They
feel as John Bunyan felt, that no one but the devil can equal them in
pollution of heart. And their wonder sometimes is that the Searcher of
Hearts does not drive them down where devils dwell and hate God and man
and one another. They look around them when the penitential psalm is
being sung, and they smile bitterly to themselves. O people of God, they
say, you do not know what you are saying. Leave that psalm to me. I can
sing it. I can tell to God what He knows about sin, and about sin in the
heart. Stand away back from me, that man says, for I am a leper. The
chief of sinners is beside you. A whited sepulchre stands open beside
you.--Stop now, O hating and hateful man, and let me speak for a single
moment before we separate. Before you say any more about yourself, and
before you leave the house of God, lift up your broken heart and with all
your might bless God that He has opened your eyes and taught you how to
look at yourself and how to hate yourself. There are hundreds of honest
Christian men and women in this house at this moment to whom God has not
done as, in His free grace, He has done to you.
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