He loses all sense of proportion, all sense
of dependence. Instead of being a humble learner in a mysterious
world, he expects to find everything made after the pattern
revealed to him in the Mount. The good that he does may be
permanent and fruitful; but in some dark valley of humiliation and
despair he will have to learn that God tolerates us and uses us; He
does not need us, "He delighteth not in any man's legs," as the
Psalmist said with homely vigour. To save others and be oneself a
castaway is the terrible fate of which St. Paul saw so clearly the
possibility; and thus any one who is conscious of the dramatic
sense, or even dimly suspects that it is there, ought to pray very
humbly to be delivered from it, as he would from any other darling
bosom-sin. He ought to eschew diplomacy and practise frankness, he
ought to welcome failure and to rejoice when he makes humiliating
mistakes. He ought to be grateful even for palpable faults and
weaknesses and sins and physical disabilities. For if we have the
hope that God is educating us, is moulding a fair statue out of the
frail and sordid clay, such a faith forbids us to reject any
experience, however disagreeable, however painful, however self-
revealing it may be, as of no import; and thus we can grow into a
truer sense of proportion, till at last we may come
"to learn that Man
Is small, and not forget that Man is great.
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