Proverbs 16:2. Unsound Spiritual Trading

A sermon (Number 849) delivered on Lord's Day morning, January 10th, 1869, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, by C. H. Spurgeon.

*“All the ways of a man *are* clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits.”*——Proverbs 16:2.

During the last two years some of the most notable commercial reputations have been hopelessly destroyed. Men in the great world of trade who were trusted for hundreds of thousands of pounds, around whose characters there hovered no cloud of suspicion nor even the shade of doubt, have proved themselves reckless of honesty and devoid of principle. The fiery trial has been too much for the wood, hay, and stubble of many a gigantic firm. Houses of business which seemed to be founded upon a rock, and to stand as fast as the commonwealth of England itself, have been shaken to their foundations and have caved in with a tremendous crash: on all sides we see the wrecks of great reputations and colossal fortunes. There is wailing in the palaces of sham, and desolation in the halls of pretense. Bubbles are bursting, windbags are collapsing, paint is cracking, gilt is peeling off. Probably we have more of this to come, more revelations still to be made of apparent wealth which covered insolvency, as a rich paper may cover a mud wall; crafty schemes which duped the public with profits never made, and tempted them to advance to deeper speculations, even as the mirage of the desert mocks the traveler. We have seen in the public prints month after month, fresh discoveries of the modes of financing adopted by the villainy of this present age, to accomplish robbery respectably, and achieve felony with credit. We have been astonished and amazed at the vile tricks and shameless devices to which men of eminence have condescended. And yet we have been compelled to hear justifications of gigantic frauds, and have even been compelled to believe that the perpetrators of them did not consider themselves to be acting disreputably, their own previous successes, and the low state of morality, together having lulled them into a state in which conscience, if not dead, was thoroughly asleep. I say, we may probably have yet more to see of this school of dishonesty; but it is a pity that we should—and altogether needless—for the whole trade of financing is now to be examined by the diligent student, with models and living examples, more than enough to illustrate every single portion of the art. Some ages may have been great in science, others in art, and others in war, but our era overtops every other in the proficiency of its rascals; this is the classic period of chicanery, the golden age of fraud. Let a man have a base heart, and a seared conscience, and a plausible mode of address, and let him resolve upon deluding the public out of millions, he need not travel to learn the readiest method, he can find examples near at home amongst high professors and the great ones of the earth. My brethren, these noises of falling towers on the right, these sounds of crumbling battlements on the left, these cries of the shipwrecked everywhere along the coasts of trade, have not only awakened within me many thoughts relative to themselves and the rottenness of modern society, but they have made me muse upon similar catastrophes evermore occurring in the spiritual world. Unrecorded in the journals, and unmourned by unregenerate men, there are failures and frauds and bankruptcies of soul most horrible to think upon. There is a spiritual trading just as pretentious and apparently just as successful as your vaunted limited liability juggle, but really just as rotten and as sure to end in hopeless overthrow. Speculation is a spiritual vice as well as a commercial one—trading without capital is common in the religious world, and puffery and deception are every-day practices. The outer world is always the representative of the inner; the life which clusters round the Exchange illustrates that which gathers within the church; and if our eyes were opened and our ears were able to hear, the sights and the sounds of the spirit world would far more interest us and sadden us than the doings which begin in the directors' board-room and end we know not where. We should see at this moment colossal religious fortunes melting into abject spiritual poverty. We should see high professors, much reverenced and held in esteem, brought into shame and everlasting contempt. We should see the wealthy in divine matters, whom men have unwisely trusted as their guides and counselors as to their souls' best interests, unmasked and proved to be deceitful through and through. I seem at this moment to be peering into the world of spiritual things, and I see many a Babel tower tottering and ready to fall; many a fair tree decaying at the heart; many a blooming cheek undermined by disease. Yes, a sound comes to my ear of men in the church, apparently rich and increased in goods, who are naked, and poor, and miserable, and great men whose towering glories are but a fading flower. There ever have been such, there are many now, and there will be to the end.

