October 2

Eleventh Wednesday after Trinity

He that humbleth himself shall be exalted. S. Luke 14:11.

THE great test of advancement of spiritual life is the grace of humility. When the natural tendencies of self-assertion and self-glorying are yielding to the growth of lowliness and simplicity, a true conversion is being worked. The tendency to self-aggrandizement, the wish "to be as Gods," was developed within the soul of man even before the state of supernatural righteousness, the Paradisiacal condition of man's nature, was lost. Pride was a cause, not a consequence, of the Fall. It is, therefore, specially inherent and rooted in us. As it awoke before the first transgression, so it remains underlying all other impulses of evil. It may have been because our life, throughout all our race, has this fundamental evil at work within it, that our Lord came in a state so marked by lowliness and self-sacrifice. It might seem to have been the one end of the manifestation of Himself. He selects humility as the distinguishing grace which was to be His true characteristic likeness. "Learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart." We must regard this grace as an essential test of an amended life. Our life is amended in proportion as we cease to put forward self, as we grow in humility, self giving way, silently retiring more and more, being hidden even if possible from oneself; the spirit of unceasing sacrifice, which delights to be in itself nothing, unobservedly offering all that one is, or can do, before the Sacred Presence in which we ever move, the Beginning and Ending of our life.

Give we glory to the Head, O'er the members love be shed!