Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/339

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HUMILITY.
331

Humility, wnat is it? It is a gracious gift of the Holy Ghost. It is the same disposition which the Psalmist called a "broken heart," and that consciousness of need which Jesus had in view when He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." So far as it has respect to God, it is that docility which is willing to learn what God teaches; that conscious penury, which is willing to accept whatever God proffers; that submission which is willing to do what God desires, and to endure whatever God deems needful.


And so among the ruins of our pride, we grow to be loving children of the Most High.


I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness. I desire from the abyss of my own nothingness and vileness to cry unto God that He might cause me to do as I ought, and to be as I ought.


Confess your nothingness and ill-desert before God. Distrust yourself. Rely only upon God. Renounce all glory except from Him. Yield yourself heartily to His will and service. Avoid an aspiring, ambitious, ostentatious, assuming, arrogant, scornful, stubborn, willful, levelling, self-justifying behavior; and strive for more and more of the humble spirit that Christ manifested while He was here upon earth.


But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.