Oh, dear friends, if—­not as a theological term, but as a clinging, personal fact—­we realise what sin against God is, what must necessarily come from it, what aggravations His gentleness, His graciousness, His constant beneficence cause, how facilely we do the evil thing and then wipe our lips and say, ‘We have done no harm,’ we should be more familiar than we are with the depths of this experience of mourning for sin.

I cannot too strongly urge upon you my own conviction—­it may be worth little, but I am bound to speak it—­that there are few things which the so-called Christianity of this day needs more than an intenser realisation of the fact, and the gravity of the fact, of personal sinfulness.  There lies the root of the shallowness of so much that calls itself Christianity in the world to-day.  It is the source of almost all the evils under which the Church is groaning.  And sure I am that if millions of the people that complacently put themselves down in the census as Christians could but once see themselves as they are, and connect their conduct with God’s thought about it, they would get shocks that would sober them.  And sure I am that if they do not thus see themselves here and now, they will one day get shocks that will stupefy them.  And so, dear friends, I urge upon you, as I would upon myself, as the foundation and first step towards all the sunny heights of God-likeness and blessedness, to go down, down deep into the hidden corners, and see how, like the elders of Israel whom the prophet beheld in the dark chamber, we worship creeping things, abominable things, lustful things, in the recesses within.  And then we shall possess more of that poverty of spirit, and the conscious recognition of our own true character will merge into the mourning which is altogether blessed.

Now, note, again, how such sorrow will refine and ennoble character.  How different our claims upon other men would be if we possessed this sober, saddened estimate of what we really are!  How our petulance, and arrogance, and insisting upon what is due to us of respect and homage and deference would all disappear!  How much more rigid would be our guard upon ourselves, our own emotions, our own inclinations and tastes!  How much more lenient would be our judgment of the openly and confessedly naughty ones, who have gone a little further in act, but not an inch further in essence, than we have done!  How different our attitude to our fellows; and how lowly our attitude to God!  Such sorrow would sober us, would deliver us from our lusting after the gauds of earth, would make us serious and reflective, would bring us to that ‘sad, wise valour’ which is the conquering characteristic of humanity.

There is nothing more contemptible than the lives which, for want of this self-knowledge, foam away in idle mirth, and effervesce in what the world calls ‘high spirits.’

    ’There is no music in the life
       That sounds with idiot laughter solely,
     There’s not a string attuned to mirth
       But has its chords in melancholy.’