32 $LMILITY REPRESENTED. SECT. III.The Advantages of Humility in Regardof Men. As humility towards God is a necessary qualification of every Christian, sohumble thoughts of ourselves in regard of our fellow- creatures belong to the profession and character of this gospel: 'For what have I to boast of above my brother, when we are all under the sentence of common condemnation before God, all guilty and miserable in hissight, and are all entirely indebted to his free and rich mercy for every degree of excellency or advan- tage that we possess ? What hast thou, O my soul, that thou hast not received? Whydost thou then glory and look big upon thy fellows as though thou host not received it 2 Who is it that has made thee difer from another? 1 Cor. iv. 7. O ! what a dishonour-does it bring upon the gospel of Christ, when one, who takes upon him the christian name, exalts himself into conceit and vanity, and swells in his own opinion of himself, when he sets himself on high above his brethren, and looks down upon them with haughtiness and scorn ? Can such a wretch be a christian, while he is areproach to the christian name, and has not the first principleof Christianity, has nothing of the temper or spirit of the gospel in him ? But some of these thoughts lead me to thesecond rank of advantages whichmay be derived from low and humble thoughts of ourselves, and these are such as regard our neighbours or fellow-creatures. And the first of them is this, I. If we have a mean opinion of self, we shall pay due esteem and honour to every thing that is valuabIT in other men, and not scorn and despise every body around us, as though they were not worthy to be named the same day with ourselves : Nor shall we be so imperious and haughty in our behaviour even where God has given somedegrees of superiority. Perhaps we plume ourselves with the honours of our ancestors and look down with disdain upon those whose family is of a lower rank than ours. But a grain of wisdom will put us in mind that the ho- nours of birth are no certain evidences of virtue or. merit : There may be somehigh -born animals with sorry and scoundrel souls, and some who drew their first breath in a cottage, strangers to title and quality, whose eminences are bright and shining. Add a grain of humility, and it will teachus that all families were one in Adam, the first man, when our blood ran in his veins : We are all made of one common earth ; we are but the same coarse ma- terials, the same clay moulded up into the form of man ; let this dwell upon the heart, andwe shall not carry it so disdainfully to our kindred-clods, nor look down with such scorn upon any of our earthly brethren, our. fellow-worms, because of those acci- dental advantages of whichwe imagine ourselves possessed.. Or perhaps we fall into company that are unpolished and unbred, they carry rustic airs about them, while we have got a
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