3. The third manifestation of the humility of God is His patience amid the obstinate ingratitude and unfriendliness of men. We are sometimes impatient enough with one another. A slight, an unguarded word, an ungenerous act, is taken as a mortal offence, not to be endured. Pride rises up and stiffens its back, and is hard to be pacified. Meanwhile, how much has God to bear from us all, every day of our life ? Blessings received from His hand, and turned into a ground of vainglorious boasting; reverence and obedience withheld in the very presence of clear revelations of His will ; the claims of His truth set aside for
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self- convenience, self-interest, or self -gratification ; rebellious murmuring against the appointments of His providence ; the faithless preference of worldly gain to the enjoyment of His favour — all that He has to bear from us.
4. Still another manifestation of the humility of God is His minute care in perfecting His meanest work. It does not at all surprise us that He should lavish skill and care on the more striking works of His hand — on the human body, that miracle of consummate ingenuity ; on the gorgeous rainbow, with its perfect arch and exquisite blending of many hues ; or on the mighty brilliant suns that flash His glory forth to all the worlds which catch their light. We expect a high degree of finish and care in the grand masterpieces of His workmanship. But what does surprise us is that the Mighty God should be so scrupulous and careful in perfecting the tiniest petal on the tiniest flower, though no eye but His own should ever heed it ; in moulding with rare completeness the crystals of the snowflakes which fall and lie away up among the solitudes of the hills ; in fashioning into harmonious adaptation to their environment the myriads of insects which crawl on a forest leaf, or in weaving with art unrivalled the delicate structure of a night-moth's wing. Such lowly kind of work it is not easy for us quite to appreciate, nor is it easy to understand the painstaking devotion that labours to bring it to perfection.
2. But it is not merely or mainly by His work in the world that the prophet recognises the humility of God. It is by His condescending to come into the lives of men. Here is the marvel of marvels, that the little soul of man can receive into itself the infinite God.
1. By the intellect. — Man receives God into himself by the intellect. We trifle with the facts of our own consciousness if we suffer the theological description of God as incomprehensible to divert us from the fact that our minds are made for nothing more expressly than for this, that they should receive God. The lowest rudiments of the knowledge of the simplest forms of matter are the beginnings of the knowledge of God. If we could re- member, you and I, now that we are grown, all that came to us in infancy — the first struggles of the childish mind with the
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questions that we are not done with yet, we should see how soon the knowledge of God conies to the little one. By such a wonder of creation it is, that He who made the little ball of the human eye so that it can take in the heavens and the earth, has made the petty intellect of man so that it can take in the knowledge of the infinite God.
2. But secondly, it is even a greater wonder than this, that the infinite God, whom the intellect has conceived, draws near for a more intimate society with His creature, and enters the heart of man through the gateway of his affections. We say a greater wonder ; for it must be confessed that this ideal of the intellect, this centre in which all infinite attributes inhere, does by His very majesty so overawe the heart that we shrink away from Him. By every new perfection of His nature that grows upon our apprehension ; by His awful power as the Almighty ; by His perfect knowledge as the All-wise ; by His unswerving steadfastness as the Faithful and True — the Immutable ; by the very infinitude of His nature. He is withdrawn farther and farther from the possibility of being counted among those humble objects on which the tendrils of a human heart are able to lay hold. How, for instance, shall this Inhabitant of eternity, whose name is Holy, be well pleased with His petty creature who has dared withstand His perfect law, and looks shrinking toward the throne of infinite Majesty, fearing and crying, " Unclean ! unclean !" The very arguments by which we climb to the knowledge of the infinite Spirit are like mountains that separate us from any re- lation with Him of childlike prayer and mutual love. But a trustful confidence can say to these mountains, " Be ye removed and be ye cast into the sea," and it shall be done.
3. But the prophet's immediate concern is not with God as received by the intellect or as received by the affections, but as holding spiritual communion with the contrite and the humhle.
(1) Humble and contrite, — we use these words often, but we hardly think of what they mean. " A broken and a contrite heart," says David, " Thou wilt not despise." A contrite heart is more than a broken one, — one crushed to powder, that is, and that feels itself dust and ashes. It is by a real, deep, and last-