p. 16 | HUMILITY by Jos. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 5, 1868

HUMILITY.

By Jos. Clarke

How few really understand what is meant by this term, humility, especially in this degenerate age, when pride is the ruling passion in all the walks of life. Everywhere, at all times, does pride lift its hideous front, and shamelessly magnify itself; and, worst of all, so common has it become that the veriest child is taught the ways and manners of the proud world around; and it is generally considered a virtue to exalt self, if done with taste and discretion. Indeed, one is reminded of the ancient Spartan proverb, that theft is no crime unless discovered.

O, sweet humility! how cruelly hast thou been exiled from human society, and only been permitted to remain in obscurity and seclusion, and even here hast thou been clad often in garments not thine own, and been made to appear as nearly like pride, thy deadly foe, as possible.

But truth cannot always lie hidden. So with humility. She will calmly arise. She will wear her own apparel; and though despised like the lowly Nazarene, like as he arose from his grave, a conqueror, so will humility assert its prerogative.

No substitute will answer to the purpose. The disciple must tread the thorny path. As Jesus wept for sinners, so his humble followers weep and mourn because of sin; and this sense of sin and its dreadful nature and tendency, begets a hatred of the same, and a dread of its touch; and when a due sense of dependence and danger is felt, then begins the growth of that sterling grace, humility.

“There is no royal road to learning,” said a celebrated teacher to a young and impatient prince; so there is but one road to God and Heaven; one way; one faith; and humility is gained only by suffering and pain. (I speak of the inward experience of the Christian.) Storms and winds do but strengthen the roots of the oak as it rocks from side to side in the tempest; so the Christian in trial bows low in the dust; freely and painfully he confesses to God his many departures from him. In this humble attitude he learns humility. Here his roots strike deep in the soil, and though no showy fruit appears, but rather the tree shows a rent and sorrowful appearance, here a limb torn away, there a broken bough, yet he has learned an important lesson; and it is this: To send out his roots deep in the soil; by repentance and sorrow of heart for sin, to appeal to God for help; to rest in him; to look away from self and outward appearance; to dig deep for a good foundation; to see it laid understandingly upon the rock; to see that no worm is eating the root of vital piety in the heart, but that all is healthy and pure within. Jos. CLARKE.