ses I shall keep my vow
made this day before Thee. Be Thou exalted over my reputation. Make me
ambitious to please Thee even if as a result I must sink into obscurity
and my name be forgotten as a dream. Rise, O Lord, into Thy proper place
of honor, above my ambitions, above my likes and dislikes, above my
family, my health and even my life itself. Let me decrease that Thou
mayest increase, let me sink that Thou mayest rise above. Ride forth
upon me as Thou didst ride into Jerusalem mounted upon the humble little
beast, a colt, the foal of an ass, and let me hear the children cry to
Thee, "Hosanna in the highest."_

IX

_Meekness and Rest_

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.--Matt. 5:5

A fairly accurate description of the human race might be furnished one
unacquainted with it by taking the Beatitudes, turning them wrong side
out and saying, "Here is your human race." For the exact opposite of the
virtues in the Beatitudes are the very qualities which distinguish human
life and conduct.

In the world of men we find nothing approaching the virtues of which
Jesus spoke in the opening words of the famous Sermon on the Mount.
Instead of poverty of spirit we find the rankest kind of pride; instead
of mourners we find pleasure seekers; instead of meekness, arrogance;
instead of hunger after righteousness we hear men saying, "I am rich and
increased with goods and have need of nothing"; instead of mercy we find
cruelty; instead of purity of heart, corrupt imaginings; instead of
peacemakers we find men quarrelsome and resentful; instead of rejoicing
in mistreatment we find them fighting back with every weapon at their
command.

Of this kind of moral stuff civilized society is composed. The
atmosphere is charged with it; we breathe it with every breath and drink
it with our mother's milk. Culture and education refine these things
slightly but leave them basically untouched. A whole world of literature
has been created to justify this kind of life as the only normal one.
And this is the more to be wondered at seeing that these are the evils
which make life the bitter struggle it is for all of us. All our
heartaches and a great many of our physical ills spring directly out of
our sins. Pride, arrogance, resentfulness, evil imaginings, malice,
greed: these are the sources of more human pain than all the diseases
that ever afflicted mortal flesh.

Into a world like this the sound of Jesus'