“Are you still a fool, Pride?” asked the Shepherd. “It was folly to reject me all the years when you possessed wealth and imagined that you could manage without me. Now that you know your utter helplessness and that in yourself you possess nothing, cannot you see that it would be sheer madness to go on rejecting me? O foolish man! Do you not realize that this world and this earthly life are so arranged that sooner or later every single human soul must realize he is nothing but is absolutely dependent upon me? If you would not learn this truth while you had temporal possessions, do you not see that there was only one thing love could do to make you understand the truth—namely, take those possessions from you, leaving you naked and empty and stripped and exposed to the realization of your own true position?

“It is love, Pride and Superiority, love himself who has brought this so-called ruin upon you. Is it ruin for love to topple over and cast down every false screen you had erected to hide the truth from yourselves? Love has but arranged it so that you must face the truth at last—see yourselves as you really are, not as you have painted yourselves in your own blind imagination. Are you therefore still going to continue to reject my help and grace on the ground that you now see how unworthy you are to seek it? Will you be a madman, Pride? Or will you humble yourself so that at last I may make you what I want you to be?”

“Sir,” said Pride tremblingly, “Sir, forgive me if I ask it, but can you really do anything with one so utterly helpless and despicable as I am?”

“I can make you what I planned that you should be when I created you. If you will be meek and lowly of heart and learn of me, I will teach you, and show you how to use for my glory all the benefits and advantages and privileges which you have enjoyed. But you must be willing to begin at the very beginning with nothing at all; willing to take from my hand this loss of all on which you have counted in life, and to accept instead that which you have despised—a low position and poverty and meanness in the eyes of the world. You must learn a new standard of values, and to adapt your desires to that which I choose for you. It is a hard saying, Pride, but this is the truth which you have refused to face up to all your life.”