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Text:God's Word to Women:Lesson 50

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== LESSONS IN HUMILITY.

378. Servility and weakness are two contemptible vices. They have been too often recommended to women clothed in the names of “humility” and “meekness,” to which virtues they are as opposed as north is to south. Presently we shall have a lesson on that badge of royalty, meekness; today we will risk a charge of being unoriginal by giving a lesson in “humility” in the language of Rev. Andrew Murray and Rev. Wm. Law.

379. Surely it is hardly necessary for us to explain here that there are, and always have been male Christian teachers who, like the above-mentioned Christian ministers, by example as well as precept, have shown the beauty and importance of these virtues in men as well as women. Let us say, once for all, that in noting the general unfairness and unscripturalness of masculine expositors, it is not incumbent upon us to pause at each step in order to call attention to exceptions. Suffice it to say, such expositors are exceptions, as far as the “woman question” is concerned. We are glad to make use of the language of the above-mentioned male religious teachers, as showing that our representation of the hatefulness of the sin of the love of pre-eminence in no wise goes beyond what good men have taught.

380. Says Mr. Murray: “No tree can grow except on the root from which it sprang. Through all its existence it can only live with the life that was in the seed that gave it being. The full apprehension of this truth in its application to the first and the second Adam cannot but help us greatly to understand both the need and the nature of the redemption there is in Jesus.”

381. “When the Old Serpent . . . spoke his words of temptation into the ears of Eve, these words carried with them the very poison of hell. And when she listened, and yielded her desire and her will to the prospect of being as God, the poison entered into her soul and blood and life . . . All the wretchedness of which this world has been the scene, all its wars and bloodshed among the nations, all its selfishness and suffering, all its ambitions and jealousies, all its broken hearts and embittered lives, all its daily unhappiness, have their origin in what this cursed, hellish pride, either our own, or that of others, has brought us. . . .”[1]

382. “Even as we need to look to the first Adam and his fall to know the power of sin within us, we need to know well the Second Adam and His power to give within us a life of humility as real and abiding and over-mastering as has been that of pride . . . In this view it is of inconceivable importance that we should have right thoughts of what Christ is, and of what may be counted His chief characteristic, the root and essence of all His character as our Redeemer. There can be but one answer: it is His humility. What is the incarnation but His heavenly humility, His emptying Himself and becoming man? What is His life on earth but humility? ‘He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death.’ And what His ascension and His glory, but humility exalted to the throne and crowned with glory? ‘He humbled Himself, therefore God highly exalted Him.’ In heaven, where He was with the Father, in His birth, in His life, in His death, in His sitting on the throne, it is all, it is nothing but humility. Christ is the humility of God embodied in human nature; the Eternal Love humbling itself, clothing itself in the garb of meekness and gentleness, to win and serve and save us. As the love and condescension of God makes Him the benefactor and helper and servant of all, so Jesus of necessity was the Incarnate Humility. And so He is still in the midst of the throne, the meek and lowly Lamb of God.”

“If this be the root of the tree, its nature must be seen in every branch and leaf and fruit. If humility be the first, the all-including grace of the life of Jesus,¾if humility be the secret of His atonement,¾then the health and strength of our spiritual life will depend entirely upon our putting this grace first too, and making humility the chief thing we admire in Him, the chief thing we ask of Him, the one thing for which we sacrifice all else . . . Until a humility which will rest in nothing less than the end and death of self; which gives up all the honor of men as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone; which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing, that God may be all, that the Lord alone may be exalted,¾until such a humility be what we seek in Christ above our chief joy, and welcome at any price, there is very little hope of a religion that will conquer the world.”

383. “I cannot too earnestly plead with my reader, if possibly his attention has never yet been specially directed to the want there is of humility within him or around him, to pause and ask whether he sees much of the spirit of the meek and lowly Lamb of God in those who are called by His name . . . and his eyes will be opened to see how a dark, shall I not say a devilish pride, creeps in almost everywhere, the assemblies of the saints not excepted. Let him begin to ask what would be the effect, if in himself and around him, if towards fellow-saints and the world, believers were really and permanently guided by the humility of Jesus.”

384. Mr. Law says: “Pride and humility are the two master powers, the two kingdoms in strife for the eternal possession of man. There never was, nor ever will be, but one humility, and that is the one humility of Christ. Pride and self have the all of man, till man has his all from Christ. He therefore only fights the good fight whose strife is that the self-idolatrous nature which he hath from Adam may be brought to death by the supernatural humility of Christ brought to life in him,¾” Address to the Clergy, p. 52.