The supply of deceivers is sure to be maintained since the text tells us that all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; there is a propensity in human nature which leads men, even when they are most wrong, to judge themselves most right. The text at the same time suggests the terrible conclusion to which all self-deception will certainly come, for the judgment of man concerning himself is not final, and there comes a day when the Lord who weigheth the spirits will reverse the verdict of a perjured conscience, and make the man to stand no longer in the false light which his conceit has thrown around him, but in the true light, in which all his fancied glory shall vanish as a dream.

Traveling some time ago in an iron steamboat to the Continent, the captain told me that the compass was far from trustworthy where so much iron was on every side, and that sometimes, when so far as he knew he had steered correctly, he had found himself very considerably out of his course. Though the compass was fixed aloft so as to be as much as possible out of the region of the metallic attraction, yet the deflection and aberrations in the case of his own compass had been occasionally most remarkable. In like manner our conscience originally as it came from God was no doubt an exceedingly correct standard of right and wrong, and if we had sailed by it we must have reached the haven safely enough; but conscience is now placed in connection with a depraved nature which forbids its accurate working. Now, if the laws of nature would vary to make up for its defects when the compass erred, the aberrations would not matter; but if the man is misled by the perverted needle he may unexpectedly be upon a rock, and will be as surely wrecked as if the helmsman had neglected the compass altogether. So, if God's law could be shaped to suit the errors of our judgment it might not matter; but the laws of God stand sternly and inflexibly the same, and if we deviate from the right way through this false judgment of ours we shall be none the less guilty, and we shall find our fate to be none the less terrible. Hence I do approach this matter with a greater vehemence and earnestness this morning, on your account, and with more brokenness and humility of spirit on my own, desiring to speak with divers classes among you, urging you not to be so flattered by your own conceptions of your position as to get out of the course in which you ought to steer; beseeching you to remember that however well you may cajole yourselves with the idea that your way is right and clear, yet the inevitable judgment day will come to end all delusions, however pleasant. Spiritual traders, I speak to you this day, reminding you of the great audit which hastens on, and warning you lest you make a fair show for awhile, and then in the end come down with a crash. I am sure there is much rotten spiritual trading abroad, and to save you from it I pray the Holy Ghost to help me speak plainly and searchingly this morning.

As God shall help me, I intend to address the text to different characters. We will endeavor to be practical throughout the sermon, and to push home vital truth with great earnestness upon each one.

I. *The ways of the openly wicked* are clean in their own eyes, but the Lord will weigh their spirits.

At first sight this statement seems to be rash. The drunkard, the blasphemer, the Sabbath-breaker, can it be that these people are right in their own eyes? Solomon was a profound student of human nature, and when he penned this sentence you may rest assured he knew what he wrote. They who are best acquainted with mankind will tell you that self-righteousness is not the peculiar sin of the virtuous, but that most remarkably it flourishes best where there appears to be the least soil for it. Those men who in the judgment of their fellows distinctly and plainly have no righteousness in which they can glory, are the very persons who, when you come to search into the depth of their nature, are relying upon a fancied goodness which they dream about and rest upon. Take the outwardly immoral for a moment and begin to talk with them about their sins, and you will find that they are accustomed to speak of their faults under very different names from those which Scripture and right reason would use. They do not call drunkenness ‘Drunkenness,’ for instance, but it is ‘taking a glass.’ They would not for a moment advocate downright blasphemy, but it is ‘strong language which a fellow must use if he's to get on,’ or ‘letting slip an ugly word or so, because you were plagued so.’ They disguise vice to themselves as pleasure; they label their uncleanness as gaiety, their filthiness as lightheartedness. They speak of their sins as though they had no enormity about them, but were trifles light as air—if wrong at all, themes rather for the feather lash of ridicule than for the scourge of reproof. Moreover, the most of them will claim that they are not so bad as others. There is some one point in their character in which they do not go so far as some of their fellows, and this is a grand point and a vast comfort to them. They will confess that they are sinners, not meaning it for a moment; and if you come to particulars and details, if they are in an honest frame of mind they will recede step by step, admitting fault after fault, till they come to a particular point, and there they take their footing with virtuous indignation. “Here I am right beyond all rebuke, and even deserving of praise. So far my sin has come, but how thoroughly sound at heart must I be that I have never permitted it to advance further!” This boasted line is frequently so singular and mysterious in its direction, that no one but the man himself can see any reason or consistency in it; and the satirist who shoots at folly as it flies, finds abundant objects for his arrows. Yet to that man himself, his pausing there is the saving clause of his life; he looks to that as the sheet anchor of his character. The woman whose character long since has gone, will yet boast some limit to her licentiousness which is merit in her esteem—merit sufficient to make all her ways clean in her own eyes.

