And now, in the hope that there may be one or two men here who are really and not counterfeitly in earnest to clothe themselves with humility before God and man, let them take these two looms to themselves out of which whole webs of such garments will be delivered to them every day—­their past life, and their present heart.  With a past life like ours, my brethren—­and everyman knows his own—­pride is surely the maddest state of mind that any of us can allow ourselves in.  The first king of Bohemia kept his clouted old shoes ever in his sight, that he might never forget that he had once been a ploughman.  And another wise king used to drink out of a coarse cup at table, and excused himself to his guests that he had made the rude thing in his rude potter days.  Look with Primislaus and Agathocles at the hole of the pit out of which you also have been dug; look often enough, deep enough, and long enough, and you will be found passing up through the Valley of Humiliation singing: 

   “With us He dealt not as we sinn’d,
   Nor did requite our ill!”

Another excellent use of the past is, if you are equal to it, to call yourself aloud sometimes, or in writing, some of the names that other people who know your past are certainly calling you.  It is a terrible discipline, but it is the terror of the Lord, and He will not let it hurt you too much.  I was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious, says Paul.  And, to show Titus, his gospel-son, the way, he said to him:  We ourselves were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.  And John Bunyan calls himself a blackguard, and many other worse names; only he swears that neither with his soldiering nor with his tinkering hands did he ever plash down Beelzebub’s orchard.  But if you have done that, or anything like that, call yourself aloud by your true name on your knees to-night.  William Law testifies, after five-and-twenty years’ experience of it, that he never heard of any harm that he had done to any in his house by his habit of singing his secret psalms aloud, and sometimes, ere ever he was aware, bursting out in his penitential prayers.

And, then, how any man with a man’s heart in his bosom for a single day can escape being the chief of sinners, and consequently the humblest of men for all the rest of his life on earth, passes my comprehension!  How a spark of pride can live in such a hell as every human heart is would be past belief, did we not know that God avenges sin by more sin; avenges Himself on a wicked and a false heart by more wickedness and more falsehood, all ending in Satanic pride.