their age, or diseases lead them to be hasty, have an opportunity, by
their meekness and gentleness, to discover both the truth and
strength of grace in general; for it is the surest mark of
uprightness to "keep ourselves from our own iniquity." And
yet, if the children of God bring forth these fruits of the Spirit in
old age, when commonly men are most froward and peevish, it shows not
only that they are upright, but rather that "the Lord is
upright," in whose strength they stand; that "he is their
rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him."
No comments:
Post a Comment