Now, is there not a great deal of that kind of work among us--I mean getting too big, reaching above us, exalting ourselves--in a word, not knowing our place? Let me instance: The poor will pass for rich: fine dress and flashy jewels in broad daylight on the street; at home, dirt, wretchedness, almost starvation. The ignorant will know more than they have learned, and so stretch themselves all out of shape, and wed in the most repulsive manner pretentious speech to gross ignorance. Not only is one man as good as another, but a great deal better. The layman will teach theology and canon law to the priest. The ward politician, who buys votes at five cents a glass, and trades them off for street contracts or other valuable consideration, can run the world, the Holy See not excepted. Our American boy of twelve thinks the old folks not a circumstance to him, and shows it in his behavior. The school girl who can do a sum and thump an "easy exercise" on the piano scorns domestic work, leaves the kitchen to "ma," and cultivates the fine arts in the parlor. Our talk, our press even, is fall of unreality, inflated bombast and buncombe. We have no degrees of comparison but the superlative. God help us for a vain, boastful set! What is it all but untruthfulness, want of humility, strutting up to the head of the table in one way or another? Our conversations are full of ourselves; we threaten horrors or we promise wonders; and it all issues, like the mountain in travail, in ridiculous failures. Let us know our place, or humiliation will teach it us. {418} Adam and Eve were well off, and might have been till this day had they known their place and been satisfied; but they wanted to go up, to become as God--and they came down to all the miseries of fallen nature. Simon the Magician started, with the help of the devil, to ascend into heaven like our Saviour; but God brought him down before he got very far. "He that exalteth himself shall be humbled." Moreover, pride finds its punishment in the very ridiculousness of itself. The fool imagines himself to be other than he is; the insane insists on taking to himself a character which is not his. Well, brethren, the mock-king and queen of the asylum are not more foolish and insane, because not more untruthful, than the proud man. The lesson, then, is this: Keep to the place God has given you, don't put yourself forward in conversation, acknowledge your nothingness before your Creator, be true and real to your fellow-men; thus you will escape shameful humiliation and deserve to be exalted in the esteem of others and in the kingdom of heaven. ----------------- {419} _Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost._ Epistle. _Ephesians iv._ 1-6.