s' great victory within the twenty-four
hours following,[108] and would have been for them had they used it.
Humility is the foundation of all strength and victory. Only the strong
can stoop. It takes the strongest to stoop lowest. He who so stoops is
revealing strength.

Humility is not thinking meanly of yourself; it is merely getting into
correct personal relation with God, and so with men. It is our true
normal attitude, as dependent creatures, as those who have sinned, as
those who have been bought with blood. Everything we have is from
Another, originally and continuously; we are utterly dependent. All
rights have been forfeited by our wilful conduct; we retain nothing in
our own right. And all we have now has been secured for us at the cost
of blood; we are being carried at enormous expense. Not much room there
for self-satisfaction, is there?

Humility is simply _recognizing_ our _utter dependence upon Another_,
and _living_ it. And this controls our touch with our fellows. In this
lies the secret of all strength,--mental keenness and vigour,
sympathetic touch with others, and power of action in life and in
service. All this touches the _weakest_ spot in these men, and in--us.

But there's more here. The humility teaching is out on the surface.
There's a bit _under_ the surface, that they would soon be needing and
needing badly. It's this: the thing in you that's wrong _must_ be made
right; and it _can_ be. Every sin done by the man who is trusting Christ
as his Saviour, every such sin _must_ be cleansed away. And it _can_ be.
The feet-washing told this bit of tremendous truth.

These men trusted Christ. But their moral feet would get badly messed
that night, mired and slimed by passionate betrayal and blasphemous
denial and cowardly flight. The man going to the bath-house was clean on
returning home except where his sandalled feet had gathered some soil
from the road. These men were cleansed in heart through Christ. But the
foot-soilings must be cleansed. These two things ring out. Sin _must_ be
reckoned with and cleansed out. _And_, blessed truth! it _can_ be. This
is the second bit. It would be brought to their remembrance that same
night when the road they took dirtied them up so badly, and afterwards.

But there's a deeper, a tenderer bit yet here. There is _the love
touch_. Jesus was giving them the tenderest touch yet of His love, to
_hold_ them. The personal touch is the tenderest. Man yearns for the