the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
John Gossner's Treasury
Who art thou? John 1:19. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Romans 12:16-17. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. Galatians 6:3.
"Who art thou? " the priests and the Pharisees asked of John. They would have done better if they had asked themselves this question. A man should ask himself this question seven times a day; then there would be less conceit and more humility and love among Christians. Who are you? Are you something in your own conceit? If so, then you are not only nothing, which we all are, but you are besides a puffed-up simpleton, deceiving yourself or being deceived. Consider your own self in comparison with the example of Christ and of His followers, the apostles; consider yourself in comparison with the example of the martyrs and other excellent men, and you shall find that you are yet far behind. Consider yourself in comparison with the duties of your state and calling only, and you will surely acknowledge yourself to be a great debtor and transgressor. Those men, especially pious men, know themselves the least, who strive to obtain high things, high knowledge, deep insight and special things that others do not know nor have any knowledge of. Such persons lose themselves so that they can no longer find the way back to their own self. Beware! Do not look up to the heights. God knows what it is. If you are to see and know, then He will show you more in a moment than you can search out in a hundred years. Do not look upward to the heights; look inward, into your own self. Condescend to those who are humble and of low estate. Keep yourself down in the valley of self-knowledge and self-abasement; then God shall exalt you and reveal to you things that you could never find on the dizzy heights but only in the way of humble faith.
Let me never from Thee stray.
Keep me in the narrow way;
Fill my soul with joy divine,
Keep me. Lord! forever Thine.
