Now we say, that in reference to all this intimate self-knowledge, all this best part of a man’s information respecting himself, he is not superior to God.  He may be certain that in no particular does he know more of himself than the Searcher of hearts knows.  He may be an uncommonly thoughtful person, and little of what is done within his soul may escape his notice,—­nay, we will make the extreme supposition that he arrests every thought as it rises, and looks at it, that he analyzes every sentiment as it swells his heart, that he scrutinizes every purpose as it determines his will,—­even if he should have such a thorough and profound self-knowledge as this, God knows him equally profoundly, and equally thoroughly.  Nay more, this process of self-inspection may go on indefinitely, and the man may grow more and more thoughtful, and obtain an everlastingly augmenting knowledge of what he is and what he does, so that it shall seem to him that he is going down so far along that path which the vulture’s eye hath not seen, is penetrating so deeply into those dim and shadowy regions of consciousness where the external life takes its very first start, as to be beyond the reach of any eye, and the ken of any intelligence but his own, and then he may be sure that God understands the thought that is afar off, and deep down, and that at this lowest range and plane in his experience He besets him behind and before.

O, this man, like the most of mankind, may be an unreflecting person.  Then, in this case, thoughts, feelings, and purposes are continually rising up within his soul like the clouds and exhalations of an evaporating deluge, and at the time of their rise he subjects them to no scrutiny of conscience, and is not pained in the least by their moral character and significance.  He lacks self-knowledge altogether, at these points in his history.  But, notice that the fact that he is not self-inspecting at these points cannot destroy the fact that he is acting at them.  The fact that he is not a spectator of his own transgression, does not alter the fact that he is the author of it.  If this man, for instance, thinks over his worldly affairs on God’s holy day, and perhaps in God’s holy house, with such an absorption and such a pleasure that he entirely drowns the voice of conscience while he is so doing, and self-inspection is banished for the time, it will not do for him to plead this absence of a distinct and painful consciousness of what his mind was actually doing in the house of God, and upon the Lord’s day, as the palliative and excuse of his wrong thoughts.  If this man, again, indulges in an envious or a sensual emotion, with such an energy and entireness, as for the time being to preclude all action of the higher powers of reason and self-reflection, so that for the time being he is not in the least troubled by a sense of his wickedness, it will be no excuse for him at the eternal bar, that he was not thinking of his envy or his lust at the time when he felt it.  And therefore it is, that accountableness covers the whole field of human agency, and God holds us responsible for our thoughtless sin, as well as for our deliberate transgression.