Moreover, the worst of men conceive that they have some excellences and virtues, which, if they do not quite atone for their faults, yet at any rate greatly diminish the measure of blame which should be awarded them. The man is a spendthrift, “But sir, he was always freehearted, and nobody's enemy but his own.” The man, it is true, would curse God, but then, well, it was a mere habit, he always was a dashing blade, but he meant no harm; and besides he never was such a liar as So-and-So; and indeed, he scorned to tell a lie upon any business subject. Another has cheated his creditors, but he was such a nice man; and although, poor fellow, he never could keep accounts or manage money matters, yet he always had a good word for everybody. The immoral man, if he sits down to write his own character, and summons all the partiality he is capable of, will say ‐I am a sad dog in some respects, sowing a great many wild oats, but I have a fine character underlying it all which will no doubt come up some day, so that my end shall be bright and glorious notwithstanding all. That last point that I hinted at is very often the righteousness of men who have no other, namely, their intention one of these days much to amend and improve. To make up for present poverty of righteousness they draw a bill upon the future. Their promises and resolves are a sort of paper currency on which they imagine they can trade for eternity. “Is it not often done in business?” say they: ‐A man who has no present income may have a reversionary interest in an estate; he gets advances thereon—why should not we?” Thus the open sinner, easing his all too ready conscience with the imaginary picture of his future repentance and amendment, begins to feel himself already meritorious and bids defiance to all the threatenings of the word of God.

I may be speaking to some to whom these remarks are very applicable, and if so I pray that they may lead to serious thought. My hearer, you must know, or at any rate a few sober moments of reflection would make you know, that there is no truth in the pleas, excuses, and promises with which you now quiet your conscience; your peace is founded on a lie, and is upheld by the father of lies. While you are continuing recklessly to break the laws of God in your ordinary life and to take pleasure in sin, you most assuredly are under the anger of God and you are heaping up wrath against the day of wrath, and when the measure of your iniquity is full then shall you receive the terrible reward of transgression. The Judge of all the earth will not pay regard to the idle preterites which now stultify your conscience. He is not a man that he should be flattered as you flatter and deceive yourself. You would not have the impertinence to tell your excuses to him. Dare you kneel down now and speak to the great God in heaven and tell him all these fine things with which you are now smoothing your downward road? I hope you have not come to such a brazen pitch of impertinence as that, but if you have let me remind you of that second sentence of my text, “The Lord weigheth the spirits.” A just and true balance will be used upon you before long. When the Lord puts such as you are into the scale, there will be no need for delay; the sentence will go forth at once and from it there shall be no appeal: “You are weighed in the balances and found wanting.” Ah then my hearer, when that conscience of yours wakes up, how it will torment you! It sleeps now, drugged by the opiates of your ignorance and perverseness; but it will start up soon like a giant refreshed with new wine, and then with strength and fury unthought of before it will pull down the temple of your peace about your ears, even as Samson struck the Philistines. An awakened conscience in another world is the worm that dies not and the fire which never can be quenched. O sirs, it is a dreadful thing to be delivered up to one's own conscience when that conscience is enlisted on the side of right. Old tyrants had their terrible headsmen with grim masks across their brows who carried the bright and gleaming axe; the old inquisitors had their familiars arrayed in gowns of serge and cowls, from the loopholes of which their fierce eyes gleamed like wolves; but no tormentors, yes, no fiends of hell, can ever prove more terrible to a man than his conscience when its lash is corded with truth and weighted with honesty. Did you ever spell the burning letters of that word *remorse*? Within the bowels of that single word there lies hell with all its torments. O sirs, if you are but a little aroused now by an earnest sermon or a sudden death, how wretched you feel and how desperately you plunge into fresh gaiety and wantonness to drown your thoughts; but what will you do with thoughts which no dissipation can drown, and remembrances which no mirth can banish? What will it be to be haunted by your sins for ever and for ever? What to have it made sure to you that from the guilt and punishment no way of escape can ever be discovered?

