One of the most difficult things in the world is to submit to anything that lowers us in the opinion of men and tends to give them a false impression respecting us. Our self-love revolts against the wrongful suspicion, and nature is eager to prove its injustice. Our Lord in the Circumcision submitted to a rite which seemed to imply that He was born in sin, in order to teach us, at the very opening of His life, a willingness to be misunderstood and judged guilty of faults we have never committed, and to be credited with natural disadvantages which we do not really possess.

We cannot all aim as high as this, or at least we have not yet reached this love of being wrongly judged and despised without cause. But we can learn to recognize how utterly opposed to the spirit of Christ is any attempt to make ourselves out better than we are, and to try and lead others to attribute to us virtues or advantages that are not ours, whether it be generosity, or piety, or learning, or riches, or high birth, or wide influence, or a distinguished position in the world.

If we want to test our humility, we cannot have a safer touchstone than this willingness to be under rated or disesteemed without any fault of our own. Happy those who can rejoice to suffer shame without giving cause for it! Am I one of these?