which we have been discussing, even the natural man should be allured by
it. For it teaches him that there is help for him in God. His own
knowledge of his own heart, as we have seen, is very imperfect and very
inadequate. But the Divine knowledge is thoroughly adequate. He may,
therefore, devolve his case with confidence upon the unerring One. Let
him take words upon his lips, and cry unto Him: "Search me, O God, and
try me; and see what evil ways there are in me, and lead me in the way
everlasting." Let him endeavor to come into possession of the Divine
knowledge. There is no presumption in this. God desires that he should
know himself as He knows him; that he should get possession of His views
upon this point; that he should see himself as He sees him. One of the
principal sins which God has to charge upon the sinner is, that his
apprehensions respecting his own character are in conflict with the
Divine. Nothing would more certainly meet the approbation of God, than a
renunciation of human estimates of human nature, and the adoption of
those contained in the inspired word. Endeavor, therefore, to obtain the
very same knowledge of your heart which God Himself possesses. And in
this endeavor, He will assist you. The influences of the Holy Spirit to
enlighten are most positively promised and proffered. Therefore be not
repelled by the truth; but be drawn by it to a deeper, truer knowledge of
your heart. Lift up your soul in prayer, and beseech God to impart to you
a profound knowledge of yourself, and then to sprinkle all your
discovered guilt, and all your undiscovered guilt, with atoning blood.
This is _salvation_; first to know yourself, and then to know Christ as
your Prophet, Priest, and King.
[Footnote 1: PENSÉES: Grandeur de l'homme, 6. Ed. Wetstein.]
[Footnote 2: CHAPMAN: Byron's Conspiracy.]
GOD'S EXHAUSTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. [*continued]
PSALM cxxxix. 1--6.--"O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou
knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thought
afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted
with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord,
thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and
laid thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is
high, I cannot attain unto it."
In the preceding discourse upon this text, we directed attention to the
fact that man is possessed of the power of self-knowledge, and that he
cannot ultimately escape from using it. He cannot forever flee from his
own presence; he cannot, through all eternity, go away from his own
spirit. If he take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the earth, he must, sooner or later, know himself, and acquit or
condemn himself.
Our attention was then directed to the fact, that God's knowledge of man
is certainly equal to man's knowledge of himself. No man knows more of
his own heart than the Searcher of hearts knows. Up to this point,
certainly, the truth of the text is incontrovertible. God knows all that
man knows.
II. We come now to the second position: That _God accurately and
exhaustively knows all that man might, but does not, know of himself_.
Although the Creator designed that every man should thoroughly understand
his own heart, and gave him the power of self-inspection that he might
use it faithfully, and apply it constantly, yet man is extremely ignorant
of himself. Mankind, says an old writer, are nowhere less at home, than
at home. Very few persons practise serious self-examination at all; and
none employ the power of self-inspection with that carefulness and
sedulity with which they ought. Hence men generally, and unrenewed men
always, are unacquainted with much that goes on within their own minds
and hearts. Though it is sin and self-will, though it is thought and
feeling and purpose and desire, that is going on and taking place during
all these years of religious indifference, yet the agent himself, so far
as a sober reflection upon the moral character of the process, and a
distinct perception of the dreadful issue of it, are concerned, is much
of the time as destitute of self-knowledge as an irrational brute itself.
For, were sinful men constantly self-examining, they would be constantly
in torment. Men can be happy in sin, only so long as they can sin without
thinking of it. The instant they begin to perceive and understand _what_
they are doing, they begin to feel the fang of the worm. If the frivolous
wicked world, which now takes so much pleasure in its wickedness, could
be forced to do here what it will be forced to do hereafter, namely, to
_eye_ its sin while it commits it, to _think_ of what it is doing while
it does it, the billows of the lake of fire would roll in upon time, and
from gay Paris and luxurious Vienna there would instantaneously ascend
the wailing cry of Pandemonium.
But it is not so at present. Men here upon earth are continually thinking
sinful thoughts and cherishing sinful feelings, and yet they are not
continually in hell. On the contrary, "they are not in trouble as other
men are, neither are they plagued like other men. Their eyes stand out
with fatness; they have more than heart could wish." This proves that
they are self-ignorant; that they know neither their sin nor its bitter
end. They sin without the _consciousness_ of sin, and hence are happy in
it. Is it not so in our own personal experience? Have there not been in the
past ten years of our own mental history long trains of thought,--sinful
thought,--and vast processions of feelings and imaginings,--sinful
feelings and imaginings,--that have trailed over the spaces of the soul,
but which have been as unwatched and unseen by the self-inspecting eye of
conscience, as the caravans of the African desert have been, during the
same period, by the eye of our sense? We have not felt a pang of guilt
every single time that we have thought a wrong thought; yet we should
have felt one inevitably, had we _scrutinized_ every such single thought.
Our face has not flushed with crimson in every particular instance in
which we have exercised a lustful emotion; yet it would have done so had
we carefully _noted_ every such emotion. A distinct self-knowledge has by
no means run parallel with all our sinful activity; has by no means been
co-extensive with it. We perform vastly more than we inspect. We have
sinned vastly more than we have been aware of at the time.
Even the Christian, in whom this unreflecting species of life and conduct
has given way, somewhat, to a thoughtful and vigilant life, knows and
acknowledges that perfection is not yet come. As he casts his eye over
even his regenerate and illuminated life, and sees what a small amount of
sin has been distinctly detected, keenly felt, and heartily confessed, in
comparison with that large amount of sin which he knows he must have
committed, during this long period of incessant action of mind, heart,
and limbs, he finds no repose for his misgivings with respect to the
filial examination and account, except by enveloping himself yet more
entirely in the ample folds of his Redeemer's righteousness; except by
hiding himself yet more profoundly in the cleft of that Rock of Ages
which protects the chief of sinners from the unsufferable splendors and
terrors of the Divine glory and holiness as it passes by. Even the
Christian knows that he must have committed many sins in thoughtless
moments and hours,--many sins of which he was not deliberately thinking
at the time of their commission,--and must pray with David, "Cleanse thou
me from secret faults." The functions and operations of memory evince
that such is the case. Are we not sometimes, in our serious hours when
memory is busy, convinced of sins which, at the time of their commission,
were wholly unaccompanied with a sense of their sinfulness? The act in
this instance was performed blindly, without self-inspection, and
therefore without self-conviction. Ten years, we will say, have
intervened,--years of new activity, and immensely varied experiences. And
now the magic power of recollection sets us back, once more, at that
point of responsible action, and bids do what we did not do at the
time,--analyze our performance and feel consciously guilty, experience the
first sensation of remorse, for what we did ten years ago. Have we not,
sometimes, been vividly reminded that upon such an occasion, and at such
a time, we were angry, or proud, but at the time when the emotion was
swelling our veins were not filled with, that clear and painful sense of
its turpitude which now attends the recollection of it? The re-exhibition
of an action in memory, as in a mirror, is often accompanied with a
distinct apprehension of its moral character that formed no part of the
experience of the agent while absorbed in the hot and hasty original
action itself. And when we remember how immense are the stores of memory,
and what an amount of sin has been committed in hours of thoughtlessness
and moral indifference, what prayer is more natural and warm than the
supplication: "Search me O God, and try me, and see what evil ways there
are within me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
But the careless, unenlightened man, as we have before remarked, leads a
life almost entirely destitute of self-inspection, and self-knowledge. He
sins constantly. He does only evil, and that continually, as did man
before the deluge. For he is constantly acting. A living self-moving
soul, like his, cannot cease action if it would. And yet the current is
all one way. Day after day sends up its clouds of sensual, worldly,
selfish thoughts. Week after week pours onward its stream of low-born,
corrupt, unspiritual feelings. Year after year accumulates that hardening
mass of carnal-mindedness, and distaste for religion, which is sometimes
a more insuperable obstacle to the truth, than positive faults and vices
which startle and shock the conscience. And yet the man _thinks_ nothing
about all this action of his mind and heart. He does not subject it to
any self-inspection. If he should, for but a single hour, be lifted up to
the eminence from which all this current of self-will, and moral agency,
may be seen and surveyed in its real character and significance, he would
start back as if brought to the brink of hell. But he is not thus lifted
up. He continues to use and abuse his mental and his moral faculties,
but, for most of his probation, with all the blindness and heedlessness
of a mere animal instinct.
