ose men's nostrils
who knew what was in his heart. By-ends was one of our Lord's whited
sepulchres. And so deep, so pervading, and so abiding is this corrupt
taint in human nature, that long after a man has had his attention called
to it, and is far on to a clean escape from it, he still--nay, he all the
more--languishes and faints and is ready to die under it. Just hear what
two great servants of God have said on this humiliating and degrading
matter. Writing on this subject with all his wonted depth and solemnity,
Hooker says, 'Even in the good things that we do, how many defects are
there intermingled! For God in that which is done, respecteth especially
the mind and intention of the doer. Cut off, then, all those things
wherein we have regarded our own glory, those things which we do to
please men, or to satisfy our own liking, those things which we do with
any by-respect, and not sincerely and purely for the love of God, and a
small score will serve for the number of our righteous deeds. Let the
holiest and best things we do be considered. We are never better
affected to God than when we pray; yet, when we pray, how are our
affections many times distracted! How little reverence do we show to
that God unto whom we speak! How little remorse of our own miseries! How
little taste of the sweet influence of His tender mercy do we feel! The
little fruit we have in holiness, it is, God knoweth, corrupt and
unsound; we put no confidence at all in it, we challenge nothing in the
world for it, we dare not call God to a reckoning as if we had Him in our
debt-books; our continued suit to Him is, and must be, to bear with our
infirmities, and to pardon our offences.' And Thomas Shepard, a divine
of a very different school, as we say, but a saint and a scholar equal to
the best, and indeed with few to equal him, thus writes in his _Spiritual
Experiences_:--'On Sabbath morning I saw that I had a secret eye to my
own name in all that I did, for which I judged myself worthy of death. On
another Sabbath, when I came home, I saw the deep hypocrisy of my heart,
that in my ministry I sought to comfort and quicken others, that the
glory might reflect on me as well as on God. On the evening before the
sacrament I saw that mine own ends were to procure honour, pleasure, gain
to myself, and not to the Lord, and I saw how impossible it was for me to
seek the Lord for Himself, and to lay up all my honour and all my
pleasures in H