Mountains of Spices by Hannah Hurnard

Author:Hannah Hurnard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781414371320
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 2012-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Mountain of Calamus

GENTLENESS: The Terror of Love

A light breeze was blowing over the mountains in the very early morning when the King and Grace and Glory came, just before sunrise, to the Mountain of Calamus, where the spices of gentleness were cultivated. As they approached the slopes of this mountain they heard a soft, musical sound like the murmur of water on far-off seas. This music became more audible the nearer they approached, and definite cadences became distinguishable, as though a very soft but lovely song was being played by a great multitude of sweet-toned instruments performing in exquisite harmony.

When they reached the slopes of the mountain, Grace and Glory stood still in delighted surprise, for stretching before her were fields of slender reeds, swaying in the breeze and tossing lightly in rhythmical motion like waves or a slightly rolling sea. On this sea there were lines of foamy white crests, for at that season of the year the reeds were all flowering and each sheath had opened out into a frothy white cobweb around the brown stamens. It was the wind blowing through this sea of gently swaying reeds which produced the low musical murmurings which so delighted her ears. But as they paused on the edge of the slope they heard also the sound of several flutelike notes, and then they saw that a group of the King’s shepherds had gathered up there, and before descending to the valley below they had cut several of the reeds and were forming them into shepherds’ pipes.

Grace and Glory had often heard the curiously soft notes of these pipes, upon which some of the shepherds played as they led their flocks through the pastures in the Valley of Humiliation, but now, for the first time, she realized that these pipes through which they blew such strangely sweet little harmonies, were formed from the hollow reeds or canes of Gentleness, which grew up here on the Mountain of Calamus.

As they stood gazing out over the tranquil scene before them, some of the shepherds began to sing, while others accompanied the air of the song upon their pipes. These were the words:

Thy gentleness hath made me great,

And I would gentle be.

’Tis love that plans my lot, not fate,

Lord, teach this grace to me.

When gales and storms thy love doth send

That I with joy may meekly bend.

Thy servants must not strive nor fight,

But as their Master be,

’Tis meekness wins, not force nor might,

Lord, teach this grace to me.

Though others should resist my love,

I may be gentle as a dove.

When presently they went on their way, the King began to tell his companion about the reeds of gentleness. He said that the chief product from them was a lovely perfume extracted from the lower part of the canes. This perfume lingered about the persons who wore it, all day long, very fresh and fragrant and soothing. He explained also that it was the pliability of the reeds and their perpetual motion which developed the

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