faults and presumptuous sins, so above all should we strive to realise what the ancient prophet means by

"

walking humbly with our God." Not to lie prostrate, not to grovel, with our foreheads touching the dust, but to walk humbly—a very different thing. By humility towards God is meant the attitude of unreserved trust, of childlike teachableness, of ready obedience-all that was in the mind of our Lord when He made little children the very type and pattern of those who would receive the Kingdom-all that He Himself exhibited in unique perfection. Quiet confidence in the Divine leading; quiet receptiveness of the Divine truth ; quiet submission to the Divine command-those who have tried the method have found it make for happiness and a peace such as is not of the world's giving. It is true that the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, who dwells in the high and holy place, dwelleth also with him that is of an humble spirit. It is true that when we take our orders from Him who has spoken to us through His Son, our spirits find rest and gladness in the knowledge that we are doing His will. It is true that when we feel sorely perplexed and unable to disentangle the coil of pain and disappointment, the conviction that He holds the threads of our destinies in His wise hand will allay the soreness and come as a cool and healing breath upon our fevered impatience.

And as spiritual humility is the condition of all spiritual advancement, so it is the source and mainspring of intrepid strength: what made the Puritans utterly fearless of men was their consciousness that they had yielded themselves implicitly as instruments to be employed as the Most High might choose; what made Jesus strong and brave in the face of danger and death

was His complete acceptance of His Father's will as absolutely best. Here is the secret of power—and like all great secrets, it is an open one. We, too, can be brave and strong and more than conquerors if we will learn from Him who humbled Himself, and whom God has exalted; and who, having been made perfect by obedience, has become unto all who obey Him the Author of eternal salvation.

XII

THE CURSE OF MEANNESS

"There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing; there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great wealth."PROV. xiii. 7.

LET me begin what I have to say this morning by drawing your attention to that incident in the closing days of our Lord, which we have once more read together that story of the woman with the cruse of ointment, who made such an unexpected appearance in the house of Simon when Jesus was a guest there. Of all the company in that room only One understood and appreciated the significance of her act; the rest, even the Master's own disciples, viewed it with disapproval as a piece of senseless extravagance, foolish and reprehensible. Waste," they called it, and wondered that Jesus countenanced such recklessness; why could not the woman have sold the precious perfume, given the proceeds to them, and let them use it in charity? But Jesus, though His mind was already filled with sad forebodings, had not lost that keen intelligence which gave Him His unique insight into human motives. He knew what was in man; He knew that the disciples were merely annoyed at the woman's superb prodigality, which their petty souls could not understand; their concern for the poor, and the charit

able use to which the price of the perfume might have been devoted, was only an afterthought-they would have liked, no doubt, to have the handling and hoarding of this considerable sum, but their complaint and censure sprang, not from philanthropy but from meanness, and with meanness Jesus had no patience. It is a fitting foot-note and comment upon the whole episode that Judas went away-apparently straight from Simon's house-to interview the priests, and offered to betray his Lord for money. If Jesus did not value that commodity, he, Judas, did.

Jesus was the son of poor people; He had grown up in a household where there could never be more than just enough to satisfy very simple wants, and He Himself had worked at the bench for a livelihood until the last year of His life; but He was as far from over-estimating as from under-estimating material wealth. He was, indeed, abundantly alive to the danger of great possessions; He saw their power to draw the soul away from the things of the spirit, to bind it in fetters none the less heavy because they were golden; He could not but have noted many an instance of uncontrolled riches furnishing the means to ruinous indulgence, and the degradation of self and others. But the real enemy, he discerned, was not wealth as such, but covetousness, avarice, a grasping disposition—not the having of money, but the idolatry of Mammon. Against this He never tired of directing His warning and rebuke-and it is significant that this part of His teaching should have provoked the particular derision of the Pharisees, because they " were lovers of money." I venture to suggest that it must have been a special disappointment to Jesus to find at the very close of

His career that His own intimate followers manifested this spirit of meanness.

And now turn again to the book which we are studying in these sermons-those Words of the Wise" and their almost inexhaustible treasures of counsel, reflection and suggestion. What makes this Book so valuable is the fact that its piety is never open to the suspicion of other-worldliness, it never makes the ordinary man impatient-as I am afraid a good deal of well-intentioned devotional literature does-by ignoring the facts of every day. It does not deal with mysteries or abstractions, but with a concrete world and the concrete people who move in it. We do not feel tempted to say, as we read these pages, “ Ah, well, all this does not refer to us," because we know that it refers very much to us. You may remember that when we were dealing with "The Worth of Wealth," I pointed out that these ancient sages make no pretence of despising that security from want which an adequate income confers, nor do they sing the praises of poverty -praises which we, frankly, do not mean, and which to our ears always savour of unreality. These writers are the spokesmen of a race which, above most others, has shown conspicuous talents in all that pertains to money-making—a race which, it is true, contains to this day an enormous percentage of the very poor, but which has never glorified poverty. Now, it is a most remarkable fact that in their collection of proverbial wisdom, together with a solid appreciation of solid possessions, we should also come upon warning after warning against an excessive devotion to riches, either as regards their acquisition or their hoarding. "Weary not thyself to be rich," the reader is exhorted, and the