Editorial June 29, 1968 Issue

Meekness Is Strength

Alan A. Aylwin

Meekness is not weakness. A genuinely meek individual is not a sort of Caspar Milquetoast, a picture of flabby inadequacy, a human doormat on which others figuratively wipe their feet. Christ Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."^{Matt. 5:5;} This forthright statement has no overtones of weakness.

In the New Testament the English word "meek" is a translation from the Greek praos meaning mild, gentle, tamed. It is said that when the Greeks captured wild horses and curbed their undisciplined natures, these horses were praos—tamed.

Individual meekness, then, must be the result of self-mastery, self-control. It results from silencing the noisy aggressiveness of human personality, from taming personal sense with its pride, conceit, egotism. Meekness is the inevitable effect of learning something of the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of God, the one Mind or Ego, and of the real spiritual man's absolute dependence on Him for intelligence and action. When one starts to acknowledge that in reality he cannot lift so much as his little finger himself nor originate a single thought, egotistical self-importance begins to fade away. Assertiveness, anger, self-will, give way to the quiet, gentle, unhurried state of thought that most effectively reflects the stationary might of the one real Ego.

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