imes have bad
children, and the most sincere do sometimes beget great hypocrites. But,
I pray Thee, take not offence at the unqualifiedness of Thy servant.'
Take good note of that uncommon expression, 'unqualifiedness,' in Mr. Wet-
eyes' confession, all of you who are attending to what is being said. Lay
'unqualifiedness' to heart. Learn how to qualify yourselves before you
begin to pray. In his fine comment on the 137th Psalm, Matthew Henry
discourses delightfully on what he calls 'deliberate tears.' Look up
that raciest of commentators, and see what he there says about the
deliberate tears of the captives in Babylon. It was the lack of
sufficient deliberation in his tears that condemned and alarmed Mr. Wet-
eyes that day. He felt now that he had not deliberated and qualified
himself properly before coming to the Prince's pavilion. Do not take up
your time or your thoughts with mere curiosities, either in your Bible or
in any other good book, says A Kempis. Read such things rather as may
yield compunction to your heart. And again, give thyself to compunction,
and thou shalt gain much devotion thereby. Mr. Wet-eyes, good and true
soul, was afraid that he had not qualified himself enough by compunctious
reading and self-recollection. The sincere, he sobbed out, do often
beget hypocrites! 'Our hearts are so deceitful in the matter of
repentance,' says Jeremy Taylor, 'that the masters of the spiritual life
are fain to invent suppletory arts and stratagems to secure the duty.'
Take not offence at the lack of all such suppletory arts and stratagems
in thy servant, said poor Wet-eyes. All which would mean in the most of
us: Take not offence at my rawness and ignorance in the spiritual life,
and especially in the life of inward devotion. Do not count up against
me the names and the numbers and the prices of my poems, and plays, and
novels, and newspapers, and then the number of my devotional books.
Compare not my outlay on my body and on this life with my outlay on my
soul and on the life to come. Oh, take not mortal offence at the
shameful and scandalous unqualifiedness of Thy miserable servant. My
father and my mother read the books of the soul, but they have left
behind them a dry-eyed reprobate in me! Say that to-night as you look
around on the grievous famine of the suppletory arts and stratagems of
repentance and reformation in your heathenish bedroom.

Spiritual preaching; real face to face, inward, ver