4. More particularly God's thoughts and ways are unlike ours in their estimate of sin.
1. God knows us more thoroughly than any human being can. The estimate which a human censor forms of us is not based on any immediate knowledge, but is an inference from our outward conduct and bearing. But this estimate may easily be an erroneous one, inasmuch as our actions may only partially betray us, may in many ways be an inadequate or deceptive expression of character. "Would any of us like that a human eye should read our thoughts and feelings, draw back the curtain of reserve, of conventional propriety, of decorous looks and regulated speech, and see our undisguised selves for a single day ? Would there be nothing to abate the observer's good opinion of us, nothing revealed which neither our words nor deeds nor outward aspect betrays ? We do not need to speak of concealed sins or crimes, the facts of which are unknown to the world, and which, if they were known, would brand our name with dishonour and infamy ; for in so far as these things are concealed, it is obviously nothing in the nature of human actions themselves but only in the accident of their being unobserved or undetected, that makes a man seem in the eyes of men better than he is, and gains him exemption from shame and censure.
' T. G. Selby, The Strenuous Gospel, p. 15.
ISAIAH 399
But what needs more reflection is that from the very nature of the thing there is much in a man's outward character and spirit that never comes above-board, or only partially and fitfully, and which cannot form an element in the judgment of those who measure us only by overt acts. There is an inner life which no mortal eye sees, a great hidden element of character seething beneath the surface, which only the occasional outflash or unexpected outbreak betrays. There are, for instance, lurking in many a man's nature evil tendencies which lack of oppor- tunity has kept latent. The unregulated appetite, the secret lust, the cowardice, covetousness, or malignity, the frail virtue which, if but the hour of opportunity came, would present but a feeble front to temptation, may be there within the man's breast ; but the conditions that would convert inclination into action have been lacking, and like the latent disease that has not become active, or the subterranean fire-damp which the flame has never reached, it lies harmless and hidden from observation.
If there be an inspection which is intercepted by no softening veil, before which all disguise and ambiguity are gone, which sees us through and through ; if there be a moral estimate which takes into account all that men are and have been and done — secrets which perhaps have never been told, burdens of guilt that have been borne for years in silent anguish, smoulder- ing tendencies to vice, unhallowed passions straining against the leash of self-control and social propriety, every rude, bad thought, every impure imagination, every meanness and weakness, every act of cowardly silence or sham disinterestedness — if, I say, there be a moral Judge before the broad, unshaded, piercing light of whose inspection all that we are is thus laid bare ; and if betwixt him and a fellow man a sin-stained soul had its choice who should be its judge, by whose decision its fate should be determined, might we not deem it impossible to hesitate for a moment ? "I can bear," might he not well say, " man's inspection, but not God's ; before the tribunal of a mortal there is room for hope, but what hope or help can there be for a guilty soul at the bar of the Omniscient ? Let me fall into the hands of man and not into the hands of God, for His thoughts are not as man's thoughts, nor His ways as man's ways."
And yet it is just because God's thoughts and ways are not
400 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
as man's, because His righteousness is infinitely exalted above man's that therefore the unrighteous may " return unto the Lord " with the assurance that " He will have mercy upon him, and to our God " with the confidence that " He will abundantly pardon." ^
IT Undoubtedly a man naturally knows that sin is an evil, and without this knowledge, indeed, he would be incapable of com- mitting sin, since in any action a man is guilty only of the evil which his conscience apprehends. But this natural perception of sin is more or less confused and indistinct. Our Saviour on the Cross prayed for His murderers in these words : " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do." He did not mean that they were ignorant that they were doing wrong, for then they could have needed no forgiveness, but that they did not realise the full atrocity of the deed. They were acting guiltily indeed, but inadvertently and blindly. And the same may be said of very many sinners. Sin is for the most part a leap in the dark. A man knows he is doing a dangerous thing, but he does not realise the full danger. He does not take in the full scope of his action, nor its complete consequences. St. Paul speaks of the deceitfulness of sin, and the expression describes very well the source of that disappointment and unhappiness which often over- takes the transgressor, when he finds himself involved in diffi- culties from which it is all but impossible to extricate himself, and sorrows which he never anticipated. It is the old story. Sin " beginneth pleasantly, but in the end it will bite like a snake and will spread abroad poison like a serpent."