There is, then, a vast amount of sin committed without self-inspection;
and, consequently, without any distinct perception, at the time, that it
is sin. The Christian will find himself feeling guilty, for the first
time, for a transgression that occurred far back in the past, and will
need a fresh application of atoning blood. The sinner will find, at some
period or other, that remorse is fastening its tooth in his conscience
for a vast amount of sinful thought, feeling, desire, and motive, that
took origin in the unembarrassed days of religious thoughtlessness and
worldly enjoyment.
For, think you that the insensible sinner is always to be thus
insensible,--that this power of self-inspection is eternally to "rust
unused?" What a tremendous revelation will one day be made to an
unreflecting transgressor, simply because he is a man and not a brute,
has lived a human life, and is endowed with the power of self-knowledge,
whether he has used it or not! What a terrific vision it will be for him,
when the limitless line of his sins which he has not yet distinctly
examined, and thought of, and repented of, shall be made to pass in slow
procession before that inward eye which he has wickedly kept shut so
long! Tell us not of the disclosures that shall be made when the sea
shall give up the dead that are in it, and the graves shall open and
surrender their dead; what are these material disclosures, when compared
with the revelations of self-knowledge! What is all this external
display, sombre and terrible as it will be to the outward eye, when
compared with all that internal revealing that will be made to a hitherto
thoughtless soul, when, of a sudden, in the day of judgment, its deepest
caverns shall heave in unison with the material convulsions of the day,
and shall send forth to judgment their long slumbering, and hidden
iniquity; when the sepulchres of its own memory shall burst open, and
give up the sin that has long lain buried there, in needless and guilty
forgetfulness, awaiting this second resurrection!
For (to come back to the unfolding of the subject, and the movement of
the argument), God perfectly knows all that man might, but does not, know
of himself. Though the transgressor is ignorant of much of his sin,
because at the time of its commission he sins blindly as well as
wilfully, and unreflectingly as well as freely; and though the
transgressor has forgotten much of that small amount of sin of which he
was conscious, and by which he was pained, at the time of its
perpetration; though on the side of man the powers of self-inspection and
memory have accomplished so little towards the preservation of man's sin,
yet God knows it all, and remembers it all. He compasseth man's path, and
his lying-down, and is acquainted with all his ways. "There is nothing
covered, therefore, that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall
not be known. Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the
light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be
proclaimed upon the house-tops." The Creator of the human mind has
control over its powers of self-inspection, and of memory; and when the
proper time comes He will compel these endowments to perform their
legitimate functions, and do their appointed work. The torturing
self-survey will begin, never more to end. The awful recollection will
commence, endlessly to go on.
One principal reason why the Biblical representations of human sinfulness
exert so little influence over men, and, generally speaking, seem to them
to be greatly exaggerated and untrue, lies in the fact that the Divine
knowledge of human character is in advance of the human knowledge. God's
consciousness and cognition upon this subject is exhaustive; while man's
self-knowledge is superficial and shallow. The two forms of knowledge,
consequently, when placed side by side, do not agree, but conflict. There
would be less difficulty, and less contradiction, if mankind generally
were possessed of even as much self-knowledge as the Christian is
possessed of. There would be no difficulty, and no contradiction, if the
knowledge of the judgment-day could be anticipated, and the
self-inspection of that occasion could commence here and now. But such is
not the fact. The Bible labors, therefore, under the difficulty of
possessing an advanced knowledge; the difficulty of being addressed to a
mind that is almost entirely unacquainted with the subject treated of.
The Word of God knows man exhaustively, as God knows him; and hence all
its descriptions of human character are founded upon such a knowledge.
