Article March 31, 1956 Issue

"FRIEND, GO UP HIGHER"

MARIUS JOHN

In his parable of the wedding, cited in the fourteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel, Christ Jesus warned against taking the highest place lest a more honorable man be bidden to the feast and the guest be subjected to the humiliation of a request to go lower. "Go and sit down in the lowest room," Jesus admonished, "that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee."

The keystone of this parable is humility. It shows forth the deep humiliation that is likely to result from the exercise of self-importance, egotism, arrogance, and pride.

Without humility one is bound sooner or later in his attempted scramble upward to be turned back in humiliation. There is a wide difference in the meaning of these two words. Humility implies meekness, deference, kindness, courtesy, unpretentiousness; whereas humiliation implies chagrin, abasement, mortification, shame.

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