false and dishonest, impure and sensual, yea, and grossly defec- tive in all the duties of their place and station ? Truly, of all the people belonging to the generation spoken of in our text, these are in the greatest danger, because their confidence is
111"!
founded in the idea, that they have already bathed in the fountain which alone is able to cleanse them from their sin.]
Address,
1. Those who, though j)ure in their own eyes, are not zvashed —
[Happy would it be if men would relax the confidence which they are ever ready to maintain of the safety of their state before God. Every one conceives, that whatever others may do, he deceives not his own soul : yet behold so great is the number of self-deceivers, that they constitute " a genera- tion!" Beloved, learn to try yourselves by the only true test, your conformity to the will of God, and to the example of
Christ It is in the balance of the sanctuary, and not in
your own balance, that you are to weigh yourselves ; for in that shall you be weighed at the last day ; and if you are found wanting in that, the measure of your deficiency will be the measure of your condemnation ]
2. Those who, though not jxiire in their own eyes,
are really washed from their filthiness —
[Blessed be God ! there is a generation of these also. Many who once wallowed in all manner of filthiness, are now washed from it, even as the Corinthian converts were ^. Yet they are not pure in their own eyes : on the contrary, they are of all people most ready to suspect themselves'^, and to " lothe themselves" for their remaining imperfections. See how strik- ingly this i§ exemplified in the very chapter before us : Agur was a man of vmquestionable piety : yet, under a sense of his great unworthiness, he complained, " Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the vmderstanding of a man'." This may appear to many to be extravagant : but it is the real feeling of many a child of God ; I may add too, it is their fre- quent complaint before God. Such were the feelings of Job,
of Isaiah, and of Paul "^ If it be asked. Whence arises
this, that such holy and heavenly persons should be so far from being pure in their own eyes ? the reason is, that they try themselves by a more perfect standard, and from their clearer discoveries of the path of duty are more deeply conscious of their aberrations from it. Their love of holiness also makes them now to abhor themselves more for their want of conformity
s 1 Cor. vi. 9 — 11. h Matt. xxvi. 21, 22, ' ver. 2.
^ Job xl. 4. and xhi. 6. Isai. vi. 5. Rom. vii. IS, 24.