But it is not so at present.  Men here upon earth are continually thinking sinful thoughts and cherishing sinful feelings, and yet they are not continually in hell.  On the contrary, “they are not in trouble as other men are, neither are they plagued like other men.  Their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than heart could wish.”  This proves that they are self-ignorant; that they know neither their sin nor its bitter end.  They sin without the consciousness of sin, and hence are happy in it.  Is it not so in our own personal experience?  Have there not been in the past ten years of our own mental history long trains of thought,—­sinful thought,—­and vast processions of feelings and imaginings,—­sinful feelings and imaginings,—­that have trailed over the spaces of the soul, but which have been as unwatched and unseen by the self-inspecting eye of conscience, as the caravans of the African desert have been, during the same period, by the eye of our sense?  We have not felt a pang of guilt every single time that we have thought a wrong thought; yet we should have felt one inevitably, had we scrutinized every such single thought.  Our face has not flushed with crimson in every particular instance in which we have exercised a lustful emotion; yet it would have done so had we carefully noted every such emotion.  A distinct self-knowledge has by no means run parallel with all our sinful activity; has by no means been co-extensive with it.  We perform vastly more than we inspect.  We have sinned vastly more than we have been aware of at the time.

Even the Christian, in whom this unreflecting species of life and conduct has given way, somewhat, to a thoughtful and vigilant life, knows and acknowledges that perfection is not yet come.  As he casts his eye over even his regenerate and illuminated life, and sees what a small amount of sin has been distinctly detected, keenly felt, and heartily confessed, in comparison with that large amount of sin which he knows he must have committed, during this long period of incessant action of mind, heart, and limbs, he finds no repose for his misgivings with respect to the filial examination and account, except by enveloping himself yet more entirely in the ample folds of his Redeemer’s righteousness; except by hiding himself yet more profoundly in the cleft of that Rock of Ages which protects the chief of sinners from the unsufferable splendors and terrors of the Divine glory and holiness as it passes by.  Even the Christian knows that he must have committed many sins in thoughtless moments and hours,—­many sins of which he was not deliberately thinking at the time of their commission,—­and must pray with David, “Cleanse thou me from secret faults.”  The functions and operations of memory evince that such is the case.  Are we not sometimes, in our serious hours when memory is busy, convinced of sins which, at the time of their commission, were wholly unaccompanied with a sense of their sinfulness?