2. Another cause of hidden sin is a hlunt conscience. Secret sins arise from inadequate religious knowledge, and neglect of religious thought and instruction not infrequently explains this defect of knowledge. Secret sins arise from the fact that passions which are antagonistic to keen intellectual and religious suscepti- bility are cherished, and passion is always more or less under the control of the will. Secret sins arise through association with men whose common frailties blind us to our own ; and it is at our own choice that we enter into these associations, or, at least, that we suffer ourselves to be so completely absorbed by them.
^ The Arctic fox, it is said, assumes a white fur in the winter months, so that it may pass undetected over the snows. When the spring comes, and the brown earth reappears, it sheds these white hairs and assumes a fur the colour of the earth over which it moves. Many fishes have markings that resemble the sand or gravel above which they make their haunts. You may watch for hours, and till they move you are unable to recognize their presence. The bird that broods on an exposed nest is never gaily coloured. However bright the plumage of its mate, it is always attired in feathers that match its surroundings, if it has to fulfil these dangerous domestic duties. Large numbers of insects are so tinted as to be scarcely distinguishable from the leaves and flowers amidst which they live. One insect has the power of assuming the appearance of a dried twig. And is there not something very much like this in the sphere of human conduct ? Our sins blend with the idiosyncrasies of the age and disguise themselves. Of course we do not sin in loud, flashing colours, if we make any pretension to piety at least. Our sins always perfectly compose with the background of our surroundings. As a rule, they are sins into which we fall in common with men we esteem, men who have established a hold upon our affections, men whose sagacity we trust, and who by their excellence in some things lead us to think very lightly of the moral errors they illustrate in other things.^
^ J. Halsey, The Spirit of Truth, 288. ^ T. G. Selby, The Iminrfccl Angel, 150. JOB-PS. XXX. — 23
354 HIDDEN FAULTS
3. Still more, self-love too often conceals from conscience the sins it ought to judge and to condemn. Conscience is a judicial and not an inquisitorial faculty, and it pronounces judgment only on what it sees and knows. If we choose deliberately to cover over or to disguise the real state of our hearts, conscience will certainly fail to judge us as we ought to be judged.
^ It is said that Catherine of Eussia, when journeying through some of the most desolate and miserable parts of her dominion, ordered painted villages to be erected on certain points of the road in which she was travelling, so that the country might not look so cheerless and deserted. And just in like manner self-love deludes us by hiding the reality from us, so that we seem to be better than we really are. It will call sin by another name, so that it no longer seems to be sin. The saddest imperfections often masquerade in stolen garments, so as to disguise their own evil nature. Avarice, for example, ceases to be regarded as a sin when self-love declares it is thrift.^
4. Sin is hidden, because the restraints of society hold it in check. Anger, pride, malice, selfishness, deceit of our hearts are checked in their manifestations by the influences of society and of early habit. Therefore we do not estimate them in their true light.
^ The traveller in the White Mountains remarks that the valley at the foot of Mount Washington is strewn with enormous boulders of granite, which have been loosened from year to year from the great overhanging cliff, and, carrying destruction in their course, have tumbled to the very spot where they now lie. If you inquire what force has separated these immense masses from the parent rock you find that behind the green fringe of foliage which waves so luxuriantly in summer, and hidden in the crevices of the mountain, are pools of water which the winter frosts change to ice. Expanding as they freeze, these little pools of limpid water have power to tear the solid rock asunder, and hurl its gigantic fragments down the mountain-side. So there are destructive powers lurking in the soul — powers which are latent during the short summer of life, but which are competent, when all restraint upon them is removed, to make the fairest seeming nature a shattered wreck. The real destructive power of sin is in great part hidden now, but it will be felt when the sunshine of God's grace comes to an end, and eternal winter settles down upon the soul.^
^ G. S. Barrett, Musings for Quiet Hours, 25. 2 A. H. Strong, Miscellanies, ii. 366.
PSALM XIX. 12 355
III.
Their Cure.
1. We must realize that God sees the things to which we are hlind. — All our latent defects are open to the eye of the Searcher of hearts. The awful beam from His presence strikes across our self-purified and self-sifted life, and detects thoughts and solicitations and unwholesome sympathies that are the hidden and deeply-folded cells in which sin conceives itself. Divine law is sent forth to enlighten all who are docile to its monitions, to search into the deep places of action, and to create a perfect inward as well as outward righteousness. Its " going forth," like that of the sun, with which the Psalmist links it in his comparison, " is from the end of the heaven," and its " circuit unto the ends of it : and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." And as this clear and ever-growing light from God is projected across our souls, we come to feel that we are full of secret corruptions, — corruptions fraught with peril both to ourselves and to others ; corruptions which, unless cleansed by continuous and immeasur- able grace from God, must prevail at last over the things that are lovely and of good report. Under this widening horizon of penetrating light, we come to suspect that there may yet be undisclosed corruptions within us, and we are constrained to cry that the purifying power of God may go deeper than our own knowledge, — deep as God's knowledge, deep as a beam of that mysterious light which, unapproachable itself, yet approaches and enters into the soul of all things. " Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance."