Meekness the highest intelligence, arrogance not so much

Meekness as defined as “submissive to the divine will” is the extraordinary quality that sets apart the spiritual man, Jesus being the ultimate example. By his own admission, he never spoke or acted from the standpoint of his own personality, but always in the name or nature of his heavenly Father. This infuriated the intelligentsia, the scribes and Pharisees, because it exposed their deficiency of meekness, spirituality, it exposed their arrogance.

Every effort to outsmart Jesus was met with stunning clarity and intelligence, leaving his detractors speechless, whether it was about healing on the sabbath, eating with unclean hands, the legitimacy of paying taxes to Caesar, and so on.

This quality of meekness was also found in Moses, Daniel, Joseph, and other Bible luminaries, and was always accompanied by outstanding intelligence. This makes perfect sense when we consider that God is the intelligence behind the universe!

The danger of the educated human mind is that it tends to assume its own intelligence and loses sight of where intelligence really resides, and this leads to arrogance, an incredibly fallible state of mind. Paul bluntly described this condition: “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.” (Gal.)

“Mortals are egotists. They believe themselves to be independent workers, personal authors, and even privileged originators of something which Deity would not or could not create. The creations of mortal mind are material. Immortal spiritual man alone represents the truth of creation.”

“Consecration to good does not lessen man's dependence on God, but heightens it. Neither does consecration diminish man's obligations to God, but shows the paramount necessity of meeting them.”

"When mortal man blends his thoughts of existence with the spiritual and works only as God works, he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven."

The above excerpts are from this larger recommended passage (4 minutes) from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.