Norwich bulletin., 1915-11-27
Sunday Movning Talk
HUM BILE PIE.

Orlglndlly, Tn days when knlghthoOd was in flower, it was a huge concoc- tion of pastry in which had been cooked the less desirable parts of ami malS brought in from the chase. While the noOleman and his guests, after a successful hunt, reSaled themselves in the great hall on the choicer portions of the game, the servants and retain CTS of the estate discussed a prodigious humble pie in the kitchen. The dish is still met with in rural districts of the British Isles.
 Have you ever eaten a portion of humble pie? Those who have testify that it is both nourishing and savory. Even if the kind baked in an oven has never been set before you, it is probable that another variety has not infrequeutly been served at your table. For humble pie is the proverbial dish that the proud must eat, and all of us have our attacks of pride.
 There are occasions when any one of us should, in all honesty, pass his plate for a generous helping and gulp it down bravely. Having made some blGnder, having expressed a confident but mistaken opinion, having spread trouble broadcast by headstrong per- sistence in some wrong course, it is our manifest duty to eat humble pie
 With what dogged stubborness will some people fight against any admis- sion of mistake. The last surrender they will make is that of an opinion. The mere possibility that their view may not be the right one is not to be
 entertained.
 Let such positive folk hearken to words that bluff Oliver Cromwell once wrote to certain of his cantankerous associates: '1 beseech you, by the mer-
 cies of God, to believe in the possibil- ity of your being mistaken" Can't you almost see the grim -visaged old Roundheads, refusing to bend? The Apostle Paul met similar conditions in
 his day, when he wrote to his Roman friends: Be not wise in your own cOnceit."
 It is perilous in a world in which
 there is so much to learn to be cock
 sure of everything. The writer, who owns up to an ill-developed bump of locality, once travelled in foreign parts with a companion who always knew the way-or thought he did. On every occasion when the proper road was in doubt, this positive gentleman, scorn- ing to make inquiries, would lead off with the assurance that he knew per- fectly well where we were coming out. Sometimes he did know. but more oft en he did not, and it was the rule that the police or sympathetic villagers must be called on to set the travellers right.
 That foreign tour was some years in the dim past, yet, somehow, the | feeling survives that this confident
 man, whatever his present field of | labor, is still sure that he knows it all, and is still trying to make other
 people acknowledge the fact. Experience with such cocksure peo- pie at least teaches us something. It teaches us from how many trials and endorsements we may save our selves and save our associates if we are willing to believe in the possibil- ity of our being-sometimes
 taken. It is a mark of moral strength as well as of a well-rounded educa- tion to be willing to acknowledge an error when we have made one. The poet Moore was surely within the bounds of truth in the character he gave to
 | Humility, that low, sweet rot
 From which all heavenly virtues shot. THE PARSON.