SECT. T.] - THE SPRINGS OF ST. PAUL'S HUMILITY. 489. As if he should say, " Here is not that glorious thing, that honourable and holy creature man, as he was first made by the hands of God, and stamped with the divine image : here is nothing but the mere outward shape and figure, shadow and appearance of him, divested of his original dignities, bereft of his inward and superior glo- ries. Ifsuch a saint as Paul, of the first degree, could call himself " the chief of sinners and less than the least of all the saints," and would frame anew word for it because there was none ready made in all the copious language of the Greeks, which was sufficiently diminutive to ex- press his humble thoughts of himself, what new lessening names, what unknown words of abasement must we form tógive ourselves our own true character, who fall so far beneath this apostle ? II. While the apostle depresses himself so much below his fellow- saints, he not only remembers hisown failings, . but he seems to look upon others without their ble- mishes : and this is one way whereby he comes to sink the idea of his own character in comparison of theirs. His goodness and his love cover all their follies and keep them as it were out of sight, while he compares himself with them: " Charity covers a multitude of sins." He practises that great duty in his epistle to the Ephesians when he calls himself " less than the least of the saints," which he recommends in his letter to the christians at Rome; Rom. xii. 10. " Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another." Oh when shall we arrive at this spirit and learn this holy lesson of love ? When shall we thinkofour fellow -christians and leave their faults out of our ideas of them ? How ready are we to spy out their blemishes, and fix our eye first upon their little spots and the abatements of their virtue ? And then we exalt ourselves while we forget our own failings, and imagine that we are higher and better than all around us. Dost thou not know, Omy soul, more of the vices of thy nature and of the sins of thy life, than thou knowest of any of thy fellow -christians ? Why then should thy vanity tempt thee to think so muchbetter ofthyself than thou dost of them ? One would think thy own. guilt and follies,. which are so well known to thee, should do more ii3
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