16. Evangelical humility
16
Evangelical humility
But if you would know it, my brethren, a lifetime of unceasing and ever-deepening prayer is by far the best security against pride, and by far the best guarantee of a genuine evangelical humility. I feel sure of this, that every truly spiritually-minded man among you experiences his greatest humiliation when he is alone with God in secret prayer. The things he has still to pray for; the things he has still to confess; the things the mere mention of which lays him down in the dust of death; yes, his secret time and place of prayer is the spiritual man’s most heart-searching valley of humiliation. O you, therefore, who have been chosen and called to prosecute a life of spiritual humility frequent, continually, your secret place and time of prayer. And have no secrets with God or with yourself then and there. Pray on in secret, says Christ to you; pray on and on and never faint, whatever your confession of sin may have to be, and whatever your petition for a new and a clean heart.
A deeper and an ever deeper humility was always the burden of William Law’s secret prayer at the third hour of every day.1 Law’s work lay largely in philosophical and theological controversy, and he felt a mighty want of humility in his continual intercourse with controversial men and with their controversial writings. And, full of pride and scorn and contempt and ill-will as he knew himself to be, he felt a wondrous change coming over his spirit as he prayed year after year and every day of the year, secretly, expressly, particularly, and pleading instances for the heavenly-minded grace of humility.
True humility, then, is the very foundation-stone of the whole edifice of the Christian character. “I was always exceedingly pleased with that saying of Chrysostom,”2 says Calvin, “‘The foundation of all our philosophy is humility!’ And yet more pleased with that of Augustine, ‘As,’ says he, ‘the great orator being asked what was the first thing in the rules of eloquence, he answered delivery. What is the second thing, he answered delivery. What is the third thing, still he answered delivery. So, says Augustine, if you ask me concerning the graces of the Christian character, I will answer—firstly, secondly, thirdly, and for ever humility.’” Yes, surely.
And thus it is that God so orders all our lives as to teach and train us in true humility every day we live. Every day he causes men to ride over our heads. Every day he makes men to be promoted and preferred before us. Every day we make mistakes and commit blunders and do wrongs, and he has men of his ready and lying in wait to correct us rudely and to advertise our errors and mistakes and trespasses to the whole world. And so on, and so on, till our whole life is one High School and Academy of humiliation and of consequent humility, if we will only enter that great school, and will pay the impoverishing fees of it, and will every day learn the appointed lessons of it, and will never play truant away from it. And, thus, the more we learn our daily lessons in true humility, the more will we be able to learn more and more all our appointed humiliations to the greater and ever greater perfection of our Christhke character.
*From The Spiritual Life: The Teaching of Thomas Goodwin (Edinburgh/London: Oliphants Ltd., [1918]), 218-20. With regard to the grace of humility, Whyte could say elsewhere: “evangelical humility is by far the most becoming, as it is by far the most Christ-like, of all our evangelical and spiritual graces” [Bunyan Characters, Fourth Series (Edinburgh/London: Oliphant Alexander and Ferrier, [1908]), 102].
1. On Whyte’s appreciation of Law, see Characters and Characteristics of William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic (London: Hodder and Stoughton, [1907]).
2. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) was renowned for his expository preaching in Constantinople. Augustine (354-430) was the most important Latin-speaking theologian of the Early Church, whose writings and thought have exercised an enormous influence on subsequent Christian history.