RANK by Helen A. Hawley

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 7, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 44.

RANK

By Helen A. Hawley

CHRIST was giving his disciples a new code of rank. We can see the picture. A mother seeking for her sons' good places in the coming kingdom, the sons affirming their own fitness for high position, the ten standing by, indignant, perhaps fearing lest the two should get the better of them. How very human they were, and how the fact that they were human helps us, beset as we are by like selfish ambitions!

Into this strife fell the words of Jesus, quiet but powerful, overturning all their ideas of rank. If one would be great in this kingdom he must serve, and then, as if to still every inward rebellion, came the little words “even as,” assuring them that he only asked of others what he came to do himself.

To take any lowly place which God willed, and think it honorable, to welcome ignominious death at the call of the King, this was the lesson taught to the disciples in that hour. Well and worthily they learned it.

“He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” When the lesson seems hard to our human ambitions, let us whisper the words “even as,” and remember that by the lowly way we reach our Lord’s conception of rank.

—Helen A. Hawley.