Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

² It is our place then to see, or seek, or learn, how we must be “meek;” and we are guided by that which I have just brought forward out of the Scriptures, to find what we are in quest of. Be attentive then, Beloved, for a little while; it is a weighty matter that is in hand, that we may be meek; a necessary thing in the adversities of life. But it is not the adverse circumstances of this life which are called offenses; but mark what “offenses” are. A man, for instance, under some hard necessity is weighed down by a press of trouble.

That he is weighed down with a press of trouble, is no offense. By such pressure were even Martyrs pressed, but not oppressed. Of an offense beware, but of a press of trouble not so much. The last presses you, an offense oppresses you. What then is the difference between the two? In the press of trouble you made ready to maintain patience, to hold fast constancy, not to abandon faith, not to consent to sin. This if you maintain, or shall have maintained, the trouble that presses you shall not be your fall; but that press of trouble shall avail to the same end as in the oil press, not to destroy the olive, but to extract the oil.

In a word, if in this trouble that presses you you ascribe praise unto God, how useful will the press be to you, whereby such oil is pressed out! Under such a press the Apostles sat in chains, and in that press they sang a hymn to God. What precious oil was this that was pressed and forced out! Beneath a heavy press did Job sit on the dunghill, without resource, without help, without substance, without children; full, but of worms only, as far, that is, as concerned the outward man, but because he too was full of God within, he praised God, and that press was no “offense” to him.

Where then was the “offense”? When his wife came to him and said, “Speak a word against God, and die.” When all had been taken from him by the devil, an Eve was reserved for the exercised sufferer, not to console but to tempt her husband. See then where the offense was. She exaggerated his miseries, and her miseries too with his, and began to persuade him to blaspheme. But he who was “meek,” because “God had taught him out of His law, and given him rest from the days of adversity;” had “great peace” in his heart as “loving the law of God, and nothing was an offense to him.”

She was an offense, but not to him. In a word, behold the meek man, behold one taught in the law of God, the eternal law of God I mean. For that law on tables was not yet given to the Jews in the time of Job, but in the hearts of the godly there remained still the eternal law, from which that which was given to the people was copied. Because then by the law of God he had “rest given him from the days of adversity,” and “had great peace as loving the law of God,” behold how “meek” he is, and what he answers. Learn hereby what I propose to enquire; who are the meek. “You speak,” he says, “as one of the foolish women speaks. If we have received good from the hand of the Lord, shall we not bear the evil?”