Well, you know all this is what we call pride. Almighty God has mercifully arranged it so that it is generally knocked out of us to some extent as we travel on through the world; but still a good deal of it remains.
It is a thing that gives us a great deal of trouble of mind, and which generally keeps us back a great deal from really excelling in anything. It is a thing, therefore, which it is good to get rid of as soon as we can; and of course, therefore, you all want to know how to do this. I think the Gospel story of to-day throws some light on this point.
The way to do it is the way of the publican, and the way not to do it is that of the Pharisee. And the way of the publican is that of common sense, too.
What is it? It is lo look at and consider our defects, and not our strong points. The publican might have talked like the Pharisee, too. He might have said: "I am a much better fellow than that old Pharisee. I am a good, hearty, generous soul. I treat my friends to the best I have got; and if I do cheat sometimes a little in business I make up for it in charity; and I don't make a show of the good I do and put on a pretence of religion like those canting hypocrites."
And so he might have gone on to the end of the chapter. But he didn't. No; he just went off in a corner all by himself and said: "O God! be merciful to me a sinner." He did not think about his virtues, but about his sins; and when he asked the Lord to be merciful to him he meant that he wanted to amend his life, and was going to do it with the help of God, and imitate the Pharisee, whom he really thought better than himself; for you see he did not think of the sins of the Pharisee, but of his virtues.
I say that his way was of common sense. It is the way we all follow when at work on anything except ourselves. We look at the defects in our work, and not its excellences; and if we have very good sense it seems to us pretty much all defects.
Humility, then, after all, is only common sense. And I think you ought to see pretty well one reason at least why, as our Lord says, he that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself exalted. The one who exalts himself, who stops to look at his virtues, is all the time running down, and losing even the little virtue that he admires; while he that really humbles himself is constantly getting better. So humility is necessary for progress. It is so in the things of this world even, and much more so in our spiritual affairs.