The Blessing of Quietness
“Just when we think we’ve fixed the golden mean — The diamond point, on which to balance fair Life, and life’s lofty issues — weighing there, With fractional precision, close and keen, Thought, motive, word, and deed, there comes between Some wayward circumstance, some jostling care, Some temper’s fret, some mood’s unwise despair, To mar the equilibrium, unforeseen,
And spoil our nice adjustment! Happy he Whose soul’s calm equipoise can know no jar, Because the unwavering hand that holds the scales Is the same hand that weighed each steadfast star —
Is the same hand that on the sacred tree Bore for his sake the anguish of the nails.”
Margaret J. Preston.
It would seem that anybody could keep still and quiet. It requires no exertion, we would say. Work is hard, but it ought to be easy to rest. It takes effort to speak; it ought to be easy just to be silent.
But we all know that few things are harder for most people than to be still. Our lives are like the ocean in their restlessness. This is one of the proofs of our immortality. We are too great to be quiet. A stone has no trouble in keeping still. A clam never gets nervous. The human soul was made for God, and its very grandeur renders its repose and quiet amid the things of earth the most difficult of all attainments.
Yet quietness is a lesson that is set for us with great frequency in the Bible. We are told that the effect of righteousness is quietness. The Shepherd leads his sheep by the still waters. We are told to study to be quiet, to be ambitious to be quiet, as a marginal reading gives it. The apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, St. Peter says, is a womanly adorning which is in the sight of God of great price. A dry morsel and quietness therewith, the wise man tells us, is better than feasting with strife. Then we are assured that in quietness and in confidence there is strength.
Thus the thought of quietness shines with very bright lustre in the Scriptures. It is used sometimes in its literal sense. Evidently God does not like noise. Then sometimes it is used to denote the restful spirit. Restlessness is not spiritually beautiful. Peace is a high attainment. Thus quietness indicates a rich Christian culture. It is not easily reached. Soldiers say that in war it is much harder to stand still under fire than it is to rush into the battle. It is easier to be in the midst of the active duties and struggles of spiritual life than it is to be compelled to wait and be still. Waiting is harder than working. For many people it requires more strength to work quietly than it does to bluster. It is only the great engine that runs noiselessly; the little machine fusses and sputters. Quietness in a man or a woman is a mark of strength.
Many persons suppose that noise indicates strength. They think a man is a great preacher just in proportion to the loudness of his voice. Eloquence is noise. Boanerges has great spiritual power. The noisy man is the strong one. People who make the most bluster and show are the greatest workers. But a closer observation soon shows us that this is an untrue measurement. Noise is not eloquence. Loudness is not power. The great preacher is the one who most deeply and widely impresses other lives, turns them from sin to holiness and makes them blessings in the world. Noise is impertinent in Christ’s work and detracts from the preacher’s power.
“We mar our work for God by noise and bustle; Can we not do our part and not be heard? Why should we care that men should see us With our tools, and praise the skill with which we use
them? And oftentimes we chafe and think it hard That we should lay our * great ’ and ’ costly ’ stones For other men to build on and get praised, While our names are forgotten or passed or.”
In all departments of life it is the quiet forces that effect most. The sunbeams fall all day long, silently, unheard by human ear; yet there is in them a wondrous energy and a great power for blessing and good. Gravitation is a silent force, with no rattle of machinery, no noise of engines, no clanking of chains, and yet it holds all the stars and worlds in their orbits and swings them through space with unvarying precision. The dew falls silently at night when men sleep, and yet it touches every plant and leaf and flower with new life and beauty. It is in the lightning, not in the thunder-peal, that the electric energy resides. Thus even in nature, strength lies in quietness and the mightiest energies work noiselessly.
The same is true also in moral and spiritual things. It is in the calm, quiet life that the truest strength is found. The power that is blessing the world these days comes from the purity, sweetness, and self-denial of gentle mother-love, from the voiceless influence of example in faithful fathers, from the patience and unselfishness of devoted sisters, from the tender beauty of innocent child-life in homes; above all, from the silent cross and the divine Spirit’s breathings of gentle stillness. The agencies that are doing the most to bless the world are the noiseless ones. Moral power seems to hide itself in silent ministries and to shun those that advertise themselves. The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation.
If therefore we would be strong we must learn to be quiet. A noisy talker is always weak, lacking the royal power of control. Quietness in speech is a mark of self-mastery. It is a Bible word which says, “If any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also.’’ The tendency of the grace of Christ in the heart is to soften and refine the whole nature. It makes the very tones of the voice more gentle. It curbs boisterousness into quietness. It represses angry feelings, and softens them into the gentleness of love. It restrains and subdues resentment, teaching us to return kindness for unkindness, gentleness for rudeness, blessing for cursing, prayer for despiteful usage. “Love suffereth long and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked; beareth all things, believeth all things.”
