to this Biblical statement, there is corruption and blindness together.  The human heart is at once sinful, and ignorant that it is so.  It is, therefore, the very worst form of evil; a fatal disease unknown to the patient, and accompanied with the belief that there is perfect health; sin and guilt without any just and proper sense of it.  This is the testimony, and the assertion, of that Being who needs not that any should testify to Him of man, for he knows what is in man.  And this is the testimony, also, of every mind that has attained a profound self-knowledge.  For it is indisputable, that in proportion as a man is introspective, and accustoms himself to the scrutiny of his motives and feelings, he discovers that “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint.”

It is, therefore, the duty and wisdom of every one to set to his seal that God is true,—­to have this as his motto.  Though, as yet, he is destitute of a clear conviction of sin, and a godly sorrow for it, still he should presume the fact of human depravity.  Good men in every age have found it to be a fact, and the infallible Word of God declares that it is a fact.  What, then, is gained, by proposing another than the Biblical theory of human nature?  Is the evil removed by denying its existence?  Will the mere calling men good at heart, and by nature, make them such?

  “Who can hold a fire in his hand,
  By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? 
  Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
  By bare imagination of a feast? 
  Or wallow naked in December snow,
  By thinking on fantastic summer heat?"[2]

2.  In the second place, we remark that it is the duty of every one, not to be discouraged by these facts and truths relative to the moral condition of man. For, one fact conducts to the next one.  One truth prepares for a second.  If it is a solemn and sad fact that men are sinners, and blind and dead in their trespasses and sin, it is also a cheering fact that the Holy Spirit can enlighten the darkest understanding, and enliven the most torpid and indifferent soul; and it is a still further, and most encouraging truth and fact, that the Holy Spirit is given to those who ask for it, with more readiness than a father gives bread to his hungry child.  Here, then, we have the fact of sin, and of blindness and apathy in sin; the fact of a mighty power in God to convince of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; and the blessed fact that this power is accessible to prayer.  Let us put these three facts together, all of them, and act accordingly.  Then we shall be taught by the Spirit, and shall come to a salutary consciousness of sin; and then shall be verified in our own experience the words of God:  “I dwell in the high and holy place, and with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”

[Footnote 1:  [Greek:  Ta aisthaeria gegurasmena.] Heb. v. 14.]