But man, in his self-ignorance, does not perceive their awful truth. He
has not yet attained the internal correspondent to the Biblical
statement,--that apprehension of total depravity, that knowledge of the
plague of the heart, which always and ever says "yea" to the most vivid
description of human sinfulness, and "amen" to God's heaviest malediction
upon it. Nothing deprives the Word of its nerve and influence, more than
this general lack of self-inspection and self-knowledge. For, only that
which is perceived to be _true_ exerts an influence upon the human mind.
The doctrine of human sinfulness is preached to men, year after year, to
whom it does not come home with the demonstration of the Spirit and with
power, because the sinfulness which is really within them is as yet
unknown, and because not one of a thousand of their transgressions has
ever been scanned in the light of self-examination. But is the Bible
untrue, because the man is ignorant? Is the sun black, because the eye is
shut?
However ignorant man may be, and may desire and strive to be, of himself,
God knows him altogether, and knows that the representations of His word,
respecting the character and necessities of human nature, are the
unexaggerated, sober, and actual fact. Though most of the sinner's life
of alienation from God, and of disobedience, has been a blind and a
reckless agency, unaccompanied with self-scrutiny, and to a great extent
passed from his memory, yet it has all of it been looked at, as it
welled, up from the living centres of free agency and responsibility, by
the calm and dreadful eye of retributive Justice, and has all of it been
indelibly written down in the book of God's sure memory, with a pen of
iron, and the point of a diamond.
And here, let us for a moment look upon the bright, as well as the dark
side of this subject. For if God's exhaustive knowledge of the human
heart waken dread in one of its aspects, it starts infinite hope in
another. If that Being has gone down into these depths of human
depravity, and seen it with a more abhorring glance than could ever shoot
from a finite eye, and yet has returned with a cordial offer to forgive
it all, and a hearty proffer to cleanse it all away, then we can lift up
the eye in adoration and in hope. There has been an infinite forbearance
and condescension. The worst has been seen, and that too by the holiest
of Beings, and yet eternal glory is offered to us! God knows, from
personal examination, the worthlessness of human character, with a
thoroughness and intensity of knowledge of which man has no conception;
and yet, in the light of this knowledge, in the very flame of this
intuition, He has devised a plan of mercy and redemption. Do not think,
then, because of your present ignorance of your guilt and corruption,
that the incarnation and death of the Son of God was unnecessary, and
that that costly blood of atonement which you are treading under foot wet
the rocks of Calvary for a peccadillo. Could you, but for a moment only,
know yourself _altogether_ and _exhaustively_, as the Author of this
Redemption knows you, you would cry out, in the words of a far holier man
than you are, "I am undone." If you could but see guilt as God sees it,
you would also see with Him that nothing but an infinite Passion can
expiate it. If you could but fathom the human heart as God fathoms it,
you would know as He knows, that nothing less than regeneration can
purify its fountains of uncleanness, and cleanse it from its ingrain
corruption.
Thus have we seen that God knows man altogether,--that He knows all that
man knows of himself, and all that man might but does not yet know of
himself. The Searcher of hearts knows all the thoughts that we have
thought upon, all the reflections that we have reflected upon, all the
experience that we have ourselves analyzed and inspected. And He also
knows that far larger part of our life which we have not yet subjected to
the scrutiny of self-examination,--all those thoughts, feelings, desires,
and motives, innumerable as they are, of which we took no heed at the
time of their origin and existence, and which we suppose, perhaps, we
shall hear no more of again. Whither then shall we go from God's spirit?
or whither shall we flee from His presence and His knowledge? If we
ascend up into heaven, He is there, and knows us perfectly. If we make
our bed in hell, behold He is there, and reads the secret thoughts and
feelings of our heart. The darkness hideth not from Him; our ignorance
does not affect His knowledge; the night shineth as the day; the darkness
and the light are both alike to Him.
