To see the mere worldling, whether the politician, the lawyer,
physician, or whatsoever, an egotist—full of self-laudation—giving
himself the glory for everything good, and acquitting himself from
everything evil, is contemptible enough in all conscience. Nothing can
sink a man faster in the estimation of sensible men. But in the kingdom
of Christ, where all is purely of the grace of God—where none has
anything that he did not receive, and where all are held responsible in
proportion to the ability that God gives, and where each one has to get
down upon his knees, before his holy and perfect Master, and confess
his weakness, imperfection, shortcomings, and nothingness in the sight
of God, how transcendently ridiculous to see egotism, self-laudation
and an effort to glorify the creature in the place of the Creator! And
how perfectly incompatible, too, such a spirit with the meek and lowly
spirit of Christ and the apostles!