atoning blood.
This is _salvation_; first to know yourself, and then to know Christ as
your Prophet, Priest, and King.

[Footnote 1: PENSEES: Grandeur de l'homme, 6. Ed. Wetstein.]

[Footnote 2: CHAPMAN: Byron's Conspiracy.]

GOD'S EXHAUSTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN. [*continued]

PSALM cxxxix. 1--6.--"O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou
knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thought
afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted
with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord,
thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and
laid thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is
high, I cannot attain unto it."

In the preceding discourse upon this text, we directed attention to the
fact that man is possessed of the power of self-knowledge, and that he
cannot ultimately escape from using it. He cannot forever flee from his
own presence; he cannot, through all eternity, go away from his own
spirit. If he take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the earth, he must, sooner or later, know himself, and acquit or
condemn himself.

Our attention was then directed to the fact, that God's knowledge of man
is certainly equal to man's knowledge of himself. No man knows more of
his own heart than the Searcher of hearts knows. Up to this point,
certainly, the truth of the text is incontrovertible. God knows all that
man knows.

II. We come now to the second position: That _God accurately and
exhaustively knows all that man might, but does not, know of himself_.

Although the Creator designed that every man should thoroughly understand
his own heart, and gave him the power of self-inspection that he might
use it faithfully, and apply it constantly, yet man is extremely ignorant
of himself. Mankind, says an old writer, are nowhere less at home, than
at home. Very few persons practise serious self-examination at all; and
none employ the power of self-inspection with that carefulness and
sedulity with which they ought. Hence men generally, and unrenewed men
always, are unacquainted with much that goes on within their own minds
and hearts. Though it is sin and self-will, though it is thought and
feeling and purpose and desire, that is going on and taking place during
all these years of religious indifference, yet the agent himself, so far
as a sober reflection upon the moral charact