Humility is the safest Ground of Docility: and Docility the surest
Promise of Docibility. Where there is no working of self-love in the
heart that secures a leaning before-hand; where the great magnet of
the planet is not overwhelmed or obscured by partial masses of Iron in
close neighbourhood to the compass of the judgment, though hidden or
unnoticed; there will this great _desideratum_ be found of a
child-like Humility. Do I then say, that I am to be influenced by _no_
interest? Far from it! There is an Interest of Truth: or how could
there be a Love of Truth? And that a love of truth for its own sake,
and merely as truth, is possible, my soul bears witness to itself in
its inmost recesses. But there are other interests--those of goodness,
of beauty, of utility. It would be a sorry proof of the humility I am
extolling, were I to ask for angel's wings to overfly my own human
nature. I exclude none of these. It is enough if the _lene clinamen_,
the gentle bias, be given by no interest that concerns myself other
than as I am a man, and included in the great family of mankind; but
which does therefore especially concern me, because being a common
interest of _all_ men it must needs concern the very _essentials_ of
my being, and because these essentials, as existing in _me_, are
especially intrusted to my particular charge.
Widely different from this social and truth-attracted bias, different
both in its nature and its effects, is the interest connected with the
desire of _distinguishing_ yourself from other men, in order to be
distinguished by them. Hoc revera _est inter_ te et veritatem. This
Interest does indeed stand between thee and truth. I might add between
thee and thy own soul. It is scarcely more at variance with the love
of truth than it is unfriendly to the attainment that deserves that
name. By your own act you have appointed the Many as your judges and
appraisers: for the anxiety to be admired is a loveless passion, ever
strongest with regard to those by whom we are least known and least
cared for, loud on the hustings, gay in the ball-room, mute and sullen
at the family fireside. What you have acquired by patient thought and
cautious discrimination, demands a portion of the same effort in those
who are to receive it from you. But applause and preference are things
of barter; and if you trade in them, Experience will soon teach you
that there are easier and less unsuitable ways to win golden judgments
than by at once taxing the patience and humiliating the self-opinion
of your judges. To obtain your end, your words must be as indefinite
as their thoughts: and how vague and general these are even on objects
of sense, the few who at a mature age have seriously set about the
discipline of their faculties, and have honestly _taken stock_, best
know by recollection of their own state. To be admired you must make
your auditors believe at least that they understand what you say;
which, be assured, they never will, under such circumstances, if it be
worth understanding, or if you understand your own soul. But while
your prevailing motive is to be compared and appreciated, is it
credible, is it possible, that you should in earnest seek for a
knowledge which is and must remain a hidden light, a secret treasure?
Have you children, or have you lived among children, and do you not
know, that in all things, in food, in medicine, in all their doings
and abstainings they must believe in order to acquire a reason for
their belief? But so is it with religious truths for all men. These we
must all learn as children. The ground of the prevailing error on this
point is the ignorance, that in spiritual concernments to believe and
to understand are not diverse things, but the same thing in different
periods of its growth. Belief is the seed, received into the will, of
which the Understanding or Knowledge is the Flower, and the thing
believed is the fruit. Unless ye believe ye cannot understand: and
unless ye be humble as children, ye not only _will_ not, but ye
_can_not believe. Of such therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven. Yea,
blessed is the calamity that makes us humble: though so repugnant
thereto is our nature, in our present state, that after a while, it is
to be feared, a second and sharper calamity would be wanted to cure us
of our pride in having become so humble.
Lastly, there are among us, though fewer and less in fashion than
among our ancestors, persons who, like Shaftesbury, do not belong to
"the herd of Epicurus," yet prefer a philosophic Paganism to the
morality of the Gospel. Now it would conduce, methinks, to the
child-like humility, we have been discoursing of, if the use of the
term, Virtue, in that high, comprehensive, and _notional_ sense in
which it was used by the ancient Stoics, were abandoned, as a relic of
Paganism, to these modern Pagans: and if Christians restoring the word
to its original import, namely, Manhood or Manliness, used it
exclusively to express the quality of Fortitude; Strength of Character
in relation to the resistance opposed by Nature and the irrational
Passions to the Dictates of Reason; Energy of Will in preserving the
Line of Rectitude tense and firm against the warping forces and
treacheries of temptation. Surely, it were far less unseemly to value
ourselves on this moral strength than on strength of body, or even
strength of intellect. But we will rather value _it_ for ourselves:
and bearing in mind the old adage, _Quis custodiet ipsum
custodem?_--we will value it the more, yea, then only will we allow it
true spiritual _worth_, when we possess it as a gift of _grace_, a
boon of mercy undeserved, a fulfilment of a free _promise_ (1 Corinth.
x. 13.). What more is meant in this last paragraph, let the venerable
HOOKER say for me in the following.