O you who fondly dream that the broad road to destruction is the upward path to celestial bliss, I beseech you, learn wisdom and listen to the voice of instruction; consider your ways and seek unto the precious blood which alone can blot out your sins.

2. A second class I will now address. *The ways of the godless man* are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the spirits.

The godless man is often exceedingly upright and moral in his outward behavior to his fellow men. He has no religion, but he glories in a multitude of virtues of another kind. It is unhappily true that there are many who have much that is amiable about them who nevertheless are unamiable and unjust towards the one Being who ought to have the most of their love, and who should have been respected in their conduct first of all. How often have I met with the ungodly man who has said, “You talk to me about fearing God! I know him not, neither do I regard him, but I am much better than those who do.” He will sometimes say, “Your religion I look upon as a mere farce: I regard Christians as being made up of two sorts, knaves and fools. They are either duped by others, or else for purposes of their own they are deceiving others. Their talk about God, sir, it is all cant; with some of them I grant you it is not quite that, but then they have too few brains to be able to discover that they are deceived. However, take the whole thing for all in all, it is all a piece of nonsense, and if people just behave as they ought towards their neighbors and do their duty in their station in life, that is enough.” Yes, and there are in this city of London thousands, and hundreds of thousands, who think this to be good logic, and indeed who open their eyes with astonishment if for a single moment you are supposed to contradict their statement that such a style of life is the best and most commendable; and yet if they would but think, nothing can be more unsound than their life and its supposed excellence. Here is a man created by his God, and he is put down amongst his fellow creatures; surely the first duty that he owes is towards his Creator. His life depends entirely upon that Creator's will—it must be his first duty to have respect to him in whose hands his breath is; but this man not only refuses to be obedient to the law of his Creator and have regard to him in his daily actions, but turns round to his neighbors who are mere creatures like himself, and he says ‐I will have respect to you, but not to God. Any laws of the state which bind me in my relation to you I will obey; but any laws which describe my relation to God I will not consider except it be to ridicule and laugh at them. I will be obedient to any but to God; I will do the right thing to any but to the Most High. I have a sense of right and wrong but I will restrict its action to my fellow men, and that sense of right and wrong when it comes in relation to God I will utterly obliterate.” Now if there were no God this man were wise enough, but as there is a God who created us, and who shall surely come in the clouds of heaven to call every one of us to account for the things which we have done in the body, what think you will be the judgment dealt out to this unfaithful servant? Will he dare to say unto his King, ‐I knew that thou wast my Maker and Lord, but I considered that if I served my fellow servants it would be enough. I knew what was right to them, but I disregarded the doing of anything that was right towards thee”? Shall not the answer be, “You wicked and faithless servant, you knew what was right and wrong, and yet towards me, having first claim upon you, you have acted unjustly, and while you would bow your neck to others you would not yield to me. Depart from me, I do not know you. You did not know me, neither do I know you. I weigh you in the balances, and I find you utterly reprobate. You are cast away for ever.” O ungodly man, let this warning, if you are here this morning, sound in your heart as well as your ears: no longer set yourself in defiance to your Creator or live in negligence of him, but say, ‐I will arise and go unto my Father; I will confess that I have forgotten him and despised him, and I will seek peace through the blood of Jesus Christ.”

