ell 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.'

III. Lastly, note the supreme court of final appeal.

'He that judgeth me is the Lord.' Now it is obvious that 'the Lord'
here is Christ, both because of the preceding context and because of
the next verse, which speaks of His coming. And it is equally
obvious, though it is often unnoticed, that the judgment of which the
Apostle is here speaking is a present and preliminary judgment. 'He
that _judgeth_ me'--not, 'will judge,' but _now_, at this very
moment. That is to say, whilst people round us are passing their
superficial estimates upon me, and whilst my conscience is excusing,
or else accusing me--and in neither case with absolute
infallibility--there is another judgment, running concurrently with
them, and going on in silence. That calm eye is fixed upon me, and
sifting me, and knowing me. _That_ judgment is not fallible, because
before Him 'the hidden things' that the darkness shelters, those
creeping things in the cellars that I was speaking about, are all
manifest; and to Him the 'counsels of the heart,' that is, the
motives from which the actions flow, are all transparent and legible.
So His judgment, the continual estimate of me which Jesus Christ, in
His supreme knowledge of me, has, at every moment of my life--_that_
is uttering the final word about me and my character.

His estimate will dwindle the sentences of the other two tribunals
into nothingness. What matter what his fellow-servants say about the
steward's accounts, and distribution of provisions, and management of
the household? He has to render his books, and to give account of his
stewardship, only to his lord.

The governor of a Crown Colony may attach some importance to colonial
opinion, but he reports home; and it is what the people in Downing
Street will say that he thinks about. We have to report home; and it
is the King whom we serve, to whom we have to give an account. The
gladiator, down in the arena, did not much mind whether the thumbs of
the populace were up or down, though the one was the signal for his
life and the other for his death. He looked to the place where,
between the purple curtains and the flashing axes of the lictors, the
emperor sate. Our Emperor once was down on the sand Himself, and
althoug