kneeling to Him, while Scribes and Pharisees despised Hirn. Yet all this time this man was profoundly igno- rant of his own heart. He hears our Lord recite those commandments which make up our duty to our neighbor, and at once declares, " All these have I observed from my youth/' The searching nature of the moral law, its application to our thoughts, and words, as well as actions, are matters with which he is utterly unacquainted.
The spiritual blindness here exhibited is unhappily most common. Myriads of professing Christians at the present day have not an idea of their own sinfulness and guilt in the sight of God. They flatter themselves that they have never done anything very wicked. — " They have never murdered, or stolen, or committed adultery, or borne false witness. They cannot surely be in much clanger of missing heaven." — They forget the holy nature of that God with whom they have to do. They forget how often they break His law in temper, or imagination, even when their outward conduct is correct. They never study such portions of Scripture as the fifth chapter of St. Matthew, or at any rate they study it with a thick veil over their hearts, and do not apply it to themselves. The result is that they are wrapped up in self-righteous- ness. Like the church of Laodicea, they are u rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." (Rev. iii. 17.) Self-satisfied they live, and self-satisfied too often they die.
Let us beware of this state of mind. So long as we think that we can keep the law of God, Christ profits us nothing. Let us pray for self-knowledge. Let us ask for the Holy Spirit to convince us of sin, to show us our
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own hearts, to show us G-od's holiness, and so to show us our need of Christ. Happy is he who has learned by experience the meaning of St. Paul's words, " I was alive without the law once ; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." (Eom. vii. 9.) Igno- rance of the Law and ignorance of the Gospel will gene- rally be found together. He whose eyes have really been opened to the spirituality of the commandments, will never rest till he has found Christ.
Let us learn, for another thing, from this passage, the love of Christ towards sinners.
This is a truth which is brought out in the expres- sion used by St. Mark, when, in his account of this man's story, he says, that " Jesus beholding him, loved him." That love, beyond doubt, was a love of pity and compassion. Our Lord beheld with pity the strange mixture of earnestness and ignorance which the case be- fore Him presented. He saw with compassion a soul struggling with all the weakness and infirmity entailed by the fall — the conscience ill at ease, and sensible that it wanted relief — the understanding sunk in darkness and blinded as to the first principles of spiritual religion. Just as we look with sorrow at some noble ruin, roofless, and shattered, and unfit for man's use, yet showing many a mark of the skill with which it was designed and reared at first, so may we suppose that Jesus looked with tender concern at this man's soul.
We must never forget that Jesus feels love and com- passion for the souls of the ungodly. Without con- troversy He feels a peculiar love for those who hear His voice and follow Him. They are His sheep, given to