This great truth which we have been considering obtains a yet more
serious emphasis, and a yet more solemn power over the mind, when we take
into view the _character_ of the Being who thus searches our hearts, and
is acquainted with all our ways. Who of us would not be filled with
uneasiness, if he knew that an imperfect fellow-creature were looking
constantly into his soul? Would not the flush of shame often burn upon
our cheek, if we knew that a sinful man like ourselves were watching all
the feelings and thoughts that are rising within us? Should we not be
more circumspect than we are, if men were able mutually to search each
other's hearts? How often does a man change his course of conduct, when
he discovers, accidentally, that his neighbor knows what he is doing.
But it is not an imperfect fellow-man, it is not a perfect angel, who
besets us behind and before, and is acquainted with, all our ways. It is
the immaculate God himself. It is He before whom archangels veil their
faces, and the burning seraphim cry, "Holy." It is He, in whose sight the
pure cerulean heavens are not clean, and whose eyes are a flame of fire
devouring all iniquity. We are beheld, in all this process of sin, be it
blind or be it intelligent, by infinite Purity. We are not, therefore, to
suppose that God contemplates this our life of sin with the dull
indifference of an Epicurean deity; that He looks into our souls, all
this while, from mere curiosity, and with no moral _emotion_ towards
us. The God who knows us altogether is the Holy One of Israel, whose
wrath is both real, and revealed, against all unrighteousness.
If, therefore, we connect the holy nature and pure essence of God with
all this unceasing and unerring inspection of the human soul, does not
the truth which, we have been considering speak with a bolder emphasis,
and acquire an additional power to impress and solemnize the mind? When
we realize that the Being who is watching us at every instant, and in
every act and element of our existence, is the very same Being who
revealed himself amidst the lightenings of Sinai as _hating_ sin and
not clearing the thoughtless guilty, do not our prospects at the bar of
justice look dark and fearful? For, who of the race of man is holy enough
to stand such an inspection? Who of the sons of men will prove pure in
such a furnace?
Are we not, then, brought by this truth close up to the central doctrine
of Christianity, and made to see our need of the atonement and
righteousness of the Redeemer? How can we endure such a scrutiny as God
is instituting into our character and conduct? What can we say, in the
day of reckoning, when the Searcher of hearts shall make known, to us all
that He knows of us? What can we do, in that day which shall reveal the
thoughts and the estimates of the Holy One respecting us?
It is perfectly plain, from the elevated central point of view where we
now stand, and in the focal light in which we now see, that no man can be
justified before God upon the ground of personal character; for that
character, when subjected to God's exhaustive scrutiny, withers and
shrinks away. A man may possibly be just before his neighbor, or his
friend, or society, or human laws, but he is miserably self-deceived who
supposes that his heart will appear righteous under such a scrutiny and
in such a Presence as we have been considering.[1] However it may be
before other tribunals, the apostle is correct when he asserts that
"every mouth, must be stopped, and the whole world plead guilty before
God." Before the Searcher of hearts, all mankind must appeal to mere and
sovereign mercy. Justice, in this reference, is out of the question.
Now, in this condition of things, God so loved the world that He gave His
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but
have everlasting life. The Divine mercy has been manifested in a mode
that does not permit even the guiltiest to doubt its reality, its
sufficiency, or its sincerity. The argument is this. "If when, we were
yet sinners," _and known to be such, in the perfect and exhaustive manner
that has been described,_ "Christ died for us, much more, being now
justified by His blood, shall we be saved from Wrath through Him."
Appropriating this atonement which the Searcher of hearts has Himself
provided for this very exigency, and which He knows to be thoroughly
adequate, no man, however guilty, need fear the most complete disclosures
which the Divine Omniscience will have to make of human character in the
day of doom. If the guilt is "infinite upon infinite," so is the
sacrifice of the God-man. Who is he that condemmeth? it is the Son of God
that died for sin. Who shall lay anything to God's elect? it is God that
justifieth. And as God shall, in the last day, summon up from the deep
places of our souls all of our sins, and bring us to a strict account for
everything, even to the idle words that we have spoken, we can look Him
full in the eye, without a thought of fear, and with love unutterable, if
we are really relying upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ for
justification. Even in that awful Presence, and under that Omniscient
scrutiny, "there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."