rit, may appear to rest on a more solid ground. Yet when we consider the nature of many of those qualities, which are frequently the objects of royal favour or popular applause; and when we remember the alloy of vice and infirmity, which is mixed up with most of those qualities, that are the theme of public admiration; we may perceive enough in the reflection to

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bring down the high looks of the proud." Indeed the very transitory duration of worldly distinction might serve to shake the foundation of inordinate self-esteem : for it is after all a humiliating thought, to the most exalted of the sons of men, that however noble may be his hereditary rank, he sprang from the same common stock with the lowest of the people; and however great may be his personal dignity, he is hastening rapidly towards that condition, when he must adopt the language of Job, and " say unto corruption, Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister."

b Job xvii. 14.

3. Equally, if not more unreasonable is that pride, which glories in large possessions. Often transmitted to their proprietor without any exercise of his own industry; and often, where they are the fruits of his own exertion, purchased by the compromise of the moral principle; often hoarded with selfish avarice, and often squandered with no less selfish and senseless profusion; extinguishing the more virtuous affections, contracting the heart, and clouding the understanding; riches under such circumstances as these, afford much fitter materials for self-abasement, than for self-esteem. But however creditably and uprightly they may have been procured; and however fitly, according to worldly notions at least, they may be employed; there is one most important consideration, sufficient of itself essentially to depreciate the value, and to annihilate the pride, of wealth. Our Saviour, whose sense of the insignificance of wealth was shown, by his "not having where to lay his head," has declared in strongly figurative language, calculated to point out the extreme

difficulty of the task, that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Surely no serious and prudent man would pride himself on a possession, which by multiplying and strengthening his temptations to evil, proportionally increases the difficulty of being admitted to the favour of God.

4. From the endowments of fortune if we turn our eyes towards those of bodily excellence, we shall find them little meritorious in the estimation of a reflecting mind. The fairest face and the most melodious voice have their counterparts in the birds of the air and in the lilies of the field: the most muscular frame is but endued with properties which belong also to the beasts of the forest. Strength and beauty, numerous as are their votaries amongst "the children of pride," are thus equally conferred upon the inanimate plant, and upon the "brute that perisheth :" destined soon to wither and to decay in each, with this ad

i Matt. xix. 24.

vantage indeed in favour of the inanimate and irrational parts of the creation, that they do not by vain-glorious ostentation give occasion for their own destruction, like of the strong and the valiant, of the lovely and the beautiful, amongst the sons and daughters of Adam.

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5. If there were any solid foundation in human excellence for inordinate selfesteem, we should find it indeed less in bodily endowments, than in the treasures of a cultivated and well-stored mind. Reason is the most noble gift of God; the most characteristic property of man. It is by this, that we are distinguished from the brute creation and it is by the due improvement of this, that we approach towards a superior order of beings. Yet he who compares the wide range of science with the minute portion of it compassed by his own understanding; he who weighs what he knows with what he has to learn, and sets the strength and acuteness of his intellect against its weakness, its errors, and its failures; he above all who estimates a mind, which can comprehend only

a little of the things on earth with the knowledge of Him, "who made the heavens;" will perceive abundant reason with Job to acknowledge his own "vileness, or to exclaim with the Psalmist, "I am foolish; I am ignorant; I am even as a beast before thee." In truth they are not men of the finest and most improved understandings, who pride themselves on their intellectual attainments. On the contrary it is a remarkable fact, and it is a fact which might serve to repress the affectation of inferior minds, that they who have been most distinguished for a powerful intellect and for profound and extensive erudition, have been also distinguished for the meekness with which they have borne their faculties. Solomon was emphatically described as the wisest of the sons of men: but instead of glorying in his superior capacity, he has left it upon record, that "in much wisdom is much grief; and that he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sor

'Psalm lxxiii. 22. m Eccles, i. 18.