3. Further, I shall address myself to another class of persons. In all ages of the church, and especially at this time, there are numbers of persons who are *outwardly religious*, but whose religion ends there. Now it seems to some of us amazingly strange that a man should be acting viciously, should be living wickedly, and yet should think that his ways are clean because he takes a sacrament or attends a certain place of worship. I must confess to my mind this seems a very strange phenomenon, that there should exist men of intelligence in this world who know that their conduct is altogether blameworthy and yet feel perfectly at ease because a chosen ritual has been diligently observed; as if bowing and scraping, singing or groaning could be a substitute for holiness of heart. Look at the Pharisee and tell me if he is not a moral wonder! He devours widows' houses, he is ready to prey on everything that comes to hand; he is a detestable hypocrite, but the man is perfectly at ease because he has made broad the border of his garments, because he fasts twice in the week, and strains out gnats from the wine that he drinks; he is quite content with himself and all his ways seem right, so right, indeed, that other men who are better than he, he passes by with contempt, afraid lest they should come between the wind and his nobility. He thanks God that he is not as other men, when so far as you and I can judge he is ten thousand fathoms deeper down in dark damnation in his horribly hypocritical character. Yet brethren, some form or other of this is very common. All the ways of a man are clean unto him when he once imbibes the idea that ceremonial religion, or religious talk, or religious profession, can make up for moral sin. Ah brethren, this evil may even creep in among ourselves. Let us not be so swift in condemning the Pharisee when perhaps the same sin may pollute our own souls. I have known the man who was reckoned a sound Calvinist and believed in very high doctrine, live a very unhallowed life. He despised “Arminians,” as he chose to call them, though some of these despised ones lived very near to God and walked in holiness and integrity. The Arminian, forsooth, godly man as he was, would be lost; but this self-righteous orthodox man who could at the same time drink and cheat thought that he should be saved because he had been able to see the truth of certain doctrines, which also the devil sees as well as he. I have known another who thought he had a deep and memorable experience who would talk by the yard of the depravity of his heart. Some people thinking that he ought to be able to talk about that very truly, for he proved it in his life; and yet because he could repeat cant phrases and had picked up certain rich expressions of experience from books, he verily thought within himself that he was not only as good as others but a very pattern for others to copy. Right and left such men as these will hurl curses and anathemas upon the best and most earnest of saints. They are the men—wisdom will die with them. Holiness being dead already with them, it is no wonder that wisdom should die too. Ah! take care lest you and I drink in the same spirit in another shape. Ah! preacher, your preaching may be all well and good, it may be sound enough and right enough, and it may be even edifying to the people of God and arousing to the unconverted. But remember, God will not judge you by your sermons but by your spirit, for he weighs not your words but your motive, your desire, your object in preaching the gospel. Deacon of the church, you may have walked in all honor for many years and may be universally respected, and your office may have been well maintained in all the outward duties of it, but if your heart be not right, if some secret sin be indulged, if there be a canker upon your profession which none know but your own self, the Lord who weighs the spirit will make nothing of your deaconship and your carrying round the cups and bread at the communion, but you shall be found wanting and cast away. You too, brother elder, your labors and your prayers are nothing if the heart be evil. You may have visited others and instructed them and been a judge of their state; still, if you have not served God and his church out of a pure desire for his glory, you too, put into the scales, shall be rejected with abhorrence. I often pray—I wish however I prayed it more—that none of us here may be preached into the idea that we are all right if we are all wrong. It is not your coming to the Tabernacle, it is not your joining the church, your being baptized, your attending prayer-meetings, or your doing anything that will be the slightest matter in this business—it is your giving up your hearts to God truly, and your living in conformity with your profession; and unless the grace of God be really given you, helping you to do this, your ways may be clean unto you because of your outward profession; but the Lord who weighs the spirits will make short work of these bubbles, he will break this confectionery, smash to pieces these shams, and leave the man who ought to have a palace over his head throughout eternity to sit down and shiver amongst the ruins of his Babylon, and cry out and weep and wail amongst dragons and fiends.

