Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/233

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

lifted up by pride or conceit at what we have acquired, for this would be to leave Israel, and wander back to Egypt; and here we should assume the character of the eagle in the pride of self-derived intelligence—that wisdom of the world which "centres in itself alone." In this sense the eagle becomes the correspondence of high and prevailing error, whether in the church or in the individual, "and where the carcass is, thither will the eagles be gathered together." When the church becomes perverted by false doctrines and inflated by the pride of self-derived intelligence, it sinks into a mere lifeless carcass, and all the intelligence it manifests is, how it shall maintain itself in the gratification of its evils.

But let us endeavour, looking to the Lord for assistance, to keep the principle of self in proper submission to the spiritual principle; then shall we constantly "renew our strength, we shall mount up with wings as eagles, we shall run and not be weary, we, shall walk and not faint."


November Eleventh.

THE EVILS OF SELF-LOVE.

"The word that the Lord spake against Babylon."Jer. l. 1.

IN offering a few thoughts on self-love—an idol to which most of us are too prone to bow the knee—perhaps there may be some who have not maturely weighed its effects; or who are unaware what a vast multitude of evils it brings in its train. But if we really have ever examined our hearts, we must be