I. If we look at the teaching of Scripture upon the subject of Christian humility, we find that its two main characteristics are: (1) distrust of self and of purely human wisdom; (2) trust in, and gratitude to, God as the Giver of all good gifts. From these qualities, when carried into practice, spring modesty and forbearance, and consideration in our dealings with each other; a devotion to, and worship of, Him to whom we acknowledge that all we have is due. Christian humility then, in its widest acceptation, is the attribute alike of a good citizen and a good Christian. It summarises, so to speak, and gathers into one focus that duty to man and duty to God which our Lord Himself, the pattern standard of humility, declared to be the sum total of Christian practice. It is the crowning grace of every relation of human life: in young and old, in teacher and in learner, in master and in servant, in parent and in child, at the councils of statesmen, in busy scenes of merchandise and industry, or at little children's play.
II. We do not, of course, suppose that humility, unlike any other virtue, has not its limits. Obedience may be slavish and unreasoning; self-effacement may cover a shrinking from responsibility; self-sacrifice may even be quixotic and useless. Childlike humility is indeed a crown of human character, a necessary ingredient in human perfection; but it may not stand in the way of Christian zeal for high and noble objects; it may not bar the path of Christian duty by encouraging weakness and irresolution. Shrink not from self-assertion in the cause of good when once you have ascertained that it is the cause of good, and not the cause of self; let not humility stay your hand from the plough when there is hard, rough soil of evil lives and evil habits to be broken up, misery to be relieved, degradation to be raised, and the very germs of civilisation to be implanted; in that great field of labour, whether in heathen lands afar, or amid scarcely less heathen scenes at home, where the labourers are so few and the work so great, and where so much has to be done to prepare the soil before there can be even a distant hope of harvest.
T. L. Papillon, Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates' Journal,Feb. 28th, 1884.
Reference: Proverbs 2:10-22, R. Wardlaw, Lectures on Proverbs,vol. i.. p. 64.