God can change the lowest to the highest, abase the proud, and raise the humble.
Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.
There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.
We have all been guilty of complaining, but God does not look at it as lightly as we may think. Complaining was the reason the Jews ended up wandering in the desert for forty years. If we were more grateful for what God has done for us, abasing ourselves would not be a problem.
The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille
It is not serving, but servility, that is menial.
England is the natural enemy of France, an enemy greedy, ambitious, unjust, and false. The invariable and cherished object of her policy is, if not the destruction of France, at least her abasement, her humiliation, her ruin.
There was no mistaking her sincerity--it breathed in every tone of her voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring. But the former understood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying her valley of humiliation--was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla, had plumed herself? Anne had turned it into a species of positive pleasure.
