The Religious Outlook

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 10 February 1940, Page 10

The Religious Outlook

POWER IN HUMILITY “NOT BY MIGHT . . Not many crimes can be laid at the door of Charles Dickens as a novelist, but one is inclined to feel he did us a grave disservice when he put the gracious word “humble” into the mouth of that arch-hypocrite, Uriah Heap. For at a time when arrogance is at a premium it is not too much to affirm that the study and practice of humility (a cardinal Christian grace) would undermine and go far to remedy most of our modern ills. The type of man who is most admitted to-day is a blend of stoic “selfsufficiency” and the “super-man” of Nietzsche. Even our English aristrocrat (commonly regarded as the typical English gentleman), as portrayed in literature and on the films, looks as if lie had stepped out of the pages of Aristotle. Can we wonder, then, in a world where we have to “get on” or “get out,” and where the chief aim is self-sufficiency, pride and power, that dictators, political oligarchies and the like have raised their heads? Or is it in any way strange that individual liberty is being challenged when few seem to realise that freedom is a relative term, and that all rights have their corresponding obligations? The ultimate test of a truly civilised and cultured person is his ability to live a life of fellowship in the community of which he is an integral part—a part, but not the whole. It is true that self.abasement can be carried too far. Man is not a doormat for the feet of his fellow-men. He has a distinct value as a person, with a legitimate claim to certain rights and a duty to fulfil certain obligations. Yet a man who has only his own resources is a sorry creature, limited not merely by space and time but prey to all the forces of evil both from within and without. Just here lies the tragedy of many who clamour for self-expression. They usually express the worst part of their nature, for they allow evil to poison at the source the highest and the best. True humility is based upon a frank recognition of dependence. Uriah was not humble. He was a “truckler”—a fawning, cringing invertebrate. Meekness is neither servility nor cowardice. Jesus of Nazareth lost none of His dignity, though He was the meekest of men. He recognised His dependence upon His fellows, upon the universe in which He lived, and His utter and absolute dependence upon God. He was not too proud to be ministered unto (for example, in the home of Martha and Mary), nor was He ashamed to perform the most menial of tasks (for instance, the washing of the disciples’ feet). He paid glad tribute to the beauty of earth and sea and sky, and was grateful to be alive in such a lovely world. Though He was sufficient in all things, He was not self-sufficient, fo.- He knew that every good and perfect thing was the gift of His heavenly Father, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. God’s world? God’s universe? Can it be? Take up your daily newspaper and you are almost persuaded that the world belongs to Hitler or Mussolini, the United States or Britain, to say nothing of Japan or Russia. To claim that it is God’s world, that He made it, seems strange teaching to-day. The notion of stewardship has fallen into disuse. Man has made himself equal with the gods. There is little need to point out to what this arrogance is leading. In his bitter and oft-times brutal struggle for possessions man is rapidly heading not merely for the de_ struction of the things he so desperately covets but of himself into the bargain. True humility is based upon a reverent sense of dependence. Its outworkmgs are along the lines of fellowship: a fellowship of mutually dependent persons. This is the only safe rock on which to build a civilisation that has reduced the world to the size of an orange. Humility takes the bombast out of man. It enables him to see himself in the right perspective. It makes him see that he needs sun and rain and frost and air, that the “self-made man is the pathetic fallacy. It teaches him that he is a sinner saved by grace. That even if some have to be first, he need not be ashamed of being among the last. It makes him willing to give as well as eager to get. The goal of the meek and lowly in heart is. therefore, not self-realisation but full and complete realisation of self through sacrificial self-giving. Religious people are concerned about revival, devoting • much time to prayer and heart-searching. Yet revival cannot come from without. Christians can prepare the way, but it is questionable if they can bring it about. Revival will come when man become humbler. Because man has placed reliance upon gods of his own construction he has no time or place for the true God. It is by science with its invention of machinery, and by “five_year-plans,” uniforms and salutes all forms and symbols of power, that modern man seeks to live. It is by these he will die, too, unless he has a change of mind and heart and will. As Professor G. T. W. Patrick says in his “Introduction to Philosophy”: “When doubts begin to assail our hitherto self-confident age, the outlook for religion will be brighter Religion does not flourish in a cocksure, self-glorifying era. . . . Something of humility is essential to the religious attitude.”

A greater than he said: “Blessed are the meek. . . Blessed are the poor in spirit. Well might the Psalmist write Pride compasseth them about like a chain." For humility as well as truth makes us tree—Richard Mort