Her spiritual attitude as revealed in the Magnificat is but the attitude which must have been hers habitually—­the attitude that exalts God and not self.  “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”  That is the starting-place of all holy souls—­the adoration of God.  True humility is never self-conscious because self is lost in the vision of God.  S. Mary was bearing in her pure body the very Son of God.  Admit, if you will, that as yet she did not understand the full reach of her vocation; but she did know that she had been chosen by God in a most signal manner to be the instrument of His purpose.  That which S. Elizabeth spoke under divine impulse,—­“Whence is this that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”—­must have had clear meaning for her.  But the wonder of all that God is accomplishing through her only brings her to God’s feet.  That “He that is mighty hath done me great things,” is but the evidence of His sanctity, not of her greatness.

One never gets through wondering at the beauty of humility; and it is one of the marks of how far we are from spiritual apprehension when we find this splendid virtue unattractive.  It does indeed cut across many of the instinctive impulses of our nature; it can hardly be said to have dawned on humanity as a virtue until the Incarnation of God.  Therein it has revealed to us God’s attitude in His work and, by consequence, the natural attitude of all such as would associate themselves with God.  It is not so much a self-denying as a self-forgetting virtue.  It is ruined by the very consciousness of it.  Such phrases as “practicing humility” seem self-contradictory—­when one begins to practice humility it becomes something else.  We do not conceive of our Lady as setting out to be humble, of thinking of what a humble person would do under such and such circumstances.  She does not, as I was saying, think of herself at all, but thinks of God.  The “great things” she has are His gift.  That He has looked upon her low estate, and that in consequence of His visitation “all generations shall call her blessed,” is a manifestation of the divine glory and goodness, not an occasion of pride to the recipient of God’s gifts.

We who are so self-seeking, who are so greedy of praise, who are constantly wanting what we feel is our due, who hunger to be “appreciated,” who are full of proud boasting about our accomplishment, will do well to meditate upon this point of view.  We acknowledge the supremacy of God with our lips, but in our acts we are quite prone to assume that we are independent actors in the universe where whatever we have is due to our own creative powers.  We claim a certain lordship over life, a certain independent use of it.  We resent the pressure of religious principle as setting up a sort of counter-claim to control that which it is ours to dispose of as we will.  Most of our difficulties come from this godless attitude which claims independence of life.  It results in a religion which is willing to pay God tribute, but is not willing to belong to God.  But the humble person has nothing of his own and moreover wants nothing; he wants simply that God shall use him, that he shall be found a ready instrument in God’s hands.