The love of Christ in the heart makes one like Christ himself, and he was quiet. He was never flustered. He never fumed nor fretted, was never worried. He never spoke hastily nor impatiently. His voice was never heard on the street. There was a calmness in his soul that showed itself in every word he spoke, in every look of his eye, in all his bearing.
It is well that we learn the lesson of quietness. It is a secret of power. It will save us from outbursts of temper and from saying the rash and hasty words which one hour afterward we should be sorry for having said, and which if spoken would make so much bitterness and trouble for us. It will enable us to be cheerful and patient amid the cares and vexations of life.
There is a blessing in being still and quiet in the time of suffering. “Does it hurt you severely?” one asked of a friend who lay with a broken arm. “Not when I keep still,” was the answer. This is the secret of much of the victoriousness we see in rejoicing Christians. They conquer the pain and the bitterness by keeping still.
They do not ask questions, nor demand to know” why they have trials. They believe in God, and are so sure of his love and wisdom, that they are pained by no doubt, no fear, no uncertainty. Peace is their pillow, because they have learned just to be still. Their quietness robs trial of its sharpness, sorrow of its bitterness, death of its sting, and the grave of its victory.
Quietness is a blessed secret for the wives and mothers in the home. It is impossible for any gentle woman, though her household life be even ideally Christian and happy, to avoid having many experiences that try her sensitive spirit. Probably the most perfect earthly marriage has at times, especially in its earlier years, its harsh incidents and its rude contacts, which tend to disturb the wife’s heart and give her pain. It is hard, or at least it takes time, for the average man to learn to be so gentle that no word, touch, act, habit, or disposition of his shall ever hurt the heart of the woman he loves even most tenderly and truly. Nothing but the love on her part that is not provoked, that doth not behave itself unseemly, that can be silent and sweet — not silent and sullen, but silent and sweet — in any circumstances, can make even holiest wedded life what it should be. Blessed is the wife who has learned this lesson.
Every home with its parents and children presents a problem of love which only the spirit of quietness can solve. Tastes differ. Individuality is ofttimes strong and aggressive. There are almost sure to be wilful, self-assertive spirits in even the smallest family, those that want their own way, that are not disposed to do even their fair share of the yielding. In some homes there are despotic spirits. In the best there are diversities of spirit, and the process of self-discipline and training requires years, before all the household can dwell together in ideal sweetness.
A German musician with an ear exquisitely sensitive to harmony, soon after arriving in our country was drawn by the sound of singing into a church which he was passing. But the singing was most discordant, jarring painfully upon his trained ear. He could not courteously go out of the house while the service was in progress, and therefore he resolved to endure the torture as patiently as possible. But soon he distinguished, amid the discord of the congregation, one voice, the soft, clear voice of a woman, singing calmly, steadily, and truly. She was not disturbed by the noisy, discordant notes of her companions in the worship, but sang on patiently, firmly, and sweetly. And as the visitor listened, one voice after another was drawn by this one singer’s gentle influence into harmony, until before the hymn had been finished, the whole congregation was singing in perfect unison.
So it is often in the making of a home. At first the individual lives are wilful, uncontrolled, and self-assertive, and there is discord in the household life. It takes time and most patient love to bring all into sweet harmony. But if the wife and mother, the real home-maker, has learned the blessed lesson of quietness, her life is the one calm, clear, true song, which never falters, and which brings all the other lives, little by little, up to its own gentle key, until at last the life of the home is indeed a sweet song of love.
Sometimes it is a daughter and sister in the home, whose quiet sweetness blesses the whole household. She has learned the lesson of patience and gentleness. She has smiles for every one. She has the happy tact to dissipate little quarrels by her kind words. She softens the father’s ill temper when he comes in weary from the day’s cares. She is a peacemaker in the home, a happiness-maker, through the influence of her own lovingness of spirit, and draws all at length into harmony with her own quietness and peace.
These are familiar illustrations of the blessing of quietness. Wherever we find this quality in any life it has a wondrous influence. It surely is a lesson worth learning, better than the winning of a crown. But can it be learned? Can the blustering, quick-tempered, rash-speaking man or woman learn to be quiet and selfmastered? Yes; Moses learned it, until he became the meekest of men. John learned it, until he became the beloved disciple, lying on Jesus’ bosom. It can be learned by any one who will enter Christ’s school, for he says, “Come unto me. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; and ye shall find rest unto your soul.” Quietness never can come through the hushing of the world’s noise so that there shall be nothing to try or. irritate the spirit. We cannot find or make a quiet place to live in, and thus get quiet in our own soul. We cannot make the people about us so loving and gentle that we shall never have anything uncongenial or unkindly to vex or annoy us. The quietness must be within us. Nothing but the peace of God in the heart can give it. Yet we can have this peace if we will simply and always do God’s will and then trust him. A quiet heart will give a quiet life.