e we have Him with us in all our agony who wept
over the heart of man because He knew what was in it, and what must
always come out of it. Evil thoughts, He said, and fornications, and
murders, and thefts, and covetousness, and wickedness, and deceit, and an
evil eye, and pride, and folly, and what not. And Paul has the mind of
Christ with him in the text. I do not need to repeat again the hateful
words. Now, what do you say? was Pascal beyond the truth, was he deeper
than the truth or more deadly than the truth when he said with a stab
that self is hateful? I think not.

5. 'Oh that I were free, then, of myself,' wrote Samuel Rutherford from
Aberdeen in 1637 to John Ferguson of Ochiltree. 'What need we all have
to be ransomed and redeemed from that master-tyrant, that cruel and
lawless lord, ourself! Even when I am most out of myself, and am best
serving Christ, I have a squint eye on myself.' And to the Laird of
Cally in the same year and from the same place: 'Myself is the master
idol we all bow down to. Every man blameth the devil for his sins, but
the house devil of every man that eateth with him and lieth in his bosom
is himself. Oh blessed are they who can deny themselves!' And to the
Irish ministers the year after: 'Except men martyr and slay the body of
sin in sanctified self-denial, they shall never be Christ's. Oh, if I
could but be master of myself, my own mind, my own will, my own credit,
my own love, how blessed were I! But alas! I shall die only minting and
aiming at being a Christian.'

CHAPTER VIII--OLD MR. PREJUDICE, THE KEEPER OF EAR-GATE, WITH HIS SIXTY
DEAF MEN UNDER HIM

'Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the
waters of Israel?'--_Naaman_.

'Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?'--_Nathanael_.

' . . observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing by
partiality.'--_Paul_.

Old Mr. Prejudice was well known in the wars of Mansoul as an angry,
unhappy, and ill-conditioned old churl. Old Mr. Prejudice was placed by
Diabolus, his master, as keeper of the ward at the post of Ear-gate, and
for that fatal service he had sixty completely deaf men put under him as
his company. Men eminently advantageous for that fatal service.
Eminently advantageous,--inasmuch as it mattered not one atom to them
what was spoken in their ear either by God or by man.

1. Now, to begin with, this churlish old man had already earned for
h