presence of that Majesty; and should make him put his hand
on his lips and say, from behind the covering, 'Unclean! unclean!' Oh,
brethren, if we would only go down into the depths of our own hearts,
every one of us would find there more than enough to make all
self-complacency and self-conceit utterly impossible, as it ought to be,
for us for ever. I have no wish, and God knows I have no need, to
exaggerate about this matter; but we all know that if we were turned
inside out, and every foul, creeping thing, and every blotch and spot
upon these hearts of ours spread in the light, we could not face one
another; we could scarcely face ourselves. If you or I were set, as they
used to set criminals, up in a pillory with a board hanging round our
necks, telling all the world what we were, and what we had done, there
would be no need for rotten eggs to be flung at us; we should abhor
ourselves. You know that is so. I know that it is so about myself, 'and
heart answereth to heart as in a glass.' And are we the people to perk
ourselves up amongst our fellows, and say, 'I am rich and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing'? Do we not know that we are poor and
miserable and blind and naked? Oh, brethren, the proud old saying of the
Greeks, 'Know thyself,' if it were followed out unflinchingly and
honestly by the purest saint this side heaven, would result in this
profound abnegation of all claims, in this poverty of spirit.

So little has the world been influenced by Christ's teaching that it
uses 'poor-spirited creature' as a term of opprobrium and depreciation.
It ought to be the very opposite; for only the man who has been down
into the dungeons of his own character, and has cried unto God out of
the depths, will be able to make the house of his soul a fabric which
may be a temple of God, and with its shining apex may pierce the clouds
and seem almost to touch the heavens. A great poet has told us that the
things which lead life to sovereign power are self-knowledge,
self-reverence, and self-control. And in a noble sense it is true, but
the deepest self-knowledge will lead to self-abhorrence rather than to
self-reverence; and self-control is only possible when, knowing our own
inability to cope with our own evil, we cast ourselves on that Lamb of
God who beareth away the sin of the world, and ask Him to guide and to
keep us. The right attitude for us is, 'He did not so much as lift up
his eyes unto heaven, but smote upo