The Greatest Thing In the World and Other AddressesDrummond, Henry
ReligionComparative
The Greatest Thing In the World and Other Addresses
Drummond, Henry
Christian life; Christianity; Love -- Religious aspects
If you know yourself, you will answer--Pride; Selfishness, Ambition.
As you look back upon the past years of your life, is it not true that
its unhappiness has chiefly come from the succession of personal
mortifications and almost trivial disappointments which the
intercourse of life has brought you? Great trials come at lengthened
intervals, and we rise to breast them; but it is the petty friction of
our every-day life with one another, the jar of business or of work,
the discord of the domestic circle, the collapse of our ambition, the
crossing of our will or the taking down of our conceit, which make
inward peace impossible. Wounded vanity, then, disappointed hopes,
unsatisfied selfishness--these are the old, vulgar, universal
SOURCES OF MAN'S UNREST.
Now it is obvious why Christ pointed out as the two chief objects for
attainment the exact opposites of these. To meekness and lowliness
these things simply do not exist. They cure unrest by making it
impossible. These remedies do not trifle with surface symptoms; they
strike at once at removing causes. The ceaseless chagrin of a
self-centered life can be removed at once by learning meekness and
lowliness of heart. He who learns them is forever proof against it. He
lives henceforth a charmed life. Christianity is a fine inoculation, a
transfusion of healthy blood into an anaemic or poisoned soul. No fever
can attack a perfectly sound body; no fever of unrest can disturb a
soul which has breathed the air or learned the ways of Christ.
Men sigh for the wings of a dove that they may fly away and be at
Rest. But flying away will not help us. "The Kingdom of God is _within
you_." We aspire to the top to look for Rest; it lies at the bottom.
Water rests only when it gets to the lowest place. So do men. Hence,
_be lowly_. The man who has no opinion of himself at all can never be
hurt if others do not acknowledge him. Hence, _be meek_. He who is
without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes to him. It is
self-evident that these things are so. The lowly man and the meek man
are really above all other men, above all other things. They dominate
the world because they do not care for it. The miser does not possess
gold, gold possesses him. But the meek possess it. "The meek," said
Christ, "inherit the earth." They do not buy it; they do not conquer
it; but they inherit it.
There are people who go about the world looking out for slights, and
they are necessarily miserable, for they find them at every
turn--especially the imaginary ones. One has the same pity for such
men as for the very poor. They are the morally illiterate. They have
had no real education, for they have never learned
HOW TO LIVE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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