By Hugh Binning
The first week of creation, as it were, afforded two individual examples of this wise arrangement of divine justice, angels cast out of heaven, and man out of paradise, a high and terrible aim at wisdom brought both as low as hell. The pride of angels and men was only the rising up to a height, or climbing up a steep to the pinnacle of glory, that they might catch the lower fall. But the last week of the creation, to speak so, will afford us rare and eminent demonstrations of the other, poor, bad, and miserable sinners lifted up to heaven by humility, when angels were thrown down from heaven for pride. What a strange sight, an angel, once so glorious, so low, and a sinner, once so bad and miserable, so high!
Truly may any man conclude within himself, “Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud,”. (Proverbs 16:19) Happy lowliness, that is the foundation of true highness! But miserable highness that is the beginning of eternal lowness. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,”. (Matthew 5:3) Blessedness begins low, in poverty of spirit. And Christ’s sermon upon blessedness begins at it, but it arises in the end to the riches of a kingdom, a heavenly kingdom.
Grace is the seed of glory, and poverty of spirit is the seed, first dead before it be enlivened to grow up in fruits. And indeed the grain “is not made alive except it die,” (1st Corinthians 15:36) and then it gets a body, and “brings forth much fruit,”. (John 7:24) Even so, grace is sown into the heart, but it is not made alive except it die in humility, and then God gives it a body, when it springs up in other beautiful graces, of meekness, patience, love, and so on. But these are never ripe til the day that the soul get the warm beams of heaven, being separated from the body, and then the harvest is a rich crop of blessedness. Holiness is the ladder to go up to happiness by, or rather our Lord Jesus Christ as adorned with all these graces.
Modernized in places by this site.
Mercy Triumphs! 