Proverbs 16:18-19 Pride goes
before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Better to be lowly in
spirit along with the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.
There is
one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world
loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except
Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people
admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about
girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard
anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same
time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the
slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more
unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the
more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.
The vice
I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in
Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking
about sexual morality, I warned you that the center of Christian morals did not
lie there. Well, now, we have come to the center. According to Christian
teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger,
greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was
through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice:
it is the complete anti-God state of mind.
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