We must all get rid of our pride

I have heard of a lady who was visited by a minister on her deathbed, and she said to him, “I want to ask you one question, now I am about to die.” “Well,” said the minister, “what is it?”; Oh!” said she, in a very affected way “I want to know if there are two places in heaven, because I could not bear that Betsy in the kitchen should be in heaven along with me, she is so unrefined?” The minister turned round and said, “O, don’t trouble yourself about that, madam. There is no fear of that, for until you get rid of your accursed pride, you will never enter heaven at all.”

We must all get rid of our pride. We must come down and stand on an equality in the sight of God, and see in every man a brother, before we can hope to be found in glory. Ay, we bless God, we thank him that will set down no separate table for one and for another. The Jew and the Gentile will sit down together. The great and the small shall feed in the same pasture, and we shall “sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.” But my text hath a yet greater depth of sweetness, for it says, that “many shall come and shall sit down.” Some narrow-minded bigots think that heaven will be a very small place, where there will be a very few people, who went to their chapel or their church. I confess, I have no wish for a very small heaven, and love to read in the Scriptures that there are many mansions in my Father’s house.

From a sermon entitled "Heaven and Hell," delivered September 4, 1855.