ate exercise, and be directed to its true end.

In the sacred volume we are throughout reminded, that we are originally
the creatures of God's formation, and continual dependents on his
bounty. There too we learn the painful lesson of man's degradation and
unworthiness. We learn that humiliation and contrition are the tempers
of mind best suited to our fallen condition, and most acceptable in the
sight of our Creator. We learn that these (to the repression and
extinction of that spirit of arrogance and self-importance, so natural
to the heart of man) it should be our habitual care to cherish and
cultivate; studiously maintaining a continual sense, that, not only for
all the _natural_ advantages over others which we may possess, but that
for all our _moral_ superiority also, we are altogether indebted to the
unmerited goodness of God. It might perhaps be said to be the great end
and purpose of all revelation, and especially to be the design of the
Gospel, to reclaim us from our natural pride and selfishness, and their
fatal consequences; to bring us to a just sense of our weakness and
_depravity_; and to dispose us, with unfeigned humiliation, to abase
ourselves, and give glory to God. "No flesh may glory in his presence;
he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord"--"The lofty looks of man
shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and
the Lord alone shall be exalted[76]."

These solemn admonitions are too generally disregarded, and their
intimate connection with the subject we are now considering, appears to
have been often entirely overlooked, even by Christian moralists. These
authors, without reference to the main spring, and internal principle of
conduct, are apt to speak of the love of human applause, as being
meritorious or culpable, as being the desire of true or of false glory,
accordingly as the external actions it produces, and the pursuits to
which it prompts, are beneficial or mischievous to mankind. But it is
undeniably manifest, that in the judgment of the word of God, the love
of worldly admiration and applause is in its _nature_ essentially and
radically corrupt; so far as it partakes of a disposition to exalt and
aggrandize ourselves, to pride ourselves on our natural or acquired
endowments, or to assume to ourselves the merit and credit of our good
qualities, instead of ascribing all the honour and glory where only they
are due. Its _guilt_ therefore in these cases, is not to be