385. What an utter contrast to such teaching as this, of the grace of humility, is that sort of artificial instruction forbidding man to wear “the sign of subjection” because he is “the glory of God,” and which would put a veil on woman “in sign that she is under the power of her husband” (inserted by those who wish it were in the Bible, into the marginal reading of 1 Corinthians 11:10)! In the first teaching there is that which seals it to our inmost consciousness as truth; in the second teaching honest men and women cannot find rest for the sole of the foot. We all know something is wrong with it; and the falsity of the latter teaching must ever be suspected so long as it is set forth. Had uninducted women read and pondered Paul’s language for the first time, we are perfectly safe in saying it would never have occurred to them that Paul meant anything so extraordinary.

386. Men, by such teaching, vaunt themselves as the superiors of wife and mother. Women have not the right to content themselves as nourishers of such masculine weaknesses. “Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him,” Leviticus 19:17, is the teaching even of the Old Testament. The words of Jesus Christ are even a more stern commandment: “Take heed to yourselves: if thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him,”¾Luke 17:3. There is something most weak and unworthy in woman’s acquiescence in man’s pride and egotism, for the sake of not incurring man’s displeasure. But at the same time let us see to it that when men vaunt themselves in our presence we do not add a wrong spirit to the wrong conduct on their part, and angrily speak otherwise than in kindness. Above all, let us not “sin their sin” and be guilty of the same offense, by vaunting ourselves. We will be accused of this, at any rate, even if we should do no more than our duty and administer rebuke.

<center>(To be continued.)</center>

==Footnotes==
[1] This statement is not absolute: women (a few) have translated a part of the Bible, or the whole. But their work is ignored, and allowed to perish. But we refer here to those translators who have been on Translation Committees, or whose work has been allowed a place of influence in the Church.

==See Also==
[[God's Word to Women]] |
[[God's Word to Women Table of Contents]] |
[[Foreword to the 1943 Edition]] |
[[Foreword to the 2005 Edition]] |
[[Author's Note]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 1 | Lesson 1]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 2 | Lesson 2]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 3 | Lesson 3]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 4 | Lesson 4]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 5 | Lesson 5]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 6 | Lesson 6]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 7 | Lesson 7]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 8 | Lesson 8]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 9 | Lesson 9]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 10 | Lesson 10]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 11 | Lesson 11]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 12 | Lesson 12]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 13 | Lesson 13]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 14 | Lesson 14]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 15 | Lesson 15]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 16 | Lesson 16]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 17 | Lesson 17]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 18 | Lesson 18]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 19 | Lesson 19]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 20 | Lesson 20]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 21 | Lesson 21]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 22 | Lesson 22]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 23 | Lesson 23]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 24 | Lesson 24]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 25 | Lesson 25]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 26 | Lesson 26]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 27 | Lesson 27]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 28 | Lesson 28]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 29 | Lesson 29]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 30 | Lesson 30]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 31 | Lesson 31]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 32 | Lesson 32]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 33 | Lesson 33]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 34 | Lesson 34]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 35 | Lesson 35]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 36 | Lesson 36]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 37 | Lesson 37]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 38 | Lesson 38]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 39 | Lesson 39]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 40 | Lesson 40]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 41 | Lesson 41]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 42 | Lesson 42]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 43 | Lesson 43]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 44 | Lesson 44]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 45 | Lesson 45]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 46 | Lesson 46]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 47 | Lesson 47]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 48 | Lesson 48]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 49 | Lesson 49]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 50 | Lesson 50]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 51 | Lesson 51]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 52 | Lesson 52]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 53 | Lesson 53]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 54 | Lesson 54]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 55 | Lesson 55]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 56 | Lesson 56]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 57 | Lesson 57]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 58 | Lesson 58]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 59 | Lesson 59]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 60 | Lesson 60]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 61 | Lesson 61]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 62 | Lesson 62]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 63 | Lesson 63]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 64 | Lesson 64]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 65 | Lesson 65]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 66 | Lesson 66]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 67 | Lesson 67]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 68 | Lesson 68]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 69 | Lesson 69]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 70 | Lesson 70]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 71 | Lesson 71]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 72 | Lesson 72]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 73 | Lesson 73]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 74 | Lesson 74]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 75 | Lesson 75]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 76 | Lesson 76]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 77 | Lesson 77]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 78 | Lesson 78]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 79 | Lesson 79]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 80 | Lesson 80]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 81 | Lesson 81]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 82 | Lesson 82]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 83 | Lesson 83]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 84 | Lesson 84]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 85 | Lesson 85]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 86 | Lesson 86]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 87 | Lesson 87]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 88 | Lesson 88]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 89 | Lesson 89]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 90 | Lesson 90]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 91 | Lesson 91]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 92 | Lesson 92]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 93 | Lesson 93]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 94 | Lesson 94]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 95 | Lesson 95]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 96 | Lesson 96]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 97 | Lesson 97]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 98 | Lesson 98]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 99 | Lesson 99]] |
[[God's Word to Women Lesson 100 | Lesson 100]] |
[[Index of Scripture Texts]] |
[[Dictionary]]
293
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