OUR blessed Saviour uttered these words upon the following memorable occasion:—The disciples came unto Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” verse 1. Upon comparing this with the parallel place in Mark, ix. 34, it appears, that “they had been disputing among themselves, who should be the greatest.” A dispute this, extremely unprofitable, and highly unbecoming the disciples of that meek and lowly Jesus, who, though he thought it no robbery to be equal with God, yet took upon him the form of a servant, and came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. Phil. ii. 6, 7. Mat. xx. 28. But see how deeply the love of power, and a fondness for pre-eminence, are rooted in human nature! One would have thought, that with such an illustrious example of humility and condescension before their eyes as their divine Master, _they_ should have been the last men in the world to commence a contest about greatness; especially if they at all reflected, that the uniform obscurity of their origin and education placed them all upon a level. But when we behold pride creeping into the little college of our Lord’s own disciples, and see a company of illiterate fishermen urging a controversy about superiority in office, we may from hence infer, that “to be as gods,” Gen. iii. 5, is a desire as predominant in the nature of man as it proved fatal to our first parents; that every man is born a Diotrephes,—would have the pre-eminence in all things; and that the same arrogant spirit, which lifts up a Roman pontiff with pride and blasphemy, is congenial to human nature; and that there is that in every man’s heart, which would incline him to be a little pope in pre-eminence, how low soever his pretensions may be, or contracted his sphere of action. What led to the dispute among the disciples, was, probably, the mistaken notion they had conceived respecting the nature of the Messiah’s kingdom. Fancying that it was to be a secular establishment, and having their heads full of ideas of their own future greatness, it should seem that they anticipated the period of their exaltation; and, concluding, that they should be raised to the highest posts of civil and ecclesiastical preferment, it remained only for them to determine, who among them should be chief. For genuine pride can never brook a superior; and is never perfectly gratified, until every competitor is vanquished, and its own sovereign mandates acquire a sanction from a pre-eminence of office and power. The source this, of all the fierce contentions, that have often for centuries rent the church, and are at this day ravaging the world. The unsanctified disputes of ecclesiastical rulers, or the bloody contests among the tyrannical governors of states and empires, when narrowly examined, appear to originate, for the most part, in this question, “Who shall be greatest?”