Holiness and Humility

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 6, 1871

Holiness and Humility.

JONATHAN EDWARDS describes a Christian as being like “such a little flower as we see in the spring of the year, low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm repose; diffusing around a sweet fragrance; standing peacefully and lowly in the midst of other flowers.” Humility is indeed one of the loveliest graces which adorn the Christian character; and between it and holiness there is an intimate connection. The nearer a Christian gets to God, the more profoundly is he impressed with his infinite purity, majesty, and glory, and the more impure, insignificant, and worthless, does he himself appear in his own eyes by reason of the marked contrast. We observe this in the case of the pious patriarch in the land of Uz, who, when the voice of the Lord came to him out of the whirlwind, exclaimed, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” So when the “still, small voice” of Jehovah reached the prophet Elijah in the cave on Horeb, he “wrapped his blushing face in his mantle.”—Sel.