Whenever, therefore, an examination is made into the nature of moral evil as it exists in the individual heart, both parties concerned should share in the examination.  The soul, as it looks within, should invite the scrutiny of God also, and as fast as it makes discoveries of its transgression and corruption should realize that the Holy One sees also.  Such a joint examination as this produces a very keen and clear sense of the evil and guilt of sin.  Conscience indeed makes cowards of us all, but when the eye of God is felt to be upon us, it smites us to the ground.  “When Thou with rebukes,”—­says the Psalmist,—­“dost correct man for his iniquity, Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth.”  One great reason why the feeling which the moralist has towards sin is so tame and languid, when compared with the holy abhorrence of the regenerate mind, lies in the fact that he has not contemplated human depravity in company with a sin-hating Jehovah.  At the very utmost, he has been shut up merely with a moral sense which he has insulated from its dread ground and support,—­the personal character and holy emotions of God.  What wonder is it, then, that this finite faculty should lose much of its temper and severity, and though still condemning sin (for it must do this, if it does anything), fails to do it with that spiritual energy which characterizes the conscience when God is felt to be co-present and co-operating.  So it is, in other provinces.  We feel the guilt of an evil action more sharply, when we know that a fellow-man saw us commit it, than when we know that no one but ourselves is cognizant of the deed.  The flush of shame often rises into our face, upon learning accidentally that a fellow-being was looking at us, when we did the wrong action without any blush.  How much more criminal, then, do we feel, when distinctly aware that the pure and holy God knows our transgression.  How much clearer is our perception of the nature of moral evil, when we investigate it along with Him whose eyes are a flame of fire.

It is, consequently, a very solemn moment, when the human spirit and the Eternal Mind are reasoning together about the inward sinfulness.  When the soul is shut up along with the Holy One of Israel, there are great searchings of heart.  Man is honest and anxious at such a time.  His usual thoughtlessness and torpidity upon the subject of religion leaves him, and he becomes a serious and deeply-interested creature.  Would that the multitudes who listen so languidly to the statements of the pulpit, upon these themes of sin and guilt, might be closeted with the Everlasting Judge, in silence and in solemn reflection.  You who have for years been told of sin, but are, perhaps, still as indifferent regarding it as if there were no stain, upon the conscience,—­would that you might enter into an examination of yourself, alone with your Maker.  Then would you become as serious, and as anxious, as you will be in that moment when you shall be informed that the last hour of your life upon earth has come.