collection will
commence, endlessly to go on.

One principal reason why the Biblical representations of human sinfulness
exert so little influence over men, and, generally speaking, seem to them
to be greatly exaggerated and untrue, lies in the fact that the Divine
knowledge of human character is in advance of the human knowledge. God's
consciousness and cognition upon this subject is exhaustive; while man's
self-knowledge is superficial and shallow. The two forms of knowledge,
consequently, when placed side by side, do not agree, but conflict. There
would be less difficulty, and less contradiction, if mankind generally
were possessed of even as much self-knowledge as the Christian is
possessed of. There would be no difficulty, and no contradiction, if the
knowledge of the judgment-day could be anticipated, and the
self-inspection of that occasion could commence here and now. But such is
not the fact. The Bible labors, therefore, under the difficulty of
possessing an advanced knowledge; the difficulty of being addressed to a
mind that is almost entirely unacquainted with the subject treated of.
The Word of God knows man exhaustively, as God knows him; and hence all
its descriptions of human character are founded upon such a knowledge.
But man, in his self-ignorance, does not perceive their awful truth. He
has not yet attained the internal correspondent to the Biblical
statement,--that apprehension of total depravity, that knowledge of the
plague of the heart, which always and ever says "yea" to the most vivid
description of human sinfulness, and "amen" to God's heaviest malediction
upon it. Nothing deprives the Word of its nerve and influence, more than
this general lack of self-inspection and self-knowledge. For, only that
which is perceived to be _true_ exerts an influence upon the human mind.
The doctrine of human sinfulness is preached to men, year after year, to
whom it does not come home with the demonstration of the Spirit and with
power, because the sinfulness which is really within them is as yet
unknown, and because not one of a thousand of their transgressions has
ever been scanned in the light of self-examination. But is the Bible
untrue, because the man is ignorant? Is the sun black, because the eye is
shut?

However ignorant man may be, and may desire and strive to be, of himself,
God knows him altogether, and knows that the representations of His word,
respecting the character and necessities of human na