o tell
yourself why.

The bad thing which you have done, or the bad tempers which you have
given way to, or the person whom you have quarrelled with, hang in
your mind, and darken all your thoughts: and you try not to
remember them: but conscience _makes_ you remember them, and will
not let the dark thought fly away; till you can enjoy nothing,
because your heart is not clean and clear; there is something in the
background which makes you sad whenever you try to be happy. Then a
man tries first to deceive himself. He says to himself, 'No, that
sin is not what makes me unhappy--not that;' and he tries to find
out any and every reason for his uncomfortable feelings, except the
very thing which he knows all the while in the bottom of his heart
_is_ the real reason. He says, 'Well, perhaps I am unhappy because
I have done something wrong: what wrong can I have done?' And so
he sets to work to find out every sin except _the_ sin which is the
cause of all, because that one he does not like to face: it is too
real, and ugly, and humbling to his proud spirit; and perhaps he is
afraid of having to give it up. So I have known a man confess
himself a sinner, a miserable sinner, freely enough, and then break
out into a rage with you, if you dare to speak a word of the one sin
which you know that he has actually committed. 'No, sir,' he will
say, 'whatever I may be wrong in, I am right _there_. I have
committed sins too many, I know: but you cannot charge me with
that, at least;'--and all the more because he knows that everybody
round _is_ charging him with it, and that the thing is as notorious
as the sun in heaven. But that makes him, in his pride, all the
more determined not to confess himself in the wrong on that one
point; and he will go and confess to God, and perhaps to man, all
manner of secret sins, nay, even invent sins for himself out of
things which are no sins, and confess himself humbly in the wrong
where perhaps he is all right, just to drug his conscience, and be
able to say, 'I have repented,'--repented, that is, of everything
but what he and all the world know that he ought to repent of.

But still his conscience is not easy: he has no peace of mind: he
is like David: 'While I held my peace, my bones waxed old through
my daily complaining.' God's hand is heavy on him day and night,
and his moisture is like the drought in summer: his heart feels
hard and dry; he cannot enjoy himself; he is moody