Godly humility in Christian preaching emphasizes recognizing our dependence on God's grace and acknowledging His sovereign work above our own efforts. Illustrations often use images of building on God's ongoing work, the lasting legacy of godly lives, and the exaltation of the humble, showing how God raises the lowly and blesses those who honor Him (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:6).
Future art will surpass ours, reminding us to humbly build on God's ongoing work.
I believe that the ages which are to follow this will surpass our possibilities of art. The art of to-day should embody the highest life of to-day for the use of to-day; for those who have gone before us need it not, and those who will come after us will have something better.
— J. G. Holland
The Bible is credited as the secret to England's national greatness by Queen Victoria.
An African prince was sent on an embassy to the court of Queen Victoria, when he asked her to tell him the secrets of England's greatness. The queen did not bring out her jewels, like Hezekiah, but, handing him a beautifully bound copy of the Bible, said, "Tell the prince that this is the secret of England's greatness."
Humility and civility open unexpected doors to success and blessing.
A few years ago, a couple of gentlemen, one of whom was a foreigner, visited the various locomotive workshops of Philadelphia. They called at the most prominent one first, stated their wishes to look through the establishment, and made some inquiries of a specific character. They were shown through the premises in a very indifferent manner; and no special pains were taken to give them any information beyond what their own inquiries drew forth. The same results followed their visits to the several large establishments. By some means, they were induced to call at one of a third or fourth rate character. The owner was himself a workman of limited means; but, on the application of the strangers, his natural urbanity of manner prompted him not only to show all he had, but to enter into detailed explanation of the working of his establishment. The gentlemen left him not only favorably impressed towards him, but with a feeling that he thoroughly understood his business. Within a year, he was surprised with an invitation to visit St. Petersburg. The result was, his locomotive establishment was removed there bodily. It was an agent of the czar who had called on him. He has recently returned, having accumulated a princely fortune, and still receives from his Russian workshops a hundred thousand dollars a year, and has laid the foundation of the largest fortune in this country: and all are the results of civility to a couple of strangers.
Christian civility promotes peace, justice, and happiness, marking true civilization.
When Zachariah Fox, the great merchant of Liverpool, was asked by what means he contrived to realize so large a fortune as he possessed, his reply was, "Friend, by one article alone, in which thou mayest deal too, if thou pleasest, — civility." 8.52. CIVILITY, True. One of the early governors of Virginia was conversing with a merchant in the street, when a negro slave saluted him. He politely returned the salutation, when the merchant asked, "How does your excellency condescend to bow to a slave?" — "To be sure!" answered the governor: I should be very sorry that a slave should show himself more civil than I."
8.53. CIVILIZATION, Christianity and. The doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future state has so great a tendency to enforce the civil laws, and restrain the vices of men, that, though Reason would decide against it on the principles of theology, she will not decide against it on the principles of good policy. No religion ever appeared in the world, whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind as the Christian. The gospel of Christ is one continual lesson of the strictest morality, of justice, benevolence, and universal charity. Supposing Christianity to be a mere human invention, it is the most amiable and successful invention that ever was imposed on mankind. Bolingbroke.
8.55. CIVILIZATION, Mark of. A writer of a book of travels, relating the particulars of his being cast away, thus concludes, "After having walked eleven hours without having traced the print of human foot, to my great comfort and delight, I saw a man hanging upon a gibbet. My pleasure at the cheering prospect was inexpressible; for it convinced me that I was in a civilized country."
8.56. CIVILIZATION, Promotion of. Disbelief in futurity loosens in great measure the ties of morality, and may be supposed for that reason to be pernicious to the peace of civil society.
Hume.
8.57. CLEMENCY, Example of. Two patricians, having conspired against Titus the Roman emperor, were discovered, convicted, and sentenced to death by the senate; but that noble prince, having sent for them, admonished them in private of their folly in aspiring to the empire, exhorted them to be satisfied with the rank in which by Providence they had been placed, and offered them any thing else which he had the power to grant. At the same time, he despatched a messenger to the mother of one of them, who was then at a great distance, and under deep concern about the fate of her son, to assure her that her son was not only alive, but out of danger. He invited them the same night to his table; and having, the next day, placed them by him at a show of gladiators, where the weapons of the combatants were, according to custom, presented to him, he desired them to survey them. Stretch.
8.58. CLOSET, Importance of the. During an examination of a newly-built house, Gotthold inquired of some friends who accompanied him, which of all the apartments they considered the best. One answered, that he preferred the parlor, as being lofty in the ceiling, well lighted, and capable of being easily warmed. The others severally fixed upon the kitchen, the cellar, the business-office, and the bedrooms. Gotthold replied, "No doubt these chambers will be the favorites of many; but what I meant to ask was, which of them a pious and godly Christian will prefer: and there can be no doubt that that is the chamber set apart as the place of prayer. That chamber is the sanctuary of the house. From it, as from a fountain, the stream of blessing flows, and is conducted into every corner; over it the heavens are open. There stands the celestial ladder, upon which the angels of God ascend and descend. There man speaks with the Most High as with a friend; pours out his heart before him; confides to him all his concerns; and obtains from him comfort in tribulation, and joy in the midst of sorrow. There stands the ark, for whose sake the whole family, like that of Obededom, is blessed. Happy he whose house has such a closet, well furnished and well employed! The meanest hut, whose inmates abound in prayer, is preferable to the costliest palaces of those who despise God."
