^ Inn Dmna Coolbrith.
3i8 THOU ART THE MAN
that he did some way or other delude himself : and this could not be with respect to the crimes themselves, they were so manifestly of the grossest kind. What the particular circum- stances were, with which he extenuated them, and quieted and deceived himself, is not related.^
2. How is it that, like David, we succeed so well in deceiving ourselves and in keeping up the deception so long ?
(1) We usually begin by recogni2dng our sin, but proceed to make excuse for it. We blame circumstances, our outward environment, bad example, the temptations of our lot, opportunity (" 0 opportunity, thy guilt is great ! " Shakespeare makes Tarquin say in self-excuse, after he had made the opportunity). If we are scientifically inclined we speak of heredity; if theologically inclined we speak of original sin and the guilt of Adam's first transgression.
^ May we say that, while all characters are liable to the snare of self-deception, those are more particularly exposed to it who, like St. Peter and David, are persons of keen sensi- bilities, warm temperaments, quick affections ? Probably we may ; for affectionateness of disposition readily commends itself to the conscience as a thing which cannot be wrong, and secretly whispers to one who is conscious of possessing it, " This generous trait in you will cover and excuse many sins." An acrid, soured character cannot flatter itself that it is right with half the facility of a warm and genial character. A man who sins by passions the reverse of malignant is apt to thank God secretly that he is not malignant, totally forgetting that, although not malignant, he follows his impulses as entirely, and so is as purely selfish, as the malignant man.^
^ A prisoner, in a recent trial, pleaded as an excuse, " an un- controllable impulse," but the judge smartly replied that an uncontrollable impulse was simply an impulse uncontrolled.
(2) Habit gradually familiarizes us with evil, and dimin- ishes our sense of it as evil. A man who has been for half a day in some ill-ventilated room does not notice the poisonous atmosphere ; if you go into it you are half suffocated at first, and breathe more easily as you get used to it. A man can live amidst the foulest poison of evil; and, as the Styrian peasants get fat
' Joseph Butler, Sermons, 131 (Bernard's edition). » E. M. Goulbiun.
2 SAMUEL XII. 7 319
upon arsenic, his whole nature may seem to thrive by the poison that it absorbs. They tell us that the breed of fish that live in the lightless caverns in the bowels of some mountains, by long disuse have had their eyes atrophied, and are blind because they have lived out of the light. And so men that live in the love of evil lose the capacity of discerning the evil, and " he that walketh in darkness " becomes blind, blind to his sin, and blind to all the realities of life.
^ There is in unresisted evil a dreadful power to stupefy the moral sense. If we thrust our hand rapidly first into hot water and then into cold, and do so many times, we are presently unable to detect which is hot and which is cold. The sensitive nerve grows callous, and its discernment is destroyed. So a man may experiment w^ith sin till he feels no instinctive recoil from its abiding horror. The moral sense is like some delicate and sensitive instrument, which indicates with perfect accuracy the tendencies of conduct so long as it is untampered with ; but once wronged, its power is gone. It is like putting the clock back because we do not wish to know the hour; the clock goes on working, but henceforth all its results are wrong. So the moral sense still works, but it strikes the wrong hour. It tells us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear, and what we know is true.^
(3) We are careful now not to examine ourselves too scrupu- lously. We avoid questions as to the moral nature of our conduct. We may have suspicions about it, but our method is usually, like David's, to try to forget, by leaving it out of account, by covering it over as if we were done with it. We have laid it like an uneasy ghost, and turned the key on it. But the murder will out some day. If not now, the disclosure will be made, and we will at last see ourselves as we are. " There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, or covered that shall not be made known."
(4) Or we nod assent to a general statement of right and wrong, accept principles, even give our unbiased judgment on concrete cases that are mentioned; and yet never make the personal application. It was not rhetoric but a deep knowledge of the heart of man that inspired St. Paul's great passage in which he drove home to the Jews that they were guilty of the same
^ W. J. DaAvson.
320 THOU ART THE MAN
moral failure as they charged the Gentiles with : " Therefore thou art inexcusable, 0 man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself ; for thou that judgest doest the same things. . . . Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself ? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal ? thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery ? thou that makest thy boast of law, through breaking the law dis- honourest thou God ? "