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But how can one feel a scorn of scorn without himself coming into the same condemnation? And when we venture to say of God that He "scorneth the scorners," do we not seem to charge upon the Judge the identical fault for which He Himself is passing sentence upon the offender? The answer to these questions lies here. Feelings, like actions, derive their moral character to a great extent from circumstances. What is sin under ordinary circumstances is, in the special case of the executioner, innocence. It seems to be a necessary feature of the law of retribution that like should be punished by like; so that this scorning of the scorner comes under the same head as the slaying of the slayer. And yet it is not every one who may slay the slayer, neither is it every one who may scorn the scorner, but He blamelessly may who is the Judge of all the earth. "Surely He scorneth the scorners," and in perfect holiness He does it.

I. OUT OF WHAT SORT OF SOIL SPRINGS UP THIS WEED OF SCORN? And through what negligence of ours is it suffered to get its growth, choking the good seed, and spoiling the whole fruitage of the soul? One of the most frequent, certainly the most vulgar, of all the varieties of scorn, is that which associates itself with the possession of money. "Our soul," exclaims one of the psalmists sadly, as if speaking out of the depths of a bitter experience, "is filled with the scornful reproof of the wealthy." Those words date from a far past. It is some three thousand years since they were spoken, but probably they had as little of the air of novelty about them then as they have now. It is an old truth. But there is a sort of power antecedent even to the money power, and perhaps for that reason I ought to have spoken of it first. I mean bodily superiority. Among savage races, where the struggle for survival is plainly seen to be everything, this tyranny of the stronger arm is, of course, more noticeable than in the midst of people called civilised. But the pride of life, yes, of downright animal life, is by no means a stranger even to enlightened society; as a hundred indications from the popular worship of the prize-fighter upwards, even as far as the councils of nations, amply testify. Along with strength of limb we reckon the advantage which those who are engaged in competition gain from a firm foothold, good standing-ground. Hence it happens that official station, high place, the holding of civil or military authority, has been known to engender scornfulness. And as with strength and power, so with beauty. Unsanctified beauty is proverbially scornful. In ancient times, the ill-made dwarf seems to have been given his place in kings' palaces for the very sake of heightening, by force of contrasts, the shapeliness of those among whom he crept and jested. The fact that graciousness of manner is always thought to add so great a charm to personal beauty testifies of itself to our not naturally expecting to find the two things combined. Imperiousness is commonly submitted to as one of the supposed prerogatives, or inherent rights of beauty. Nevertheless, it is written in a certain place, that "the Lord hateth a proud look." A consciousness of superior knowledge, or knowledge supposed to be superior, often carries with it the assumption of scorn. Thank God, the succession of lowly-minded scholars has never wholly failed since knowledge began to be. And yet the affectation of omniscience on the part of speakers and writers is far more frequent than could be wished. Learning patronises sanctity. Yet again, there is such a thing as spiritual scorn. Contempt for those held to be theologically or ecclesiastically below the mark, a certain pitiless disdain for the class whom St. Paul so tenderly speaks of, "the weak in the faith," has too often found utterance and illustration in the history of the people of God. So, then, these are the motive springs, the sources and the suggestions of scorn.

II. SOME OF THE BEST ACCREDITED REMEDIES FOR SCORN. Do not understand me to intend methods of warding off from ourselves the scorn of others. The thing we really need to be told is how to seal up the fountain of scorn in our own hearts.

1. One of these remedies is to consider often and seriously the littleness, the real, the intrinsic smallness of the possession, gift, privilege, whichever it may be, upon which we are pluming ourselves, and from which we draw the justification of our scornful thoughts. Your wealth is tempting you to entertain a certain disdain for those less rich than yourself, is it? Consider what your riches really are. One of the English mystics speaks of his having found it an effectual mode of disabusing himself of the illusions of wealth to imagine all his property turned into some one form of merchandise, and then asking himself, How am I the better or the happier for being the legal owner of a hundred thousand pieces of such or such a mineral, or half a million boxes or two million bales of such or such a fabric? The device is perhaps a clumsy one, for in real life wealth seldom or never locks itself up in the monotonous and unattractive way supposed; at least, that is not the form in which we see it. Still the suggestion has something of value in it, for it does fasten the attention upon the coarse, material side of all accumulated riches, and does remind us how insignificant the thing called a fortune really is as compared with the earth and the fulness thereof. The mighty One who made and owns the world scorneth the scorners, and assuredly on this score of great possessions He has a right to do so. So much for the littleness of wealth at its greatest, but when we go on to take into account the transiency of it as well as the littleness, we see at once what an utterly groundless justification riches furnish for the exercise of scorn. Once separated from your property, and finding yourself all alone with your scorn, how very, very poorly off you will be! how very, very lonely! But if the case be thus with riches, is it any the better with bodily strength and personal beauty, the pride of power and the pride of intellect, and the pride of Churchly privilege? No, they are transient all. If riches have wings, so have they.

2. But there is a nobler, loftier thought than this, and one even more efficacious as a protection against the growth in us of the scornful mood, and that is the thought that all of these various possessions are given us in trust. If we can only rise to that conception of our life which acknowledges it to be, with all its powers and talents and privileges and opportunities, nothing less than a weighty trust committed to us by Almighty God, the Maker of our bodies and the Father of our spirits, if we can but do this, we shall be guarded alike from frivolity, from despondency, and from scorn. We cannot be frivolous, for no matter how swift the trust, we see the solemnity of it; we cannot be despondent, for the responsibility laid on us is, by its very nature, prophetic of more than heart can wish or tongue utter; we cannot be scornful, for there is nothing in a lent possession that tends to foster the vanity of ownership.

3. But the best of all the antidotes to scorn is the contemplation, honest, earnest, and sustained, of the example of our Saviour Christ. If superiority of any kind whatsoever could confer the right to be contemptuous, surely that right was His. But what saith He of Himself, this King of kings? "I am meek," He says, "and lowly in heart." Yes, that is it; there lies the hiding of His power. There is no dash or touch or tinge of scorn to mar the perfect sweetness of His nature. Gracious He is, and clement, reassuring our timidity by the loving kindness of His smile, and through the pitifulness of His great mercy loosing those who are tied and bound by sin. If our religion means anything at all, means it not this, that a Christian's duty is the imitating of Christ? And are we imitators of Him, if knowingly we go on letting the scornful temper rule our hearts in place of pity? There is a hard, unloving mood of mind into which people sometimes allow themselves to fall as a sort of revenge upon their own ill success. Embittered by losses or failure, disappointed, hurt, they seem to find a certain ghastly consolation in noticing the like drawbacks in lives other than their own. But this is not to imitate Christ. He lost everything. "Then they all forsook Him and fled." And yet some of the gentlest, tenderest, most pitiful of His sayings are to be found among the words spoken from the Cross. In the family prayers of the late Dean Alford, himself an eminent exemplar of kindliness and forbearance, there is a beautiful petition, which, if granted, would bring gladness into many a home to which now it is a stranger: "From forgetting or not caring for one another's infirmities," so the supplication runs, "good Lord, deliver us." The forgetting is the evil that comes from want of thought; the not caring, the evil that comes from want of heart; and how sore is our need of deliverance from both of them!

(W. R. Huntington, D. D.)

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KJV: Surely he scorneth the scorners: but he giveth grace unto the lowly.

WEB: Surely he mocks the mockers, but he gives grace to the humble.