can claim none of them as my merit, or as my property; the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, and blessed be the name of the Lord: He has done no more than he has a right to do with a worthless worm, and I lie in the dust before him waiting his good pleasure. Such a temper of mind carries peace and serenity in it, not without some glimpses of pious hope and humble expectation. I will lay my mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope in the grace of God, which loves to triumph over the unworthiness of creatures.

But let us now turn the tables, and view the different tenrper and conduct of the man who has high thoughts of himself. When he is under the afflicting stroke of heaven he imagines he has deserved some better treatment at the hand of God, and though he dares not say this to his Maker's face, yet the inward vexation and rage, the disquietude and resentment of his heart ander afflictions, is such as would vent itself in loud murmurs and reproaches against heaven if it durst: And because he dares not suffer his passion and fury to rise thus against his Creator, he gives it a vent and lets loose his impatience against every creature that comes in his way: Hence arises the impious fretfulness, and the tormenting vexation of spirit, that haughty persons feel under pressing calamities; they throw their fury all around them: Their impatience under the hand of God is expressed by peevishness toward men: They make every one that is near them a witness of that inward indignation and resentment, which they dare not directly aim at him that dwells on high. It is this rising vanity, this fermenting and swelling idea of self that gives us ten-fold agony and smart when we are cast down and pressed under the hand of God. When we sustain evils which we cannot remedy, we multiply and increase their load, and sharpen every sting of calamity by the pride and impatience of our own spirits. God is affronted by us, men grow weary of helping us, we enhance the pain and anguish of every affliction, and we provoke the hand of a holy and jealous God to keep us longer under the weight of sorrow, sickness or distress, till it has done his work and pressed down the haughtiness of our spirit.

IV. By diminishing thoughts of ourselves we shall attain a nearer and greater conformity to the blessed Jesus the Son of God. What is there in all the character of our dear Redeemer greater and more surprising than his humble temper and his humble estate? The merit and honour of his humility and lowliness are aggrandized and brightened by every glorious and divine idea that enters into his character. He is the brightness of his Father's glory and the express image of his person, yet he humbled himself to the form of a man, and to the likeness of sinful flesh: He is the Son of God, and one with the Father, yet he became the Son of man and was born of a poor virgin of the des

picable country of Galilee; and when he was a man here upon earth, how did his meek and gentle and condescending bahaviour manifest his self-abasing virtues? He emptied himself of the splendors which he once possessed; Phil. ii. 6, 7. He made himself of no reputation, as the English translators have rendered it, and being found in fashion as a man, he behaved like a fellowcreature, a friend and a brother, though he was really superior to angels and one with God, though his name was God with us, and his character was God manifest in the flesh. See what sort of inference the apostle makes from such a view of our blessed Lord? verses 3, 4, 5. Let nothing be done through strife or rain-glory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, that is, with a self-flattering and exalted survey of them, but let every man also look on the things of others, paying all due regard to their real worth and dignity. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Indeed there is no possibility of lessening ourselves comparably to the self-abasement of the Son of God and yet the nearer we are like him the more shall we partake of the Father's love, and we shall be in the way of divine advancement, in a humble imitation of the advancement of Christ himself: Because he humbled himself to death, therefore God hath highly exalted him and given him a name above every name;

Phil. ii. 9.

;

V. By a humble opinion of ourselves, and by a lowly conduct and behaviour in life we shall bring honour to the gospel and become the truest ornaments to the divine religion which we profess. Never was any religion founded in so much humility as that of the gospel: The first principle of it requires that we be sensible of our own guilt and sinfulness, our danger and misery, and our utter insufficiency to relieve ourselves: And in the progress it shews us to derive all the good we have and hope for from the free mercy of God through a Mediator. The first line of that excellent sermon which Jesus, the author of the gospel, preached to his people upon the mountain, is this, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; Mat. v. 3. Blessed are those who have the lowest and meanest thoughts of themselves, for the heavenly treasures of divine grace are particularly offered to them, and they are most ready to receive them. It is the very design of the gospel to stain the glory of all flesh, and to hide pride from man, to teach man that he is nothing, and that he has nothing in and of himself, that he that glorieth may glory in the Lord; 1 Cor. i. 19, 31. Now the man that keeps these self-abasing virtues, and maintains a humbling sense of his own nothingaess in himself, and his universal dependence upon the grace of Christ, does acceptable honour to the gospel which he professes, and makes it appear in its own proper and divine light

SECT. III.-The Advantages of Humility in Regard of Men.

As humility towards God is a necessary qualification of every christian, so humble thoughts of ourselves in regard of our fellowcreatures belong to the profession and character of this gospel : For what have I to boast of above my brother, when we are all under the sentence of common condemnation before God, all guilty and miserable in his sight, and are all entirely indebted to his free and rich mercy for every degree of excellency or advantage that we possess? What hast thou, O my soul, that thou hast not received? Why dost thou then glory and look big upon thy fellows as though thou hast not received it? Who is it that has made thee differ from another? 1 Cor. iv. 7.