4. But to pass on, there is another character that must be addressed. “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes,” so are *the ways of the covetous professor*.

It is marvelous to some of us that a man whose object in life is merely to get money and who withholds what he has from the cause of God should take up the profession of being a Christian man, because none of all the vices is more contrary to true religion than covetousness. Where will you find an instance of a single saint in Scripture that ever fell into covetousness? Into all other sins have they fallen, but into this one I do not remember that one child of God mentioned in Scripture ever descended. Grace may exist where there are many occasional sins, but never where there is abiding covetousness. Think of Paul's words: “Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither, fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Luther used to say, “I have been tempted to all sins but covetousness.” This he so detested that he distributed gifts made to him lest he should have his portion in this world. Adams, in his book on Peter, well remarks, “Noah was once drunk with wine but never with the world; Lot, twice incestuous, never covetous; Peter denied his Master three times, but it was not the love but the fear of the world that brought him to it. Once David was overcome by the flesh, never by covetousness. Why did not these purge themselves from adultery, anger, and the like? Because into these sins the infirmities of a saint may fall, but if once into covetousness there is nothing of a saint left—not even the name. Covetousness has the brand of God's hate full on its brow.” “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him;” and when a professor shows the love of the world in its grossest shape, when he gives way to being the slave of “Mammon, the least erect of all the fiends,” he bears evidence to all who judge righteously according to Scripture that the love of God is not in him, and cannot be in him; the two things are inconsistent. Yet, strange to say we do know not a few whose way seems very clean to them. They screw here and there, now their servants, and now their customers: the widow and the fatherless would not be safe from them if they could pick their bones. What they scrape together is held with an iron grasp. Let souls be damned, they shall have no missionary sent to them by their money. Let this London fester with sin, let it be covered with the ulcers of the most fearful depravity, they are never stirred to give any assistance towards the healing of the city's wounds. And yet while their damnation awaits them certainly, and their condemnation stares them in the face as plainly as the sun in the heavens, yet their ways seem clean unto them. Strange it should be so, but the Lord weighs the spirits, and what a weighing that shall be when men who escape church censure because theirs was a sin of which the church could not deal with, shall be found guilty of it, and God shall cast them away! Vain will be their pretensions that they ate and they drank in God's house, for the answer shall come, “I was hungry and you gave me no meat; I was thirsty and you gave me no drink; naked, and you clothed me not. I was sick and in prison, and you did not minister unto me. Verily I say unto you, I know you not!” O let this truth, for truth it is, pierce like a two-edged sword right through the hearts of any of you who are beginning to yield to this damning vice. Cry unto God that as he gives you substance you may use it for his glory. Ask him that you may never perish with a millstone about your neck; for even if that killing weight be made of gold it will be no better perishing for all that.

5. Another character must have a word also: we will now note *the ways of the worldly professor*.

It is amazing how some people making a profession of religion, square it with their conscience that they live as they do live. You could not with a microscope detect any difference between them and common worldlings, and yet they think there is a vast difference, and they would be insulted if you did not allow it. Here they come up to the house of God today, but to what amusements have they been during the week? How are they dressed? How are their children educated? Is there any family prayer? Is there anything in the household that is Christian? Look at them in business. Do they not trade precisely like those who make no pretensions to religion? Ask their workpeople, just go yourselves and watch them—see if they cannot tell white lies as well as others, whether they are not for all the world as alike as two peas are to one another, like other unregenerate and unconverted people! And yet their ways seem very clean unto them, very clean indeed, and their conscience does not trouble them in any way whatever. I have but this word to say in all affection to such, earnestly desiring that they may be plucked out of this fire, “The Lord will weigh the spirits.” The whole of our life is known to him. He will not judge us without book. When he comes to the account he will not be like a judge who has to learn the facts; he will come to the last assize, having seen with those eyes of fire the secret thoughts, the private feelings of our life. God be merciful to us sinners, we may all of us say; but God especially save us from being like the ungodly.

