Gold Nugget 371 - Quiet Strength

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      “In quietness … shall be your strength.”

      It is a common fallacy that noise and strength are closely allied.  On the contrary, it is the quiet and even the silent things which are the strong ones.  The thunder startles or appalls, but it effects nothing; gunpowder deafens the ear, but it enriches no one; tempestuous rhetoric excites to momentary force or feeling, but it adds nothing to character. 

      It is the silent forces of gravitation and electricity acting for ages without being known to exist; it is the soft sunshine and the still rains of heaven, it is the quiet words of the calm teacher finding their way to the mind and working conviction and conversion there; - it is in these things, and in things like these, that real power resides.  The quiet strength of a gentle mother’s purity and love, of a faithful father’s warning, of an honoured teacher’s counsel and example, of an earnest Church’s testimony and work; - these are the God-given agencies by which the world is to be won to righteousness and truth.

      Noisy, spasmodic, irregular outburst may be auxiliaries, but they are only that.

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Isaiah I p. 503, Isaiah 30:15, (W. Clarkson)

 

Gold Nugget 371

Quiet Strength

 

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