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By
S. S.
No. VIII. Pride.
Dominant over human passions, which it rules with
despotic sway, sits Pride but, unlike the passions
which in their indulgence give, for the time being,
pleasure to our corporeal natures,
<<520>>this
tendency of the mind is a constant source of painful
emotions, and is only at rest when some great
elevation has been attained or some rival distanced,
again to be tormented by some “Mordecai sitting at
the king’s gate,” who will not bow to the
self-sufficiency of its victim.
The curse of our race from the earliest part of our
history, it has been the cause of those harvests of
sorrow that Israel so often reaped in agony and
tears. When passing through the waves of the silent
sea, when crossing the howling desert, who led
onward the hosts of Israel but the
God-appointed?—the meekest of mankind, and yet the
wisest? For he knew that the heart full of the
holiness of the Lord can have no room for pride;
that the mind which acknowledges that all power was
from God cannot be elated at the results of its
actions; that he who acknowledges that he owes his
prosperity to his Maker’s bounty cannot say that he
is thereby better than his poor but virtuous
brother.
In
the appointment of him through whom the law was
given to be our prophet and leader, the Most High
emphatically pointed out those qualities of the
heart most acceptable to Him, but which, as if in
antagonism to his will, mankind most neglect to
cultivate—a spirit humble and contrite, a hand that
knows no evil, and a heart free from guile.
When the life of man extended to a thousand years,
death seemed so remote that the evil tendencies of
the heart grew and flourished in rank luxuriance.
Man felt himself immortal. What was the after life
to him? But now, “as the shadow of a day that is
past,” so is his existence. His feelings towards his
Creator should be as humble as the dust to which his
body must return. But, like the war-horse that in
the fierceness of his strength spurns the ground
beneath his flying feet, so man, the creature of
every wind, the butterfly of an hour, acts as if all
strength was self-derived, as if prosperity would
endure for ever; and with a proud and obdurate heart
he sets at defiance the commands of his God, and
neglects every duty under the lea of necessity or
that His commands are not of sufficient importance
for so wise a being as himself to pay any regard to.
But when the soul approaches towards the gates of
eternity, will <<521>>pride support it then? When
the judgment-seat of the Most High flashes forth
with blinding light, on what then will it rest? Will
the blessings of the widow not acquired serve it for
a garb? Will the tears of orphans, wrung from them
by cruel injustice, purify it for the august
Presence? Or will the plea of necessity want of
importance be a sufficient shield? I fear not. Our
duties are plain, and cannot be set aside. We must
banish arrogance from our heart as we would a
venomous reptile from our dwelling, and implant
there the flowers whose fruits are love and duty
towards God and mankind, and will not wither to
eternity. |
