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「主的僕人不可爭況；只要溫溫和和地待衆人，善於教導，存心忍耐。」（提後2：24）
上帝征服我們，在我們本性上除去像石頭一樣的強硬性格，使我們對耶穌的靈有深刻認識的時候，我們就會前所未有地看到這個黑暗邪惡世界中溫和的難能可貴。
這種聖靈的恩典不是偶然臨到我們身上的，如果我們認識不清，不去選擇，不從我們思想裏去培養發展，那麽這種溫和就永遠不會深入我們的本性，或見之于行爲。
在恩典裏每前進一步，我們必須先領會，然後懇切禱告，才能得到。
很少人願意經受苦難，然而徹底的溫和卻來自苦難。我們要培養自己成爲溫和必須先與主同死，因爲釘十字架就包括苦難。這是真正的擘開自己和壓碎自己，也就是使自己經受悲痛，勝過本性上的強硬，成爲溫和。
今天有許多僅僅是心理上和邏輯上的成聖，這樣的成聖不是屬靈的成聖，只不過是杜撰僞裝的成聖。這種人在心理上把自己放在祭壇上，然後在內心中認爲祭壇能使祭物成聖，因此又在邏輯上斷定他已成聖。於是像這樣的一個人就到處信口雌黃，侈談神學理論，胡說上帝的深奧的事。
可是他先天的惡性並未改變，亞當的硬心腸還沒有被磨碎，內心還沒有與客西馬尼的歎息聲一同跳動，也沒有真正的各各他的釘死標記，因而就不可能成爲柔和的、親切的、溫和的、勝利的、滿溢的、得勝的生命。
真像春天早晨，從一個空墳墓中流出來的基督復活的生命一樣。
「衆人也都蒙大恩。」（徒4：33）
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"The servant of the Lord must be gentle" (2 Tim. 2:24).
When God conquers us and takes all the flint out of our nature, and we get deep visions into the Spirit of Jesus, we then see as never before the great rarity of gentleness of spirit in this dark and unheavenly world.
The graces of the Spirit do not settle themselves down upon us by chance, and if we do not discern certain states of grace, and choose them, and in our thoughts nourish them, they never become fastened in our nature or behavior.
Every advance step in grace must be preceded by first apprehending it, and then a prayerful resolve to have it.
So few are willing to undergo the suffering out of which thorough gentleness comes. We must die before we are turned into gentleness, and crucifixion involves suffering; it is a real breaking and crushing of self, which wrings the heart and conquers the mind.
There is a good deal of mere mental and logical sanctification nowadays, which is only a religious fiction. It consists of mentally putting one's self on the altar, and then mentally saying the altar sanctifies the gift, and then logically concluding therefore one is sanctified; and such an one goes forth with a gay, flippant, theological prattle about the deep things of God.
But the natural heartstrings have not been snapped, and the Adamic flint has not been ground to powder, and the bosom has not throbbed with the lonely, surging sighs of Gethsemane; and not having the real death marks of Calvary, there cannot be that soft, sweet, gentle, floating, victorious, overflowing, triumphant life that flows like a spring morning from an empty tomb. --G. D. W.
"And great grace was upon them all" (Acts 4:33).
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