Our Apostle is not to be taken here as contradicting what he says in
other places. 'I judge not mine own self,'--yet in one of these same
letters to the Corinthians he says, 'If we judged ourselves we should
not be judged.' So that he does not mean here that he is entirely
without any estimate of his own character or actions. That he did in
some sense judge himself is evident from the next clause, because he
goes on to say, 'I know nothing against myself.' If he acquitted
himself, he must previously have been judging himself. But his
acquittal of himself is not to be understood as if it covered the
whole ground of his life and character, but it is to be confined to
the subject in hand--viz. his faithfulness as a steward of the
mysteries of God. But though there is nothing in that region of his
life which he can charge against himself as unfaithfulness, he goes
on to say, 'Yet am I not hereby justified?'
Our absolution by conscience is not infallible. I suppose that
conscience is more reliable when it condemns than when it acquits. It
is never safe for a man to neglect it when it says, 'You are wrong!'
It is just as unsafe for a man to accept it, without further
investigation, when it says, 'You are right!' For the only thing that
is infallible about what we call conscience is its sentence, 'It is
right to do right.' But when it proceeds to say 'This, that, and the
other thing is right; and therefore it is right for you to do it,'
there may be errors in the judgment, as everybody's own experience
tells them. The inward judge needs to be stimulated, to be
enlightened, to be corrected often. I suppose that the growth of
Christian character is very largely the discovery that things that we
thought innocent are not, for us, so innocent as we thought them.
You only need to go back to history, or to go down into your own
histories, to see how, as light has increased, dark corners have been
revealed that were invisible in the less brilliant illumination. How
long it has taken the Christian Church to find out what Christ's
Gospel teaches about slavery, about the relations of sex, about
drunkenness, about war, about a hundred other things that you and I
do not yet know, but which our successors will wonder that we failed
to see! Inquisitor and martyr have equally said, 'We are serving
God.' Surely, too, nothing is more clearly witnessed by individual
experience, than that we may do a wrong thing, and think that it is
right. 'They that kill you will think that they do God service.'
So, Christian people, accept the inward monition when it is stern and
prohibitive. Do not be too sure about it when it is placable and
permissive. 'Happy is he that condemneth not himself in the thing
which he alloweth.' There may be secret faults, lying all unseen
beneath the undergrowth in the forest, which yet do prick and sting.
The upper floors of the house where we receive company, and where we,
the tenants, generally live, may be luxurious, and sweet, and clean.
What about the cellars, where ugly things crawl and swarm, and breed,
and sting?
Ah, dear brethren! when my conscience says to me, 'You may do it,' it
is always well to go to Jesus Christ, and say to Him 'May I?' 'Search
me, O God, and ... see if there be any wicked way in me,' and show it
to me, and help me to cast it out. 'I know nothing against myself;
yet am I not hereby justified.'