In Numbers 12 we read how Moses’ own brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, reviled and slandered him before all of Israel and before the Lord. They attacked Moses and wanted him demoted.
And how did Moses respond? He didn’t; he was as quiet as a docile mouse. Moses didn’t fight for his honor; he didn’t let his pride get wounded and strike out. Instead, he let God defend him. Even though Moses had power and authority, he refused to use the power for himself. He chose to trust in God. And when the Lord punished Miriam, Moses asked for leniency and mercy.
Moses didn’t want his sister to suffer the full brunt of the law. This is meekness which he also showed during the golden calf debacle in Exodus 32. In a just and controlled anger, Moses rightly broke the covenant tablets at the horrible adultery of the people. Meekness is not shy to correct what is wrong; rather, it is bold.
Yet, Moses’ manner of correction was gentle, merciful, and seeking good. When the Lord was going to destroy Israel and told Moses to stand aside, Moses courageously stepped in between to intercede for mercy. Meekness eschews power, especially as the world uses power:

When the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, like snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said to Moses, “Oh, my lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother’s womb.” And Moses cried to the Lord, “O God, please heal her—please.” (Num. 12:10-13)

If any mere human had a valid claim to be full of pride, it would be Moses. He had the special honor of intimately conversing with God on Mount Sinai and in the tent of meeting (Exod. 33); “the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Exod. 34:29). Yet, Scripture tells us that “the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3).
2. Hannah

Written by Patrick J. O’Banion |
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Works like Calvin’s masterpiece don’t belong to a small subset of trained pastors and theologians, much less to the secular academy. They belong to the church. And reading them ties the church of this century to all of those that have come before.

In his recent book Breaking Bread with the Dead [read TGC’s review], Alan Jacobs offers advice for achieving a “more tranquil mind”—a thing devoutly to be wished. At the heart of the book is the following insight: the more substantially we’re in touch with the past, the more effectively we’ll avoid being “trapped” in the “social structure and life patterns” all around us (14).
Like C. S. Lewis, who famously urged us to “keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds” by reading old books, Jacobs argues that “you can’t understand the place and time you’re in by immersion” unless you regularly step away from it (23). For Christians, this means attentively reading (and rereading) the great works of the church’s history.
But, let’s face it, reading Augustine’s City of God, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Dante’s Divine Comedy, or Milton’s Paradise Lost can be hard work. Helpful resources exist for potential readers, of course. You’re more likely to hang in there with the great, big books if those who have gone before us can reduce the friction (as it were) by telling you what to expect.
In that spirit, I’d like to point out some landmarks from a recent reading of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), one of those great works of the Christian past and a daunting tome to encounter. Think of the following as lessons learned—things I wish someone had told me before I took the plunge.
1. Calvin had a vast knowledge of Scripture.
Calvin often used the Institutes to address issues that didn’t fit into his sermons or commentaries. Scholars suggest interacting with all three genres—Institutes, commentaries, and sermons—to get the full picture. No doubt they’re correct, but Calvin’s interaction with the Bible bleeds over from his exegetical labors into the Institutes. Watch for his wide and deep knowledge of Scripture. Seeing it operate in a work of this scale is marvelous to behold.
2. Calvin engaged church history deeply.
Calvin understood that being a Christian meant being connected to all Christians who had gone before. In addition to theologians of his own day, Calvin read (widely) among the church fathers and (not quite as widely) among the medievals.
This allowed him to bring the debates of the past into conversation with the controversies of the present and, by considering how the church and her theologians had previously engaged those issues, to move his readers through confusion toward conclusions.
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The Everlasting Man (Christian Heritage Series) by Chesterton, G. K. (Author). Chapter 2 of Part 2: “The Riddles of the Gospel.” One can argue as to which chapter in this book is the most important, but surely this would be one of them. While only 13 pages in length (in the 1955 Image Books edition that I have), it is loaded with wonderful truths. It was this book especially that helped C. S. Lewis to abandon his atheism and convert to Christianity.

It was Francis Bacon who once said: “Some books are to be tested, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Many of us have our favourite books in this regard. And Charles Spurgeon said this about the matter:
Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them, masticate and digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analysis of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride come of hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by their putting meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be, ‘much not many’.
Not just books, but authors as well need to be regarded in a selective fashion. Some are good to briefly read and then move on from, while other authors you keep going back to, over and over again. Obviously for me G. K. Chesterton is one such author.
I just looked it up, and in nearly 200 articles I have written about, referred to, or quoted from Chesterton on this website. As I keep saying, he is one of my all-time favourites, as he would be for so many others. Just yesterday I featured a number of quotes from his 1925 classic, The Everlasting Man: billmuehlenberg.com/2022/07/23/chesterton-and-the-everlasting-man/
One Chesterton fan just sent in a comment with one of his fave quotes from the book (thanks Steven). But it made me think I need to pen another piece of quotes from this amazing book. The quote he mentioned came from a chapter I did not quote from at all yesterday, and it is such a vital chapter.
I refer to Chapter 2 of Part 2: “The Riddles of the Gospel.” One can argue as to which chapter in this book is the most important, but surely this would be one of them. While only 13 pages in length (in the 1955 Image Books edition that I have), it is loaded with wonderful truths. As I noted in my earlier piece, it was this book especially that helped C. S. Lewis to abandon his atheism and convert to Christianity.
So this book – and this particular chapter – is well worth quoting from. The whole chapter of course should be read, but let me offer some select portions of it.
“We have all heard people say a hundred times over, for they seem never to tire of saying it, that the Jesus of the New Testament is indeed a most merciful and humane lover of humanity, but that the Church has hidden this human character in repellent dogmas and stiffened it with ecclesiastical terrors till it has taken on an inhuman character. This is, I venture to repeat, very nearly the reverse of the truth. The truth is that it is the image of Christ in the churches that is almost entirely mild and merciful. It is the image of Christ in the Gospels that is a good many other things as well….” p. 190
“A man simply taking the words of the story as they stand would form quite another impression; an impression full of mystery and possibly of inconsistency; but certainly not merely an impression of mildness. It would be intensely interesting; but part of the interest would consist in its leaving a good deal to be guessed at or explained. It is full of sudden gestures evidently significant except that we hardly know what they signify; of enigmatic silences; of ironical replies. The outbreaks of wrath, like storms above our atmosphere, do not seem to break out exactly where we should expect them, but to follow some higher weather-chart of their own. The Peter whom popular Church teaching presents is very rightly the Peter to whom Christ said in forgiveness, ‘Feed my lambs.’ He is not the Peter upon whom Christ turned as if he were the devil, crying in that obscure wrath, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’.” p. 191
“If there is one aspect of the New Testament Jesus in which he may be said to present himself eminently as a practical person, it is in the aspect of an exorcist….”
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