of the Gospel, and is well
understood by the readers of the Scriptures. By way of purging himself
from sin in the lump, he says shortly, "I am not as this publican." In
order to condemn the Pharisee on this point, it is not necessary to
suppose that he made a wrong estimate of his neighbour. Granted that
this publican had up to this hour been stained with all these three
vices, and that the Pharisee, knowing his character, formed a correct
judgment regarding it; still his condemnation remains the same; it is
not the part of one sinner to judge and condemn another.

"I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess,"--all
that I acquire; it is not capital but income. It is a picture of mere
self-righteousness. His judgment was wrong from the root; he knew
neither his own heart nor God's law. Pharisee as he was, he might have
learned from the prophet Isaiah the true state of the case, "We are all
as an unclean thing; and all our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags."[99]

[99] He obtained this self-confidence by comparing himself not with
the law of God, but with others who seemed worse than himself. When
a man compares himself with robbers and adulterers, for whom the
sword and the prison are prepared, he may easily seem to himself
like an angel.--_Arndt_.

"The publican standing afar off," &c. The difference does not lie in
that this was a good man while the other was bad. This is a sinner too;
but he has come to know it, and therein lies the distinction between him
and the Pharisee. His judgment of himself accords with his actual state
and character; he knows and owns the truth regarding his own sinfulness.
There is no merit in this discovery, and in itself it cannot save. If
two men should both take poison, and one of them should become aware of
the fact ere the poison had time to operate; the one who knows the truth
is more miserable than the one who is ignorant, but not more safe. If
there be a physician within reach who can cure, the knowledge of his
danger will send one man to the source of help, while the ignorance of
the other will keep him lingering where he is, till it is too late to
flee. But even in that case it was not the man's knowledge of his danger
that saved him. Another saved him; his knowledge of his own need only
led him to a deliverer.

It is so here. There is no merit and no salvation in the publican's
conviction and confession; although he confesses his sin, he is still