holy and beloved, meekness." It is one of the members of the new
Now the way prescribed for the attainment of meekness is to seek it. Ask it of God, pray for it: it is fruit of the Spirit, it is given by the God of all grace, and to Him we must go for it. It is a branch of that wisdom which he that lacks must ask of God, and it shall be given him. The God we address is called "the God of patience and consolation;" and He is the God of consolation because the God of patience—for the more patient we are, the more we are comforted under our afflictions—and as such we must look to Him when we come to Him for grace to make us "like-minded," that is, meek and loving one towards another, which is the apostle's errand at the throne of grace. God's people are, and should be, a generation that "covet the best gifts," and make their court to the best Giver, who never said to the wrestling seed of Jacob, Seek in vain; but has given us an assurance firm enough for us to build upon, and rich enough for us to encourage ourselves with—Seek, and you shall find. What would we more? Seek meekness, and you shall find it.
The promise annexed is very encouraging to the meek of the earth that seek meekness: "It may be you shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger." Though it is but a promise with an "it may be," yet it ministers abundance of comfort: God's probabilities are better than the world's certainties; and the meek ones of the earth that hope in His mercy, and can venture their all upon an intimation of His good will, shall find to their comfort, that when God brings a flood upon the world of the ungodly, He has an ark for all his Noahs, His resting, quiet people, in which they shall be hid, it may be, from the calamity itself, at least from the sting and malignity of it—"HID," as Luther said, "either in heaven or under heaven, either in the possession or under the protection of heaven."
2. We must put on meekness. "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, meekness." It is one of the members of the new