“Humility” by Jonathan Edwards

“Let all be exhorted earnestly to seek much of a humble spirit, and to endeavor to be humble in all their behavior toward God and men. Seek for a deep and abiding sense of your comparative meanness before God and man.

Know God. Confess your nothingness and ill-desert before Him. Distrust yourself. Rely only on God. Renounce all glory except from Him. Yield yourself heartily to His will and service.

Avoid an aspiring, ambitious, ostentatious, assuming, arrogant, scornful, stubborn, wilful, levelling, self-justifying behaviour. And strive for more and more of the humble spirit that Christ manifested while He was on earth.

Consider the many motives to such a spirit. Humility is the most essential and distinguishing trait of all true piety. It is the attendant of every grace, and in a peculiar manner tends to the purity of Christian feeling. It is the ornament of the spirit.

It is the source of some of the sweetest exercises of Christian experience. It is the most acceptable sacrifice we can offer to God. It is the subject of the richest of His promises. It is the spirit with which He will dwell on earth, and which He will crown with glory in heaven hereafter.

Earnestly, then, and diligently and prayerfully cherish, a humble spirit, and God shall walk with you here below. And when a few more days shall have passed, He will receive you to the honours bestowed on His people at Christ’s right hand.”

–Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1852/2000), 155-156.