Humble Soul

I propose to offer a few advices, in order to your attaining this lowly frame and temper of soul which the high God doth so much regard.
1. Go to the law as a schoolmaster; read the ten commandments, and Christ's spiritual commentary upon them, Matth. 5. View the law of God in its utmost extent and spirituality; for it is exceeding broad. This would make the proudest heart to lie in the dust: Rom. 7:9: "I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." The feathers of his pride and legal righteousness soon fell, when the law in its spirituality was set before his eyes.
2. Get Christ to dwell in your heart by faith; for the reigning power of this evil is never broken, till Christ come by the power of his Spirit, bringing down the towering imaginations of the heart, and erect his throne there. The more of Christ, the more humility; and the less of Christ, the more pride. When the Spirit of Christ enters into the. heart, he stamps the likeness and image of Christ there. O then, if you would have this humility and lowliness of spirit, "lift up the everlasting doors, that the King of glory may come in:" he brings a glorious retinue of graces with him, of which this is one of the first.
3. Be much [employed] in viewing the glorious perfections of the Majesty of heaven, as they are displayed in the works of creation and providence; but especially as they shine in the face of Jesus Christ, and the glorious work of redemption through him. When the prophet Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train filling the temple, he cries out, "Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips." See Job 42:5, 6. "I have heard of thee," says he, "by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
4. Be much in viewing "the rock whence ye were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence ye were digged;" I mean your original corruption and degeneration; how you are "conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity." And O how much of this cleaves even to believers themselves, while they are on this side of eternity! There is a law in the members continually warring against the law of the mind. This laid the great apostle Paul in the dust, notwithstanding his high attainments.
5. Be much in viewing the vanity of the creature, and all things below. "Vanity and vexation of spirit" is written in legible characters upon all things under the sun. "The fashion of this world is passing away." Be much in viewing the bed of the grave, where you must lie down shortly, and where rottenness and corruption shall cover you: let this make you say, with Job, "to corruption, Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister." View an awful tribunal, and endless eternity, that is to follow on the back of death, where you and I shortly shall stand panels and receive a sentence from the righteous Judge, which shall determine our state for ever.
6. Lastly, Be much in eyeing those patterns of lowliness and humility which I already mentioned. God, angels, and saints, have cast you a copy of it. But especially be much in viewing the humility and humiliation of the Son of God, which is proposed as the great pattern, Phil. 2:5-8: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."   Erskine

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