of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart_? It is surely significant that
He does not say, expressly, Learn of Me to be pure, or courageous, or
fervent; but _Learn to be humble_, for in this, above all, you shall
_find rest to your souls_. Instead, have you not had a kind of gentle
pride in your religion or your virtue or your fastidiousness? In a
word, you have not been as excellent an Elder Son as your brother has
been a Younger. You have not corresponded with your graces as he has
corresponded with his. You have never yet been capable of sufficient
lowliness to come home (which is so much harder than to remain there),
or of sufficient humility to begin for the first time to work with all
your heart only an hour before sunset.

Begin, then, at the beginning, not half-way up the line. Go down to the
church door and beat your breast and say not, God reward me who have
done so much for Him, but _God be merciful to me_ who have done so
little. Get off your seat amongst the Pharisees and go down on your
knees and weep behind Christ's couch, if perhaps He may at last say to
you, _Friend, come up higher_.




THE THIRD WORD

_Woman, behold thy son. Behold thy mother_.


Our Divine Lord now turns, from the soul who at one bound has sprung
into the front rank, to those two souls who have never left it, and
supremely to that Mother on whose soul sin has never yet breathed, on