Oh to walk humbly with our God! to be content with His will! to be satisfied to fill a very humble niche, and to do the most unpretending work! This is true dignity and true happiness. If God gives us a crossing to sweep, let us sweep it, as under His eye and to His praise. The grand and all-essential point is, to be found doing the very work which He gives us to do, and occupying the very post to which He appoints us. Had Korah and his company learnt this, their piercing wail would never have terrified the hearts of their brethren. But no; they would be something, when they were nothing, and hence they went down into the pit. Pride and destruction are inseparably linked together in the moral government of God. This principle always holds good, however the measure may vary. Let us remember it. Let us seek to rise from the study of Numbers xvi. with a deepened sense of the value of a humble and contrite spirit. We live at a moment in the which man is pushing himself upward and onward. “_Excelsior_” is a very popular motto just now. Let us look well to our mode of interpreting and applying it. “He that exalteth himself shall be abased.” If we are to be governed by the rule of God’s kingdom, we shall find that the only way to get up is to go down. The One who now occupies the very highest place in heaven is the One who voluntarily took the very lowest place on earth. (See Phil. ii. 5-11.) Here is our example, as Christians; and here, too, the divine antidote against the pride and restless ambition of the men of this world. Nothing is more sad than to witness a pushing, bustling, forward, self-confident, spirit and style in those who profess to be followers of Him who was meek and lowly in heart. It is such a flagrant contradiction of the spirit and precepts of Christianity, and is a sure accompaniment of an unbroken condition of soul. It is utterly impossible for any one to indulge in a boastful, pretentious, self-confident spirit if ever he has really measured himself in the presence of God. To be much alone with God is the sovereign remedy for pride and self-complacency. May we know the reality of this in the secret of our own souls. May the good Lord keep us truly humble, in all our ways, simply leaning on Himself, and very, very little in our own eyes.