O! what a dishonour does it bring upon the gospel of Christ, when one, who takes upon him the christian name, exalts himself into conceit and vanity, and swells in his own opinion of himself, when he sets himself on high above his brethren, and looks down upon them with haughtiness and scorn? Can such a wretch be a christian, while he is a reproach to the christian name, and has not the first principle of christianity, has nothing of the temper or spirit of the gospel in him? But some of these thoughts lead me to the second rank of advantages which may be derived from low and humble thoughts of ourselves, and these are such as regard our neighbours or fellow-creatures. And the first of them is this,

I. If we have a mean opinion of self, we shall pay due esteem and honour to every thing that is valuable in other men, and not scorn and despise every body around us, as though they were not worthy to be named the same day with ourselves: Nor shall we be so imperious and haughty in our behaviour even where God has given some degrees of superiority. Perhaps we plume ourselves with the honours of our ancestors and look down with disdain upon those whose family is of a lower rank than ours. But a grain of wisdom will put us in mind that the honours of birth are no certain evidences of virtue or merit: There may be some high-born animals with sorry and scoundrel souls, and some who drew their first breath in a cottage, strangers to title and quality, whose eminences are bright and shining. Add a grain of humility, and it will teach us that all families were one in Adam, the first man, when our blood ran in his veins: We are all made of one common earth; we are but the same coarse materials, the same clay moulded up into the form of man; let this dwell upon the heart, and we shall not carry it so disdainfully to our kindred-clods, nor look down with such scorn upon any of our earthly brethren, our fellow-worms, because of those accidental advantages of which we imagine ourselves possessed.

Or perhaps we fall into company that are unpolished and unbred, they carry rustic airs about them, while we have got a

few forms of behaviour, and we publish our scorn of them to shew our breeding. Foolish insolence and preposterous vanity, which the well-bred and polite are never guilty of! But tell me, man, how long hast thou learned thy genteel and elegant behaviour, these arts and forms of boasted decency? Canst thou not remember the time when thy gait, and thy mein, thy speech and all thy airs were almost as awkward and uncouth as the very creature thou deridest? And wouldst thou have been willing to have had thy former awkwardnesses made the ridicule of the company? Couldst thou so well bear to have been the jest of the man above thee, that thou spendest thy jests so freely upon one in low life, who is the very figure of what thou hast been? Hast thou not humility, nor prudence, nor goodness enough to remember this?

Or perhaps thou art dressed finer and art a favourite among the great: But is this sufficient reason to scorn the poor? Remember also that he is thy brother by nature: Naked and cast out of the favour of God together with thee: All sons and daughters of Adam the great sinner, all by nature the children of wrath, strangers to the blessed God, outcasts of paradise, and averse to all that is holy: And if we behold ourselves in this state, what is there in one little lump of this wretched and polluted mass of human nature, that it should exalt itself upon any little pretences over the rest of the mass, wherein it lay in common pollution and wretchedness? Or if we hope that we are called and sanctified and become the children of God, who was it made the difference? Was it not the free mercy of God that called us and wrought the divine change in us? What is there for us to boast of? Let us allow those who we think are yet uncalled and unchanged by grace, all the natural excellencies and moral qualifications that belong to them, and not sully and darken the evidences of our own christianity by a haughty and scornful carriage toward our neighbours.

Let us remember yet further, that many others are called and renewed and sanctified as well as we, and perhaps have brighter evidences of their graces, and bear up the character of the children of God with more honour than we do: And we should think so too, if our pride and conceit would but suffer us to see their shining virtues, their exalted piety. If we could but maintain such thoughts as these, we should not assume such haughty airs, such insolence of language over our fellow-worms, that have crept out of the same bed of meanness and defilement, and some of them perhaps have a larger share of purifying grace than ourselves. Or had I but a due degree of self-abasement, how swift and ready should I be to spy out the virtues which my neighbour possesses, and to pay due honour to all his valuable qualifications; even as the proud, the envious, and the malicious VOL. III. C

spirits are ready to spy out the blemishes of their follows and to expose them.

It is the voice of the humble man concerning his poor neighbour, "Though he may not have so much of this world as God has given to me, yet, perhaps, he has a larger and fairer interest in the inheritance on high: He may not have such a large acquaintance with human sciences because he has not had the advantages which I have enjoyed, but perhaps he is richer in grace, and has laid up a better treasure against a day to come. It may be he is not so much acquainted with courts and palaces, he has little to do with chariots and horses and rich equipage, but perhaps he is more acquainted with God, oftner at the gates of heaven, and nearer a-kin to the spirits made perfect, to the saints and angels on high." Thus he prefers his neighbour in the honours of the invisible world, while in all things visible he is much superior to him: Thus he fulfils the advice of St. Paul to the Philippians, chapter ii. verse 3. and in lowliness of mind esteems others better than himself.

Such a happy spirit as this reigning within us, will utterly forbid us to fall in with a word of scandal when it is going current round the room: A wretched but a common crime! Humble souls ever carry about them such a constant sense of their own defects and follies that they dare not help onward the flying reproach. They find so many errors in their own lives that they cannot dwell with delight on the blemishes of their fellow-mortals. And inward consciousness and shame blushes in their bosoms, and imposes silence upon their lips: Or perhaps compassion awakens them to make some apology for the absent sufferer, or to strike the scandal dead with a word of just reproof. If we have a low opinion of ourselves, our eyes will never acquire the disdainful cast, nor learn the scornful airs of those who are full of self. Our lips will never assume the haughty tone and the insolent language of the proud in heart. "Speak not ;" say they to their inferior friends," we do not want your prattle, while I am here: Answer not when I give my opinion: Do what I require, be silent and dumb; Do you not know who it is speaks to you?" At another time they will forbid you their company go out of my sight, avoid my presence, it is not fit I should be seen in your company, you have neither dress nor manners fit to appear. So the haughty hypocrites in the days of Isaiah the prophet, Stand by thyself for I am holier and better than thou; Isa. Ixv. 5. So the proud mortals of every age publish and pronounce their scorn of those, whom providence has placed but a little below them.

Such sort of language, indeed, should scarce ever be used by masters to their own menial servants, but where the servant is very assuming, or intolerably impertinent: But for persons to treat lower friends or acquaintance at this rate, gives too evident