all bear witness to the existence of moral guilt. The testimony of individuals leads to the same result. The very best of mankind readily confess and lament their own sins: and those who have been blessed with the immediate inspiration of the Spirit of God express themselves in terms of the greatest humiliation. St. Paul declares himself to be encompassed with a body of death from which he struggles with ineffectual efforts to be delivered. The patriarchs, and prophets, the apostles, and followers of Christ, all utter the same complaints. The personal experience of all men is equally decisive. All have, at some times, serious apprehensions concerning their future state; some hidden consciousness that their whole duty is not performed as it ought to be. Conscience will sometimes hold up its faithful mirror before the mental eye, and discover numerous imperfections and vices. And every man, even when he attempts to do what he knows to be his duty, often finds a law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity. The good he would he does not, the evil he would not that he does.

Now if this contrast between the purity of God, who requires our obedience, and the

Rom. vii. 24.

imperfection of our nature, even in our own sight, be thus striking, the conclusion is irresistible, that, where we see much that is done amiss, God must see more: that if there are many offences which we can understand, there must be many more which to us are secret, and from which we may reasonably pray to be cleansed.

2. If, however, there be many faults which are necessarily hidden from our view, by the weakness of our minds, there are others which remain concealed by our own wilful neglect. Every one is proverbially blind to his own

errors.

They escape his notice, not because he would not acknowledge them to be culpable in others, but because he either contrives to avoid seeing them at all, or disguises them to his own conscience under specious names. If avarice be his vice, he styles it prudence; if prodigality, he considers it the overflowing of a liberal heart. Anger and revenge are gratified under the plea of a spirited vindication of his rights: licentiousness is denominated a venial error of youth; obstinacy, firmness; and arrogance, proper pride. As long as the faults of a man are thus hidden from him, they are secret faults: but they are faults which he may and ought to know, and to amend: and every one who has learned that "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately

wicked," would do well to pray that it may be cleansed from them.

3. There is still another mode, in which we may have secret faults; and a mode even more dangerous than the preceding; because it proceeds from a hardihood in continued sin. It is by no means uncommon for a man to advance so far in a guilty course, that he ceases to reflect at all upon his actions. On first entering upon a vicious life, remorse and hesitation are usually felt. The mind unused to gross violations of duty proceeds with timorousness: and the sinner still flatters himself with the delusive hope of returning, at no distant period, into the path of duty, which he has deserted. Soon, however, one guilty compliance succeeds to another: that unchecked produces still more; until the progress of corruption is complete: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. Conscience, long heard in vain ceases to utter her warning voice; and the calm of insensibility is mistaken for the tranquillity of a self approving mind.

As long as the sinner continues in this melancholy state, all his sins to him are secret faults. Clear as the noon-day to the rest of the world, open in all their deformity before the eye of God, they still escape his own observation.

h Jer. xvii. 9.

From such a degree of mental blindness it is surely above all things desirable to be delivered: and knowing that these things are sometimes so, we must join in the prayer of David, "who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults."

II. Having thus seen some of the causes which render many of our faults secret, and the danger with which they are especially invested, as long as they are concealed, let us turn our attention to some of the means, by which we may, with the divine blessing, be enabled to discover them.

1. The first method is by sincere self examination, according to the rule of life laid down in the Scriptures. As long as men measure themselves by themselves, and compare themselves among themselves, they will make no progress in true wisdom. Self love will always tend to withdraw our attention from those parts of our conduct, which are reprehensible; and entertain us with the more pleasing prospect of our imagined virtues. And in making a comparison, between the relative merits of ourselves and others, we are still more liable to be deceived. That man must be bad indeed, who cannot discover something in his own character, which his

i 2 Cor. x. 12.

partiality may convert into a mark of superiority over his neighbour. "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are," is an address, conceived in the heart, if not uttered by the lips, of many, who have made even less progress in a religious life than the Pharisee in the parable. But let a man once peruse his Bible with an earnest desire to profit by its instructions; let him study its history, with a full determination to take counsel by its warnings; let him reflect upon its holy precepts, and its pure doctrines; let him compare together all the evidences of its truth; let him contemplate the noble, but awful views, which it discloses, concerning the dealings of God, and the weakness of fallen man; let him ponder its declarations concerning the deceitfulness, and universal extent of sin; and the astonishing means which have been devised for our redemption: let him regard mankind in their present state of probation, and in their future state of ultimate retribution: and then let him apply all these particulars individually to his own case: let him examine, step by step, the degree of his proficiency in all his relative duties; the influence which his faith exercises upon his life; and he will have found an unerring standard,

k Luke xviii. 11.