the Third Week after Easter
Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
" God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." - Galatians 6:14.
Whatever constitutes, in our opinion, our chief ground of distinction, that is the thing in which we glory. Like the fabled jewel in the toad, so there is in almost every man, if we may believe him, a very wonderful jewel. He finds it in himself; though with respect to others the whole thing is a fable. But even if there were this diamond in a man’s nature, the presence of self-esteem would turn it to carbon again. To pride yourself on any good is to lose that good. Virtue comes to you, not that she may make you love yourself, but love Him that sent her to you.
There are those, indeed, who glory in something beside themselves. A man glories in his ancestors. A child in its father. Men are proud of their country. Soldiers glory in their commander. A successful general inspires his soldiers with the most intense enthusiasm, so that they are ready to throw away their lives at the slightest expression of his will.
This enthusiasm, however, must be aided by a measure of ignorance in order to endure. Passionate admiration has only to come very near its object, to discover some fatal flaw. No reputation of man is safe where there is abundant light. And the great art of men is to veil their heroes. Sometimes, however, the greatest enemies of the Bible find themselves speaking the language of the Bible.
" Where shall the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the great.
Where neither guilty glory glows
Nor despicable hate?"
Reading the history of humanity, Paul found but one page on which his eye could rest, ever rest, with unmingled satisfaction. It was not the page that records the conquests of Alexander; nor that which describes the eloquence of Demosthenes; nor that which treats of Thermopile. He passed dissatisfied from Homer to Eschylus, to Plato, to Socrates, to Pythagoras, to Cato. The page on which humanity came out faultlessly glorious, was that which told of the death of Him who had come down from the highest heavens and assumed humanity that he might expose the worthlessness of all that man had gloried in and make such an atonement for the sins of men as would heal the division then yawning like a great gulf between God and man. At the cross he had first obtained a correct view of himself and of all mankind; an acquaintance with God; a knowledge of time and of eternity. And that which taught him to renounce the idea of man’s nobility, was that also which disclosed the means of rising to the highest conceivable degree of nobility. It poured contempt on princes; but it raised men from the dunghill to array them in robes of never-fading splendor to crown them with everlasting joy.
-
