“A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.”
THE WRATH-DISPELLING POWER OF A SOFT ANSWER.
Proverbs xv. 1.
While it is the effect, if not the end and aim, of grievous words to stir up anger,—“a soft answer turneth away wrath.” Though “the wrath of a king is as messengers of death, a wise man will pacify it.” “By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone.”
When the men of Ephraim, enraged at Gideon’s failing to invoke their aid when he went to fight with the Midianites, chided with him sharply, his soft answer was of instant avail to turn away their wrath. What had he done now in comparison of them? the champion deferentially exclaimed; and what was he able to do in comparison of them? Was not the mere gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the entire vintage of Abi-ezer? “Then their anger was abated toward him, when he had said that.” What threatened to be a very bone of contention,—well, so soft a tongue as that of Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, breaketh the bone.
Discussing Lord Aberdeen’s settlement of the vexed question of the right of search, in 1843, the historian of Europe observes that never was there a truer maxim than that it requires the consent of two persons to make a quarrel; a soft word, a seasonable explanation, often turns aside wrath, and sometimes prevents the most serious wars that threaten to devastate the world. Æsop Smith says he never knew a downright quarrel yet, where two people were not in the wrong; “drop your battledore, and the shuttlecock will fall. ‘A soft answer turneth away wrath.’ No doubt it does, in nine cases out of ten,”—but not quite always, this authority affirms; there being some unreasonable quarrellers, who will batter the peacemaker when he drops his battledore. But as a rule, and on the authority of an older and still more widely recognised maker of proverbs, the mere fact of yielding pacifieth great offences.