'Gird yourselves with the slave's apron of humility.' Humility does not
consist in being, or pretending to be, blind to one's strong points.
There is no humility in a man denying that he can do certain things if
he can do them, or even refusing to believe he can do them well, if God
has given him special faculties in any given direction. That is not
humility at all. But to know whence all my strength comes, and to know
what a little thing it is, after all; not to estimate myself highly,
and, still further, not to be always insisting upon other people
estimating me highly, and to think a great deal more about their claims
on me than fretfully to insist upon my due modicum of respect and
attention from others, that is the sort of temper that Peter means here.
Now, that temper which may recognise fully any gift that God has given
me, its sweep and degree, but that nevertheless takes a true, because a
lowly, measure of myself, and does not always demand from other people
their regard and assistance, that temper is a thing that we can
cultivate. We can increase it, and we are all bound to try specifically
and directly to do so. Now, I believe that a great part of the feeble
and unprogressive character of so many Christian people amongst us is
due to this, that they do not definitely steady their thoughts and focus
them on the purpose of finding out the weak points to which special
attention and discipline should be directed. It is a very easy thing to
say, 'Oh, I am a poor, weak, sinful creature!' It would do you a great
deal more good to say, 'I am a very passionate one, and my business is
to control that quick temper of mine,' or, 'I am a great deal too much
disposed to run after worldly advantage, and my business is to subdue
that,' or, 'I am afraid I am rather too close-fisted, and I ought to
crucify myself into liberality.' It would be a great deal better, I say,
to apply the general confession to specific cases, and to set ourselves
to cultivate individual types of goodness, as well as to seek to be
filled with the all-comprehensive root of it all, which lies in union
with Jesus Christ. We have often to preach, dear brethren, that the way
of self-improvement is not by hammering at ourselves, but by letting God
mould us, and to keep the balance right. We have also to insist upon the
other side of the truth, and to press the complementary thought that
specific efforts after the cultivation of specific virtues and all the
more if they are virtues that are not natural to us, for the gospel is
given to us to mend our natural tempers--is the duty of all Christian
people that would seek to live as Christ would have them.
And how is this to be done? How am I to gird upon myself and to keep--if
I may transpose the metaphor into the key of modern English--tightly
buckled around me this belt which may hold in place a number of fine
articles of clothing?
Well, there are three things, I think, that we may profitably do. Go
down deep enough into yourself if you want to cure a lofty estimate of
yourself. The top storeys may be beautifully furnished, but there are
some ugly things and rubbish down in the cellar. There is not one of us
but, if we honestly let the dredge down into the depths, as far down as
the _Challenger's_ went, miles and miles down, will bring up a pretty
collection of wriggling monstrosities that never have been in the
daylight before, and are ugly enough to be always shrouded in their
native darkness. Down in us all, if we will go deep enough, and take
with us a light bright enough, we shall discover enough to make anything
but humility ridiculous, if it were not wicked. And the only right place
and attitude for a man who knows himself down to the roots of his being
is the publican's when 'he stood afar off, and would not so much as lift
up his eyes to heaven, and said, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Ah,
dear friends, it will put an end to any undue exaltation of ourselves if
we know ourselves as we are.
Further, let us try to cultivate this temper, by looking at God, and
having communion with Him. Think of Him as the Giver of anything in us
that is good, and that annihilates our pride. Think of Jesus as our
pattern; how that kills our satisfaction in little excellences! If you
get high enough up the mountainside, the undulating country which when
you were down amongst the knolls showed all variations of level, and
where he who lived on the top of one little mound thought himself in a
fine, airy situation as compared with his neighbour down in the close
valley, is smoothed down, and brought to one uniform level; and from
the hilltop the rolling land is a plateau.
I have heard of a child who, when she was told that the sun was
ninety-five millions of miles off, asked if that was from the top or the
bottom storey of the house! There is about as much difference between
the great men and the little, between heroes and the unknown men, as
measured against the distance to God, as there is difference in the
distance to the sun from the slates and from the cellar. Let us live
near God, and so aspiration will come in the place of satisfaction, and
the unattained will gleam before us, and beckon us not in vain, and the
man that sees what an infinite stretch there is before him will be
delivered from the temptations of self-conceit, and will say, 'Not as
though I had already attained, either were already perfected, but I
follow after.'
