yet they saw a depravity within
their own hearts which he does not see in his; a depravity which he
cannot see, and which he steadily denies to exist, until he is
enlightened by the Holy Ghost.

But the preacher has no power to impart this clear spiritual discernment.
He cannot arm the eye of the natural man with that magnifying and
microscopic power, by which hatred shall be seen to be murder, and lust,
adultery, and the least swelling of pride, the sin of Lucifer. He is
compelled, by the testimony of the Bible, of the wise and the holy of all
time, and of his own consciousness, to tell every unregenerate man that
he is no better than his race; that he certainly is no better than the
Christian Church which continually confesses and mourns over indwelling
sin. The faithful preacher of the word is obliged to insist that there is
no radical difference among men, and that the depravity of the man of
irreproachable morals but unrenewed heart is as total as was that of the
great preacher to the Gentiles,--a man of perfectly irreproachable
morals, but who confessed that he was the chief of sinners, and feared
lest he should be a cast-away. But the preacher of this unwelcome message
has no power to open the blind eye. He cannot endow the self-ignorant and
incredulous man before him, with that consciousness of the "plague of the
heart" which says "yea" to the most vivid description of human
sinfulness, and "amen" to God's heaviest malediction upon it. The
preacher's position would be far easier, if there might be a transfer of
experience; if some of that bitter painful sense of sin with which the
struggling Christian is burdened might flow over into the easy, unvexed,
and thoughtless souls of the men of this world. Would that the
consciousness upon this subject of sin, of a Paul or a Luther, might
deluge that large multitude of men who doubt or deny the doctrine of
human depravity. The materials for that consciousness, the items that go
to make up that experience, exist as really and as plentifully in your
moral state and character, as they do in that of the mourning and
self-reproaching Christian who sits by your side,--your devout father, your
saintly mother, or sister,--whom you know, and who you know is a better
being than you are. Why should they be weary and heavy-laden with a sense
of their unworthiness before God, and you go through life indifferent and
light-hearted? Are they deluded in respect to the doctrine of human