Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/71

Rh Christ's method is divine. His words have the charm of antiquity with the freshness of yesterday; the simplicity of a child with the wisdom of a God; the softness of kisses from the lip of love, and the force of the lightning rending the tower. His parables are like groups of matchless statuary; His prayers like an organ peal floating round the world and down the ages, echoed by the mountain-peaks and plains into rich and varied melody, in which all devout hearts find their noblest feelings at once expressed, sustained, refined. His truths are self-evidencing. They fall into the soul as seed into the ground, to rest and germinate. He speaks, and all nature and life become vocal with theology. —.

Then, too, His patience—reaching on and on in its long-suffering amplitude, waiting and never weary, hopeful and never despairing of conquering the soul,—no wonder the "patience of Christ" became the apostolic formulary of moral loveliness. What a power was in it! Here is a nature made suspicious by manifold deceits, stranded on the shoals of doubt, desponding, obstinate, wedded to sin. Does the Master crush it by imperious authority, exasperate it by taunts, fling it aside as a cumberer of the ground? Ah, give it time to recover, opportunities to know itself, nurse it by gentleness, gain its confidence, find the secret of its weakness and sorrow! Do not despair! It may bear fruit next year. Oh, this infinite patience of Jesus, how it rebukes our cynical criticisms and passionate haste! How it bids us take note of temperaments, troubles, habits, provocations, prejudices, in our judgments of men!—.

How free from every thing like art were the reasonings and language of Christ.