Man delights in exhibition. The testimony is simply to go along as meek and lowly in heart. This is not a natural habit of the mind. In seeking to avoid display one may easily make an idol of apparent humility. It is well to bear in mind that there is the humility of flesh as well as the pride of flesh, and they come both under the category of pride. To make an exertion to appear humble is to be proud. God hates pride, because it gives man the place that belongs to the Lord. Pride cuts off communion. God resists the proud (Jas. 4:6); He knows them afar off (Ps. 138:6). In His sight, a proud heart is sin (Prov. 21:4). The proud heart never gets near to His sanctuary, for God has respect only to the lowly. Moreover from the other side pride of countenance, or life, is a hindrance to seeking after God (Ps. 10:4). "The pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world" (1 John 2:16). The world is passing; even so must the pride of life, as a constituent element of the world, be passing. Its consummation will meet its end in the day of the Lord (Isa. 2:12).

One of the great writers of Christian literature in the nineteenth century once said that, "Pride is the greatest of all evils which beset us, and of all our enemies it is that which dies the slowest and hardest."

May God preserve us from either of the extremes, and from the "in-between" of the pride of life! T. Oliver (Galashiels)