he know
more of himself than the Searcher of hearts knows. He may be an
uncommonly thoughtful person, and little of what is done within his soul
may escape his notice,--nay, we will make the extreme supposition that he
arrests every thought as it rises, and looks at it, that he analyzes
every sentiment as it swells his heart, that he scrutinizes every purpose
as it determines his will,--even if he should have such a thorough and
profound self-knowledge as this, God knows him equally profoundly, and
equally thoroughly. Nay more, this process of self-inspection may go on
indefinitely, and the man may grow more and more thoughtful, and obtain
an everlastingly augmenting knowledge of what he is and what he does, so
that it shall seem to him that he is going down so far along that path
which the vulture's eye hath not seen, is penetrating so deeply into
those dim and shadowy regions of consciousness where the external life
takes its very first start, as to be beyond the reach of any eye, and
the ken of any intelligence but his own, and then he may be sure that God
understands the thought that is afar off, and deep down, and that at this
lowest range and plane in his experience He besets him behind and before.

O, this man, like the most of mankind, may be an unreflecting person.
Then, in this case, thoughts, feelings, and purposes are continually
rising up within his soul like the clouds and exhalations of an
evaporating deluge, and at the time of their rise he subjects them to no
scrutiny of conscience, and is not pained in the least by their moral
character and significance. He lacks self-knowledge altogether, at these
points in his history. But, notice that the fact that he is not
self-inspecting at these points cannot destroy the fact that he is acting
at them. The fact that he is not a spectator of his own transgression,
does not alter the fact that he is the author of it. If this man, for
instance, thinks over his worldly affairs on God's holy day, and perhaps
in God's holy house, with such an absorption and such a pleasure that he
entirely drowns the voice of conscience while he is so doing, and
self-inspection is banished for the time, it will not do for him to plead
this absence of a distinct and painful consciousness of what his mind was
actually doing in the house of God, and upon the Lord's day, as the
palliative and excuse of his wrong thoughts. If this man, again, indulges
in an envious or a sensual emotion, wit