are quite at a loss what God is about to do with us—His way is in the
2. When the methods of Providence are dark and intricate, and we are quite at a loss what God is about to do with us—His way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known, clouds and darkness are round about Him—a meek and quiet spirit acquiesces in an assurance that all things shall work together for good to us, if we love God, though we cannot understand how or which way. It teaches us to follow God with an implicit faith, as Abraham did when he went out, not knowing where he went, but knowing very well whom he followed. It quiets us with this, that though what He does we know not now, yet we shall know hereafter. John 13:7. When poor Job was brought to that dismal plunge, that he could no way trace the footsteps of divine Providence, but was almost lost in the labyrinth, Job 23:8, 9, how quietly does he sit down with this thought: "But He knows the way that I take: when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold."
II. There is MEEKNESS TOWARDS OUR BRETHREN, towards "all men." Tit. 3:2. Meekness is especially conversant about the disposition of anger: not to entirely destroy and erase from the soul the holy indignation of which the Scriptures speak, for that were to quench a coal which sometimes there is occasion for, even at God's altar, and to blunt the edge even of the spiritual weapons with which we are to carry on our spiritual warfare; but its office is to direct and govern this affection, that we may be angry and not sin. Eph. 4:26.
Meekness, in the school of the philosophers, is a virtue consisting in a mean between the extremes of rash excessive anger on the one hand, and a defect of anger on the other; a mean which Aristotle confesses it very hard exactly to gain.
Meekness, in the school of Christ, is one of the fruits of the Spirit. Gal. 5:22, 23. It is a grace wrought by the Holy Spirit both as a