It is well known that the truest harmonies grow out of the strongest contrasts. The precepts of scripture are no exception to this rule. The connection is not obvious between a peaceable spirit and the discriminating zeal for God, which was doubtless typified by the salt of the sanctuary. But nonetheless is there a divine and necessary connection between the two. In short, there is no one-sidedness in scripture. There is a good deal in us. And we are too apt to cross the border-land of spirituality on the one side or the other, and consequently either to be particularly hard on those whose habits of thought, disposition, or training, lead them in a direction aside from our own; or else to think that to differ is a light matter. We are all aggression, or all yieldingness. We are either fain to call down fire from heaven on those who differ from us, or we call them soft names and hint, not obscurely, that after all we should not be so tenacious of doctrine; that Christianity shows itself in the charity that beareth and hopeth all things more than in the energy of the girded loins and burning lamp. In fact, they are just as essential the one as the other, and the blessed Lord in this concise verse links them in a divine harmony. Of course there are times for yielding, as also for bold defense of the truth. Subjection to God can alone teach us when and how. But though zeal be aggressive, it will be dominated by peaceableness; and if the occasion calls for peace pure and simple, it will not be invertebrate; it will be, so to speak, the gentle pressure of the strong hand. In proportion as this precept of the Lord is, by His grace, made good in our own souls, in that measure shall we be like Him Who, as one has said, “when meekness became Him, was meek; when indignation, who could withstand His overwhelming and withering rebuke?” So much for what seems to be the direct teaching of this verse; but does it not also admonish us that we are often needlessly wordy, and consequently pointless, seeing that so much truth is wrapt up in words so few and so simple? Such brevity is of course divine, but may we not follow the Lord in this also? R B Jun