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These words, after all that has gone before, thrill us like the tones of a trumpet. If it had been left to ourselves to expand the general exhortation into practical details, we should have insisted, perhaps, on the duty of cultivating a magnanimity corresponding to the greatness of our position and the greatness of our hopes. We might have argued that those who have received such a "calling" should exhibit a certain stateliness of character, a lofty indifference not only to the baser pleasures of life but to power and fame. Or we might have urged that with such a "calling" Christian men should be inspired with a passionate zeal for heroic tasks and fortitude for martyrdom. This would be to walk worthily of the calling wherewith we were called. But instead of appealing to us in this lofty tone, Paul exhorts us to humility, to meekness, and to long suffering; and this suggests a principle of great value in the discipline of the spiritual life. Religious excitement, originated by direct contact with God, will always enlarge and exalt our conception of God's greatness, and will deepen our sense of dependence on Him. The heart may be flooded with a shining sea of religious emotion; the imagination may be glowing like the heavens at sunset with purple and golden splendour; but as emotion becomes more intense, and as our conception of the Christian life becomes more and more glorious, the infinite greatness of God's righteousness and power and grace will inspire us with deeper wonder and awe. We have received unmeasurable blessings, we have been raised to wonderful honours, we are hoping to share with Christ Himself infinite blessedness and glory; but all that we have has come from the eternal thought and purpose and love of God; all that we hope for will be conferred by His grace and "the exceeding greatness of His power." The wealth is not ours; it is a Divine gift: the strength is not ours; it is the inspiration of the Divine life: the dignity is not ours; it is conferred on us by the free unpurchased love of God, because we are in Christ. We live in palaces of eternal light and righteousness, and among the principalities and powers of heaven; but our native home was in the dust, and this transfigured, eternal, and glorified life was not achieved by our own strength, it has come to us from God. We are nothing; God is all. Humility, lowliness, is disciplined by prayer, by communion with God, by the vision of Divine and eternal things; by meditation on God's righteousness and our own sin, on the greatness of God and the limitations of all created life, on the eternal fulness of God and our own dependence on Him; on the blessings which God has made our inheritance in Christ, and the dark destiny which would have been the natural and just result of our indifference to God's authority and love.

(R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

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KJV: With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;

WEB: with all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love;