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CHRISTIAN HUMILITY

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 25, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 32.

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CHRISTIAN HUMILITY.

"THERE was a strife among them which should be accounted the greatest." This "strife" was not confined to that early period. Our age is laden with decorations, certificates, and double class honors; there is an earnest thronging towards the chief seats. It may be well for us to study the teachings of Jesus upon this subject; to consider the principle which regulates authority and position in his church. He said, "Except ye be converted"—take an opposite course—"ye cannot so much as enter into the kingdom of Heaven, much less have any position in it. We thus learn that the conquest of self is the indispensable condition, not only of authority in the church, but of actual entrance into it. In this, as in all else, Christ is the example. "He made himself of no reputation;" he humbled himself; he washed the disciples' feet. The true Christian is that man in whom the dominion of self is broken; so long as the fraction is held to be greater than the whole, the heart is at a great distance from Jesus. This principle has important applications in all the relations of life. The man who works only for himself may be a theologian, but he is not a Christian; he is not working on the line which terminates in the cross; the spirit of self-crucifixion is not in him. Christ will excuse ignorance and pity weakness, but he cannot endure vanity. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart."
—Parker.