Editorial February 3, 1923 Issue

"Honour shall uphold the humble in spirit"

Duncan Sinclair

A VERSE in the twenty-ninth chapter of Proverbs reads, "A man's pride shall bring him low: but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit." It presents a striking contrast between the result produced by pride and that which follows from humility, a contrast as true to-day as in the long ago when first it was uttered. Everybody knows how true the contrast is; but not everybody has learned to reject the pride which is foolishness and to cultivate the humility which can never fail to receive the crown of honor. Why is this? Simply because pride is one of the fallacies of the so-called human mind, that supposititious mentality which believes itself to be a self-sustained entity. Believing that intelligence exists in matter, constituting what is called a human personality, this supposititious mind claims, in belief, the right to be boastful, arrogant, proud; in other words, with all the meanness of its finite imperfectness, it vaunts itself as if it were on an equal with divine Mind.

Pride is one of the subtlest and, therefore, one of the most obnoxious forms of evil the Christian Scientist encounters. He finds it first of all trying to bar his way against the acceptance of the great fundamental truths of Christian Science,—perhaps as pride of intellect, social position, or scholastic culture. Is he not this or that in his own personal right? it suggests. Does he not know this or that of his own personal volition? Would the acceptance of the truths of Christian Science not remove him from his little self-erected throne? All the questions of pride! And not one step will he advance into the kingdom of heaven,—that is, into the understanding of the eternal verities of being,—until pride is leveled, and humility has taken its place.

But humility does not come into its own in a day with any of us. Even when men have been honored with positions of trust, with positions where their influence for good may be very great and very far reaching, they are still subject to the same temptation: pride would seek to lure them on to its rickety platform,—which it may suggest to them is a throne,—whence, after a brief period, they may find themselves hurled among its miserable ruins. The pride of position is constantly being encountered in church work. And it must be scientifically met and overcome through the understanding that we of ourselves can do nothing; that all we are and have and do is entirely due to the spiritual fact that man is the reflection of God, divine Mind. Under the marginal heading of "Temple cleansed," on page 142 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes: "As in Jesus' time, so to-day, tyranny and pride need to be whipped out of the temple, and humility and divine Science to be welcomed in. The strong cords of scientific demonstration, as twisted and wielded by Jesus, are still needed to purge the temples of their vain traffic in worldly worship and to make them meet dwelling-places for the Most High."

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