Page:Meditations For Every Day In The Year.djvu/330

 mit, diminishes  that  which  is  his  most  just  due. He never commends himself,  but  rather,  as  St.  Bernard  remarks, "as much  as  he  can,  prevents  his  good  qualities  from  being known." Blush at  your  folly  in  seeking  the  applause of men,  and  in  attempting  to  magnify  your  own  merits, and pretensions.

I. The  Jews  still  urging  St.  John  to  give  some  account of himself,  he  said,  "  I  am  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the wilderness,  Make  straight  the  way  of  the  Lord." (John i. 23.)  He  makes  no  boast  of  his  parentage  or  priesthood, as worldly  men  are  accustomed  to  do. He calls  himself a voice,  expressive  of  his  office  of  precursor,  and  acknowledges that  whatever  he  was  or  whatever  he  possessed belonged to  another,  to  God,  whose  instrument  he  was. This is  an  exercise  of  a  third  degree  of  humility. It consists in  this,  that  when  we  are  forced  to  disclose  something good  belonging  to  ourselves,  we  feel  and  acknowledge that  it  is  purely  a  gift  of  God,  and  not  our  own.

II. "And they  asked  him  and  said  to  him,  Why  then dost  thou  baptize,  if  thou  be  not  Christ?" The Jews accuse him  of  presumption  in  assuming,  by  his  private authority, the  office  of  baptizing. St. John,  however,  did not attempt  his  own  justification,  nor  make  any  apology, but, leaving  the  matter  to  the  providence  of  God,  he continues  to  speak  to  his  own  disadvantage. " I  baptize," he  said,  "  in  water:  but  there  hath  stood  One  in the  midst  of  you,  whom  you  know  not,  the  lachet  of whose  shoe  I  am  not  worthy  to  loose." It is  an  exercise of  a  fourth  degree  of  humility,  to  be  backward  in  ex-