The Humility of the Saints.
The kingdom of heaven this is what Christ came to introduce to introduce into active co-operation with us poor men. He brought down out of that far place this fund of eternal and victorious forces. He put at our disposal and under our manipulation the whole resources of the Divine house. He brought heaven into activity here on earth, and we who are made members of that kingdom become media through which its energies penetrate and work, expand and make entries.
I. And this will perhaps explain the peculiar stress laid upon two Christian excellences Humility and Thanksgiving. Humility, the rare gift of the saints, is sometimes, I believe, supposed to be a sort of compulsory lie, as if we were required to glorify God by pretending that we are not so good as we really are. But the professed humility of the saints is nothing more than the natural and normal, and true and healthy, outcome of the conditions under which we belong to the kingdom of heaven; for these conditions imply that we, so far as we rightly correspond to them, do but make ourselves channels through which the powers of God can operate, vehicles through which they may extend their boundaries. Our Christian excellence just lies in admitting Christ. Saintliness is the energy and glory of God become active in a man. It is the display of God's grace through a human personality, and if so, it cannot help being overwhelmed with humility. The grace of this humility is the measure of the saintliness, for the more complete this self-surrender, then the more vigorously flows through it the splendour of God's fulness.
II. And then Thanksgiving. The saint has a spiritual microscope, and through it he can see at least fragments of the mysterious subtilties that operate at His bidding all that delicate world of miracle that is ever at His service. How, then, can he ever thank God enough? This only is his desire to be ever giving thanks; and every touch of holiness in him is a new wonder to him a new miracle worked by God; and to recount his own labours is to recount God's successes; and all such recounting, such rehearsal, is itself a thanksgiving. In so glorying he can glory in the Lord glory because all things are his. Paul and Apollos and Cephas, and the world and life and death, and things present and things to come all are his and he glories in it. He gives thanks to God, for herein is his Father glorified who is in heaven.
H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 234.
References: Matthew 25:37-39. Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 234.Matthew 25:40. J. H. Hollowell, Ibid.,vol. xviii., p. 89; T. R. Evans, Ibid.,vol. xxiv., p. 337. Matthew 25:40-45. R. Veitch, Ibid.,vol. xxix., p. 259. Matthew 25:41. H. N. Grimley, The Temple of Humanity,p. 203; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 381.Matthew 25:44. J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 121.