humbles us; suffers us to be tried and afflicted; allures us, brings us into the wilderness; permits adversity to overtake us: and all with the view of inducing poverty of spirit, which brings with it the blessedness of heaven. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
It is poverty of spirit which induces true modesty. It is ashamed to do anything that is repugnant to right reason. It is constantly looking to the Lord for guidance, that it may avoid everything that has a tendency to crime; and it brings all its actions under the regulations of prudence and religion. It no longer boasts itself in the multitude of its acquirements, but only strives to render them more subservient to use.
This state of humility is acquired through the operations of Divine providence; trials, temptations, and difficulties, which humble us, and are the means of "doing us good at our latter end." Our heavenly Father permits us, so to speak, to thirst for water and hunger for bread, to appear in want of both truth and goodness, so that we are given to see—yea, compelled to acknowledge—that unless the Lord of Life give us water, the water of life, we must pine and waste away; and, unless he give us bread, the bread of heaven, which is good of heavenly love, we must hunger, and eventually perish. Thus are we, by the Divine dispensations, brought to acknowledge that man is nothing; that he can procure nothing, and must perish in sin and misery, unless the Lord wrought every moment on his behalf, and contended for him against his enemies, the most direful being those that are within him, and which the Scriptures denominate "the enemies of his own household,"