Great men live on through their enduring influence and godly legacy beyond their earthly life.
The great men of the earth are the shadowy men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts. Thus living, though their footfalls are heard no more, their voices are louder than the thunder, and unceasing as the flow of tides or air. Moses was not half living when he was alive. His real life has been since he died. The prophets seemed almost useless in their time. They did little for themselves or for the Church of that day; but, when you look at the life they have lived since, you shall find they have been God's pilots, guiding the Church through all perils. From their black bosoms, they sent forth the blast of his lightning and the roar of his thunder; and to-day, if the Church needs rebuke and denunciation, it is they who must hurl it. I could have killed old Jeremiah if I could have got at his ribs; but I should like to see the archer that could hit him now. Martin Luther was mighty when he lived; but the shadowy Luther is mightier than a regiment of fleshly Luthers. When he was on earth, he in some sense asked the pope leave to be, and the emperor and the elector leave to be; he asked the stream and the wheat to give him sustenance for a day; but now that his body is dead, now that that rubbish is out of the way, he asks no leave of pope or elector or emperor, but is the monarch of thought, and the noblest defender of the faith to the end of time. Beecher.
A mother's nurturing shapes her children’s character and spiritual legacy.
Of the mother of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, we have the following: Alice was an admirable woman; all the biographies of Bernard unite in giving her the credit of his early education. He was one of a large family of children, all of whom were fed from the bosom of their mother; for she entertained the idea, that the infant, with the milk it drew from a stranger's bosom, imbibed also some portion of the quality and temperament of the nurse: therefore, while her children were young, they had no attendant but herself. They all became remarkable men and women; but the fame of the rest is merged in that of Bernard, who appears, indeed, to have moulded them all to his own bent. Mrs. Jameson.
Old age commands respect and sympathy as life’s sunset approaches with humility.
The eye of age looks meek into my heart! The voice of age echoes mournfully through it! The hoary head and palsied hand of age plead irresistibly for its sympathies! I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eyes, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding. Longfellow.
God protects those who honor Him, even making enemies peaceful toward them.
When the Grecians had won Troy, before they fell to plunder it, they gave every man leave to bear his burden out of what he would. And, first of all, Æneas marched out, carrying his household gods; which when they saw, and that he did them no great damage thereby, they bade him take another burthen; which he did, and returned with his old father, Anchises, on his back, and his young son Ascenius in hand. Which the Grecians seeing, passed by his house, as Joshua did by the house of Rahab, saying, that no man should hurt him that was so religious. And thus that man that hath his mind set on his God shall receive no hurt by his enemy; for, when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him. Nay, he shall be "in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with him." And, which is yet more, God will break the bow and the sword, and snap the spear asunder: he will make all those terrible instruments of war so unserviceable, that they shall lie down quietly by him, not offering the least hurt that may be. Spencer.
God often raises humble, poor people to accomplish great purposes for His kingdom.
Moses was the son of a poor Levite; Gideon was a thresher; David was a shepherd-boy; Amos was a herdsman; the apostles were "ignorant and unlearned;" Zwingle emerged from a shepherd's hut amongst the Alps; Melanethon was a workman in an armorer's shop; Martin Luther was the child of a poor miner; Carey, who originated the plan of translating the Bible into the language of the millions of Hindostan, was a shoemaker in Northampton; Dr. Morrison, who translated the Bible into the Chinese language, was a last-maker in Newcastle; Dr. Milner was a herd-boy in Aberdeenshire; Dr. Adam Clarke was the child of Irish cotters; John Foster was a weaver; Andrew Fuller was a farm-servant; William Jay of Bath was a herd-man. Bowes.
Young men can be powerful forces for God when used early in life.
At the age of twenty-seven, Napoleon executed that grand campaign in Italy which stamped him the foremost captain of any age, drove back the routed Austrians to their capital, treated with the haughtiest monarch in Europe as an equal, and exacted from the terror-stricken House of Hapsburg peace on his own terms. At twenty-seven, Calvin put forth those "Institutes," which have so profoundly affected the theological thought of the world ever since. At twenty-seven, Summerfield ascended, leaving a name which the Church will cherish forever, not merely as the designation of a remarkable person, but as the delicious aroma of a style of sympathetic and subduing eloquence, unique and inimitable. All these men were forces; and whatever men are destined to be forces, and not merely respectable figure-heads, are generally thrust out into the arena and put upon their metal young.
— C. D. Foss
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