But there is another advice to be given--cultivate the habit of thinking
about other people, their excellences, their claims on you. To be always
trying to get a footing in a social grade above our own is a poor
effort, but there is a sense in which it is good advice--live with your
_betters_. We can all do that. A man writes a bit of a book, preaches a
sermon, makes a speech--all the newspapers pat him on the back, and say
what a clever fellow he is. But let him steep his mind and his heart in
the great works of the _great_ men, and he finds out what a poor little
dwarf he is by the side of them. And so all round the circle. Live with
bigger men, not with little ones. And learn to discount--and you may
take a very liberal discount off--either the praises or the censures of
the people round you. Let us rather say, 'With me it is a very small
matter to be judged of man's judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord.'
There are plenty of hands, foremost among them a black one that is not
so much a hand as a claw, ready to snatch the girdle of humility off
you! Buckle it tight about you, brother; and in an immovable temper of
lowly estimate of yourself live and work.
II. The second thought here is, What we are to wear the apron or girdle
for?
The Revised Version makes a little alteration in the reading as well as
in the translation of our text, the previous words to which, in the
Authorised Version stand, 'Yea, all of you be subject one to another.'
There is another reading which strikes out that clause, and adds a
portion of it to the first part of my text, which then runs thus: 'Yea,
all of you gird yourselves with humility to serve one another.' That is
what Christian humility is for. The slave put on his garment, whatever
it was, when he had work to do.
But perhaps there is a deeper thought here. I wonder if it is fanciful
to see in the text one of the very numerous allusions in this epistle to
the events in our Lord's Passion. You remember that Jesus laid aside His
garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself, and washed the
disciples' feet, and then said, 'The servant is not above His master. I
have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.'
Probably, I think, there floated before the memory of the man who had
said, 'Lord, Thou shalt never wash my feet,' and then, with the swift
recoil to the opposite pole which makes us love Him so much, hurried to
say, 'Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head'--some
reminiscence of that upper chamber, and of how the Master had girded
Himself with the slave's apron, or towel, in order that He might serve
the disciples; and then had told them that that was the pattern for all
Christian men, and for all Christian living till the very end.
Service coming from humility, and humility manifested in service, are
the requirements laid down in the text. Humility is the preparation for
service; and service is the test of humility. If a man does not feel
himself to be needy and low, he will never be able, and he will never be
willing, to help those that are. You must go down if you would lift up.
Laces and velvets and the fine feathers that the peacocks of
self-conceit in this world strut about in are terribly in the way of
Christian work. Rough work needs rough dress; and the only garb in which
we shall be able to do the deeds of self-sacrifice that are needed in
order to help our brethren is humility, the preparation for all service.
But, further, service is the test of humility. Plenty of people will
say, 'I know that I have nothing to boast of,' and so forth; but they
never do any work. And there is a still more spurious kind of humility,
that of a great many professing Christians (I wonder of how many of us)
who, when we ask them for any kind of Christian service, say, 'I do not
feel myself at all competent. I am sure I could not take a class in the
Sunday School. I do not feel sufficiently master of the subject. I
cannot talk. I have no facilities for influencing other people,' and so
on. Too many of us are very humble when there is anything to be done,
and never at any other time as far as anybody can see; and that sort of
humility the Apostle does not commend. It is unfortunately very frequent
amongst professing Christians. Christian humility is not particular
about the sort of work it does for Jesus. Never mind whether you are on
the quarter-deck, with gold lace on your coat and epaulettes on your
shoulders as an officer, or whether you are a cabin-boy doing the
humblest duties, or a stoker working away down fifty feet below
daylight. As long as the work is done for the great Admiral, that is
enough; and whoever does any work for Him will never want for a reward.
There are some of us who like to be officers, but do not like carrying a
musket in the ranks. Humility is the preparation for service, and
service is the test of humility.