mit, diminishes that which is his most just due. He never commends himself, but rather, as St. Bernard remarks, "as much as he can, prevents his good qualities from being known." Blush at your folly in seeking the applause of men, and in attempting to magnify your own merits, and pretensions.
THURSDAY.
The Jews' Message to St. John the Baptist.— II.
I. The Jews still urging St. John to give some account of himself, he said, " I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord." (John i. 23.) He makes no boast of his parentage or priesthood, as worldly men are accustomed to do. He calls himself a voice, expressive of his office of precursor, and acknowledges that whatever he was or whatever he possessed belonged to another, to God, whose instrument he was. This is an exercise of a third degree of humility. It consists in this, that when we are forced to disclose something good belonging to ourselves, we feel and acknowledge that it is purely a gift of God, and not our own.
II. "And they asked him and said to him, Why then dost thou baptize, if thou be not Christ?" The Jews accuse him of presumption in assuming, by his private authority, the office of baptizing. St. John, however, did not attempt his own justification, nor make any apology, but, leaving the matter to the providence of God, he continues to speak to his own disadvantage. " I baptize," he said, " in water: but there hath stood One in the midst of you, whom you know not, the lachet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose." It is an exercise of a fourth degree of humility, to be backward in ex-
