some are proud of being religious, others of being irreligious; some of their asceticism, others of their luxuriousness; some take pride in being proud and in showing that they are proud, others in an ostentatious exhibition of humility. The Cynic philosophers were very proud of their supposed freedom from pride. "I trample upon the pride of Plato," said Diogenes. "Yes," said Plato, "but it is with another kind of pride." Socrates once said very naïvely to Antisthenes, "I see your vanity through your threadbare cloak." This is the worst kind of pride. The devil's darling sin, as Coleridge has it, is the pride that apes humility.

Now the evil effects of pride are manifest. It is incompatible, first of all, with sympathy and philanthropy, which are among the surest manifestations of the Christian life and character. If we despise our neighbours, we can take no interest in their welfare; and even if we did we could not do them any good. You cannot really benefit any one unless you respect him. You may contemptuously fling half-a-crown to a poor man, but your unkind demeanour will have done him more harm morally, than can be compensated for by any physical good that the thirty pence are capable of accomplishing. And this want of

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sympathy is visited upon the proud man's own head. He cannot but live a lonely, isolated, melancholy life.

Again, pride is at the bottom of most of the quarrels of the human race,-quarrels, of course, quite incompatible with a perfect Christian character. You may trace its influence in civil and international wars, in private duels and family feuds, and in the religious persecutions which have done so much to bring the name of religion into contempt, and to justify the sarcastic exclamation of Lucretius, "To so many evils has religion persuaded men." Looking on their own set of opinions as an absolute standard of saving truth, men have come to the conclusion that all who differed from themselves must be children of the devil, whom it was a work of piety to despise, excommunicate, anathematise, torture, and slay.

Once more, pride is incompatible with progress, mental or moral. The man who is proud of the achievements of his intellect proves by his very pride the incurable denseness of his ignorance. "Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit ? there is more hope of a fool than of him." The fool who is conscious of his folly has already advanced far on the road to wisdom; but the

man who thinks he is already wise is proceeding in the opposite direction,-is approaching nearer and nearer to idiocy every day. Similarly in the moral sphere. He who is proud of his virtues, who thanks God that he is not as other men, has reached his moral goal, such as it is, and he will be quite content to stay there. But he cannot stay there. In the moral sphere there is no standing still. Every man who is not making progress is really retrogressing. So the proud Pharisee is not only a very sorry specimen of virtue to begin with, but he is constantly becoming sorrier. He grows contented with less and less actual merit, and makes up for the diminution of his virtue by the increase of his insufferable pride.

Having thus seen the unreasonableness of pride, let us look for a moment at the reasonableness of humility. The word, as you see, is derived from humus, the ground, and is therefore equivalent to the Saxon word lowliness. It is also synonymous with modesty, which latter term is derived from modus, a measure, and means therefore the measuring faculty. All this is instructive. Humility being synonymous with modesty, will mean, not under-estimating, but correctly estimating ourselves. "I believe," says

Ruskin, "the first test of the truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility doubt of his own powers, or hesitation to speak his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation between what he can say and do, and the rest of the world's sayings and doings. Arnolfo knows that he can build a good dome at Florence, Albert Dürer writes calmly, to one who has found fault with his work, that it cannot be better done. Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled any one else. Only they do not expect their fellowmen to fall down and worship them. They have a curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them; that they could not be or do anything else than God made them; and they see something divine and God-made in every other man they meet." Hence, just as there is a seeming humility which is nothing but pride, so there may be a seeming pride which is really humility.

However, though it is not our duty to underestimate ourselves, we must bear in mind that only a lowly self-valuation can be correct. The man who is possessed of the measuring faculty will be aware that for everything he can do well, there are hundreds of things he can effect but

indifferently, and hundreds more that he cannot do at all; that for every thing he knows, there are thousands and tens of thousands of things of which he is ignorant; that though he may possess good qualities, he is not without bad; that if in certain particulars he is really wiser and better than his neighbours, this superiority is due in a great degree to the fact that he has been placed in more favourable circumstances; and that his improvement under those circumstances has been by no means proportionate to the advantages which they offer. If we would but reflect, we should sometimes discover that it was we ourselves who deserved the scorn we were so lavishly bestowing upon others. I have not unfrequently caught myself, I am sorry to say, despising persons for certain opinions and practices, which I by and by remembered were once my own, and would probably have been so still, had not some tutor or professor or writer or friend taught me a more excellent way.

When one's pride is thus changed by reflection into humility, contempt is at the same time converted into sympathy. And sympathy is the chief criterion of the perfect Christian character. By sympathy we can make men better, whereas