Humility | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 9, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 47.

Humility.

HUMILITY is a beautiful and priceless grace. The words of the psalmist are noteworthy: "Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly; but the proud he knoweth afar off." There is no one grace that Christ personally exemplified more conspicuously than humility. Witness the washing of the disciples' feet! Can anything be conceived of more touching and expressive? What a rebuke to pride, to ambition, to strife for place or preferment, to all feeling of exaltation or personal worthiness! Could those rebuked disciples have ever forgotten the lesson?

The same great lesson is taught by Christ in the parable of the two men who "went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican." The lesson is made the clearer and the more emphatic by the sharp contrast in which it is presented. The characters are diametrically opposite. The Pharisee stands forth in his saintly robes, and erect posture, and bold attitude, and perfect assurance, and sublime self-complacency, as the very impersonation of spiritual pride, self-righteousness, self-satisfaction, burning incense in the temple of God to his own virtue, and flaunting that "filthy rag" before Heaven and in the face of the publican, his fellow-worshiper. The publican, trembling and abashed to find himself in the holy temple, overwhelmed with a sense of his sinfulness and unworthiness as he comes into God's presence, "standing afar off," afraid so much as to lift up "his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner"—impersonates the virtue of Christian humility—acts out the spirit of genuine repentance and Christ-like humility.

There can be no genuine religion without humility. Even if we were not sinners, the dust would become us; God is so exalted, so holy, so infinitely just, and we are "nothing and less than nothing, and vanity." The very angels who surround the throne veil their faces and cast their crowns at his feet, and cry, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!" But we are sinners, rebels, all defiled with sin, and how shall we come before God? how take his sacred name on our lips? how offer acceptable worship to him? how find favor at his hands?

Is it any marvel that the proud, self-glorifying, boasting Pharisee, praying in the temple, found no audience with God, and went away without a blessing?—Homiletic Review.