I don't know its origin but when a friend quoted this I asked him to write it down for me. And now I come back to it a lot; more often in recent days when I note the borrowed glory of those parading themselves, especially in politics, but also in sports (an Olympian proclaims himself to be "The Greatest . . ."), business and industry, and the like. Wherever there is authority, ability, supremacy or influence that pronounces high words of promise and prophecy, this truth remains:
Christianity is, in one sense, the greatest of all levelers.
It looks
to the elements, and not to the circumstantials of humanity; and regarding as
altogether superficial and temporary the distinctions of this fleeting
pilgrimage, it fastens on those points of assimilation which liken the king
upon the throne to the very humblest of his subject population.
They are alike
in the nakedness of their birth. They are alike in the sureness of their decay.
They are alike in the agonies of their dissolution. And after the one is tombed
in sepulchral magnificence, and the other is laid in his sod-wrapt grave, are
they most fearfully alike in the corruption to which they moulder.
But it is
with the immortal nature of each that Christianity has to do; and, in both the
one and the other, does it behold a nature alike forfeited by guilt, and alike
capable of being restored by the grace of an offered salvation. And never do
the pomp and the circumstance of externals appear more humiliating, than when,
looking onwards to the day of resurrection, we behold the sovereign standing
without his crown, and trembling, with the subject by his side, at the bar of
heaven’s majesty.
There the master and the servant will be brought to their
reckoning together; and when the one is tried upon the guilt and the malignant
influence of his [life] . . . —O! how tremendously will the little brief
authority in which he now plays his fantastic tricks, turn to his own
condemnation; for, than thus abuse his authority, it were better for him that a
millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
Take some time with these words. Understand them. Be sobered. But also be encouraged.