Humility Before Honour

k Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” — xvi. 18. man’s pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit. ‘’ — xxix. 23.

OF a man strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully” (2 Tim. ii. 5). There is only one way of reaching honour, and the candidates who do not keep that way will fail. You must go to honour through humility. This is the law — the law of God. It cannot be changed. It has its analogies in the material creation. Every height has its corresponding depth. As far as the Andes pierce upward into the sky, so far do the valleys of the Pacific at their base go down into the heart of the earth. If the branches of a tree rise high in the air, its roots must penetrate to a corresponding depth in the ground; and the necessity is reciprocal. The higher the branches are, the deeper go the roots; and the deeper the roots are, the higher go the branches.

This law pervades the moral administration as well as the material works of God. The child Jesus “is set for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel:” but it is first the fall and then the rising; for “before honour is humility.” Fall they must at the feet of the Crucified, before they can rise and reign as the children of the great King. No cross, no crown. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom.” What are these, and whence came they, — they are in honour now, whatever their origin may. have been, — these that stand before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands? These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, (Rev. vii.) Like Joshua the high priest (Zech. iii), they were clothed with filthy garments, before they obtained that glorious change. If the unhappy guest at the King’s table (Matt, xxii.) had gone first through the valley of humiliation, he would not have been cast at last into outer darkness; if he had owned his own garment worthless, he would have gotten a fit one, free, and not have been speechless at the incoming of the King. “Before honour is humility:” this is the organic law of the kingdom of heaven. The King is far from the proud, but dwells with him that is humble and of a contrite heart.

There are two mountains in the land of Israel, equal in height, and standing near each other, with a deep narrow valley between. At an interesting point in the people’s history, one of these mountains bore the curse, and the other received the blessing (Deut. xi. 26-29). If you had stood then on Ebal, where the curse was lying, you could not have escaped to Gerizim to enjoy the blessing without going down to the bottom of the intervening gorge. There was a way for the pilgrim from the curse to the blessing, if he were willing to pass through the valley of humiliation; but there was no flight through the air, so as to escape the going down.

These things are an allegory. All men are at first in their own judgments on a lofty place, but the curse hangs over the mountain of their pride. Nature’s hopes are high, but there is wrath from the Lord upon them, because they dishonour his law by expecting that it will accept sin for righteousness. All the saved are also on a mountain height, but God the Lord dwells among them, and great is the peace of his children. All who have reached this mountain have been in the deep. They sowed in tears before they went forth rejoicing, to bear home the sheaves.

Paul was high at first in nature’s pride: “I was alive without the law once.” But the commandment came, like a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun, and its instant effect was to cast him down to the ground: “When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” He felt that he was altogether vile; he saw that he was lost. After he had been brought low in conviction of sin, he was raised again in the hope of mercy. It was necessary that he should be brought down, but it was also necessary that he should rise again. Fear is the way to trust, but fear is not trust. You must, indeed, come down from the mountain that is capped with the curse; but you must then ascend the mountain where Jesus, transfigured and radiant with the glory of grace, makes his ravished disciples feel that it is good to be there, and desire to dwell for ever in the light of his countenance. It is not the going down that will make you safe and happy. It is not the putting off, but the putting on, that saves; and the preciousness of putting off the old man lies in this, — that it is the only way of putting on Christ. Before honour is humility; but after humility is honour. If our hearts are truly humbled, God has pledged himself to exalt us in due season. In proportion as we attain the contrite heart, we may count on his gracious indwelling. If we are led by the Spirit of the Lord down into humility, we may be assured the next thing is honour; as we confidently anticipate that the day will follow the night. The broken heart is the Lord’s chosen dwelling place. When David was in the depths (Ps. cxxx.), he waited for the Lord: how? As those who are exposed to danger in night’s darkness wait for the morning, — keenly feeling the want of it, but confidently counting that it will come. The Lord loves to be so looked for: to them that look for him he will come, and his coming will be like the morning. This humility — this honour have all the saints.

It is a part of the same divine law that “a man’s pride shall bring him low.” That which brings a creature furthest down is his own rebellious effort to exalt himself. It is with spirit as with matter, — the further it shoots upward from its own proper sphere into the heavens above, the deeper will it sink down, and the more will it be broken by its fall. That law operated on spirit, as the law of gravitation acted on matter, before man was made. Among the angels that excel in strength, there was a leap of pride in order to exalt itself, and a consequent fall into the lowest depths of the pit. When these morning stars fell from the very height of heaven, they fell into a deep from which even the power of God provides no rising. In the same way man fell. It was a leap upward that brought us down so low: it was the proud effort to be as gods that brought man down to the companionship of devils. Under this eternal law the Papacy now lies. It cannot glide gently down from its presumptuous height, and so save itself from destruction. It has flown too high for falling softly; it is fixed, and that by an unchanging law, that it cannot be reformed, and must be destroyed.

This law will crush every one who dares to cross its path. Like the other laws of God, it touches the smallest, while it controls the greatest. An atom obeys the same impulses that guide a world. Oh, how jealously should a man watch the swellings of pride in his own breast! How eagerly should each desire to have his own pride purged wholly out! Pride remaining in us will bring us down, though we were in the highest heaven. When two things are weighed in the opposite ends of a balance, who can make both simultaneously descend? The crushing of the proud is but the other side of the exaltation of the lowly. Either pride must be cast out of me, or I must be cast out from the company of the blessed.

The seventy-third Psalm, like the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, is a specimen of spiritual autobiography. Cut out, at the crisis, a section from that self-history of a soul: “So foolish was I and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.” Extremes meet here; the lowest and the highest touch each other. Within the compass of a few lines, recording one man’s experience, we find a humility which depresses him beneath the level of man, and an honour which admits him into the presence of God. One moment the penitent feels himself to be brutish; another, his glad forgiven spirit rises buoyant toward the throne like a flame of fire, or a ministering angel. These are the footsteps of the flock. It concerns us to know that we are on the same track; for none other conducts to safety. It is when a man is so purged of pride as to count himself like a “beast,” that he is best prepared for the company of a justifying God, and the spirits of just men made perfect. They who thus put off their own righteousness as filthy rags, are ready to put on Christ; and in Him they are counted worthy. Paul kept close on the track of the Psalmist: in one verse it is, “0 wretched man that I am!” in the next, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. vii. 24, 25). If we get down into the “humility” through which these ancient disciples passed, we shall share the “honour” to which they have been raised.