to himself in the greatest men-heroes in whom all lesser men see and worship God. It is opposed to the notion of some hidden nobleness in the soul that only needs development by culture to make it God-like-opposed to the much lauded humanitarian gospel of the present day with its fundamental dogma about the dignity and perfectibility of human nature. True humility accepts the situation, though it stains the pride of human reason. Humility in this sense is peculiarly a Christian virtue, as self-sufficiency was pre-eminently the characteristic of all ancient philosophies. 2. Evangelical humility requires us not only to believe what God says, but to do what God commands. We must obey, whether told to go up or come down. When God invites, we are to come, and come, too, in the way he tells us to come. Pride would plead unworthiness and frame its own way. Humility submits to his righteousness and goes in the revealed way. Even when summoned to a higher place we are to go, despite our conscious unworthiness. The Prodigal would fain have taken his place among the "hired servants," but when told by a loving father to array himself in the "best robe," and to put on the "ring" and the "shoes," he must do it. If the father will place him among the "sons," he can do no otherwise than accept the honor. Obedience is humility, and sometimes the strongest evidence we can give of our humility. Like Mary of old we must receive the exceeding honor as meekly as the poverty, and say, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to thy word." When Louis XIV would put the politeness of Chesterfield to the test he stood at his carriage door and made a signal for the nobleman to enter before him, who at once obeyed. "That," said the king, "is a more refined politeness than most men would have shown." Dr. Johnson, when asked whether he made any reply to a high compliment paid him by the king, replied, "No, sir! When the king hath said it, it must be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my sovereign." It was when Thomas Wingford, curate, was meditating on the words, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say," that he made that fatal discovery of the hollowness of his preaching. "Good God," he exclaimed," here am I bothering over words and questioning about this and that as if I were testing his fitness for a post I had to offer him, and he all the time claiming my obedience. I cannot even, on the spur of the moment at least, tell one thing he wants me to do; and as to doing anything because he told me not once did I ever." And thus in that confession that so startled his congregation he proceeded to show that faith and obedience are one and the same spirit, passing, as it were, from room to room in the same heart; what in the heart we call faith, in the will we call obedience, and showed that the Lord absolutely refused the faith that found its vent at the lips in worshiping words, and not in the limbs in obedient action. One of the most beautiful exemplifications of true. gospel humility on record is that given by Archbishop Whately on his death bed. He was surrounded, so it appeared, by obsequious flatterers. Said one, "You are dying as you lived, great to the last." Repudiating such ill-timed flattery, and with that humility which always accompanies true greatness he replied, "I am dying as I have lived, in the faith of Jesus." Another in the same strain, making a covert appeal to his vanity, said, "What a blessing that your glorious intellect is unimpaired." "Do not call intellect glorious, there is nothing glorious out of Christ." By this time surely the holy man must have been filled with inward disgust, but yet a third trial awaited him, for still another stupid flatterer said, "The great fortitude of your character now supports you." "No, it is not my fortitude of character that supports me, but my faith in Christ." Contrast with this the self-sufficiency of another man who lived, made himself a name in both hemispheres, and died boasting of his "Socratic brain." I mean Theodore Parker. What we have called his self-sufficiency his admirers euphonize into self-consciousness. Call it what you please. It was a blind pride of intellect that unlike Whately's humility would not believe himself to be the sinful creature God in his word declared him in common with us all to be, and disdainfully refused obedience to his revealed will. It was a pride of intellect that ignored a God he could not fathom with his logic, which led him to venerate Theodore Parker more than the prophets and apostles-to believe his own writings on the absolute religion to be incomparably ahead of the Bible. It was a pride of intellect which led him to set himself up as the critic and judge of Jesus Christ, and made him so envious of the exaltation of the Redeemer that he refused homage to that name which is above every other name. We now pass to consider the reward our Savior attaches to humility. It is exaltation. But does not the expectation of a reward vitiate our humility and transform it into selfishness? Not at all, if God himself affix the reward. Christ was humble, yet for the suffering of death was crowned with glory and honor. Moses had respect to the recompense of reward. The prodigal did not return for the sake of the reward; yet if the father chose to exalt him to sonship, who was he in his rags and dirt that he should refuse? The Christian 66 is conscious that he does not serve God for the sake of the recompense, but if by a sublime necessity God has attached happiness to that service, who is he that he should reject the reward or find fault with the arrangement? If the Grand Master of the feast tells us to come up higher," and bids us "Come! taste of my supper as a gracious reward for humble obedience and faithful service here," we will with rapturous joy do as we are bidden-for as we told you, obedience is the truest humility. As Celsus, already quoted, had no conception of true humility, so neither had he any just conception of true loftiness. How humility or selfabasement (in his view) could be the condition of man's exaltation was beyond his comprehension. No Greek ever could understand it, for the humility of Greek piety forbade man to entertain lofty views of his destiny. Hence, as is well known, the New Testament writers not finding a suitable word in the Greek language to express the idea of Christian humility, were obliged to coin one for their own especial use. But Christianity harmonizes these seeming contradictions. Christ solves the problem: "Whosoever will be great among you let him be your minister." Olshausen says, "The distinction between great and small which exists in the world is not abolished in the kingdom of God. But another and different rule prevails in regard to great and small, master and servant. In the world power and understanding are the measure of authority. In the kingdom it is love." This love the Lord, in the fourteenth chapter of Luke, now commends to his disciples in contrast with the self-exaltation of Pharisees. And to teach just this, viz., how to be truly great, Jesus came into the world-to teach us what the world never knew, and untaught can never learn. No man save Jesus Christ was ever truly great. True greatness cannot be attained in that ascendancy acquired by transcendent power. Splendid achievements, noble deeds, whether in the domain of worldly thought, art or action, will not secure it, but rather is it found in such touching instances of humble ministering love as is recorded of him who in the full consciousness of his divine origin condescended to wash his disciples' feet. Ullmann remarks: "By this consummating act of love he bore testimony to the truth that he regarded the perfection of life as consisting in the service of love." "Jesus! who deem'dst it not unmeet Now, very likely when we attempt to put all this into practice Satan will insinuate as he did to Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, when he went down into the valley of humiliation, that in going down so low we are going out of the way of influence and usefulness. That bold villain, shame, perhaps will haunt us and whisper continually vile things in our ears as, for instance, that nothing great can be accomplished for God in the valley; it is only going into darkness or out of the world-that but few of the mighty or rich or wise were ever of our opinion, nor any of them before were persuaded to be fools and venture the loss of all for nobody else knows what. And discontent will persuade us, if possible, to go back with him, for the valleys were altogether without honor-that there to go was the way to disobey all our friends, as pride, arrogancy, self-conceit |