「主的奴僕不該爭競，總要溫溫和和的待眾人」－提摩太後書2:24
少有人願意經歷苦難，然而唯有經過苦難，才能擁有真正的溫柔。
我們必須先經歷十字架的致死與受苦，才能有真實溫柔生命的流露；也只有十字架，才能對付我們的己，使我們的心歸順，心思降服。
今日有許多人只知道在理智和邏輯上的聖別，卻不知道這些只是宗教的外衣。他們只在理智上將自己獻於祭壇，在心理上認定這樣的獻上就是成聖。他們用神學虛空浮華的理論代替了生命經歷的實際。
如果天然的心弦沒有被扯斷，亞當遺留下的硬心沒有被磨碾成灰，客西馬尼寂寞錐心的嘆息沒有充滿胸懷，加略的釘痕沒有烙在心間，恐怕溫柔甜美、湧流潺潺、得勝滿溢的生命江河，也永遠無法從清晨的空墓下流出。
－G. D. W.
"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.