6. Yet another word, and this is addressed to all professors here more or less: it is a solemn word concerning *the ways of secure backsliders*.

Do you not know brethren and sisters, that very often our ways seem very clean to us when they are not. I have learned by experience most painful to my own soul, that I am not in the least qualified to judge of my own spiritual health: I have thought myself gradually advancing in the ways of God when I have been going back, and I have had the conceit crossing my mind that I had now overcome a certain besetting sin, when to my surprise I had found it return with greater force than before. Fellow professor, you may be at this moment walking as you think very rightly, and going off very well and comfortably, but let me ask you a few questions: are you not less in private prayer than you used to be? Do you not now hurry over it, do you not sometimes omit it altogether? Do you not frequently come from your closet without really having spoken to God, having merely gone through the form for the sake of quieting yourself? Your way may seem clean, but is it not foul when the mercy-seat becomes neglected? How about your Bible, is that read as it once was, and are the promises as sweet to you? Do they ever rise from the page and talk with you? Oh, but if your Bible be neglected my brother, you may be just as diligent in attending to the house of God as you used to be, but is not yours a sad state of decay? Let me come closer still. Is there the vitality about your profession that there used to be? There are some in this house this morning who if they could speak, would tell you that when to their great sorrow they fell into sin, it was because by little and little their piety began to lose its force and power of life. They have been restored, but their bones still ache where they were once broken, and I am sure they would say to their brethren "Take care of allowing a gracious spirit to evaporate, as it were, by slow degrees." Watch carefully over it, lest settling upon your lees and not being emptied from vessel to vessel you should by-and-by become carnally secure, and afterwards fall into actual sin. I ask some of my brethren here, and I ask the question because I have asked it of my own soul and answered it very tearfully, may not some of us be growing hardened in heart with regard to the salvation of our fellow creatures? Do we not love less now than we used to do, those who are crying to us, "Come over and help us"? Do we not think ourselves getting to be experienced saints? We are not the poor sinners we once used to be. We do not come broken-heartedly to the mercy-seat as we did. We begin to judge our fellow Christians and we think far less of them than we did years ago when we used almost to love the ground that the Lord's saints did tread upon, thinking ourselves to be less than nothing in their sight. Now if it were the case in others, that they were growing proud, or becoming cold, or waxing hard of heart, we should say of them, "they are in great danger," but what about ourselves if that be the case with us? For my own self, I dread lest I should come to this pulpit merely to preach to you because the time has come and I must get through an hour or an hour-and-a-half of worship. I dread getting to be a mere preaching machine without my heart and soul being exercised in this solemn duty; and I dread for you, my dear friends who hear me constantly, lest it should be a mere piece of clock-work that you should be in the seats at certain times in the week, and should sit there and patiently hear the din which my noise makes in your ears. We must have vital godliness, and the vitality of it must be maintained, and the force and energy of our religion must go on to increase day by day, or else though our ways may seem to be very clean the Lord will soon weigh our spirits to our eternal confusion. Do you know that to his people the divine weighing in fatherly chastisement is rough work, for he can put the soul into the scale to our own consciousness, and when we think that it weighs pounds he can reveal to us that it does not even reach to drams! "There," saith he, "see what you are!" and he begins to strip off the veil of self-conceit, and we see the loathsomeness and falsehood of our nature, and we are utterly dismayed. Or perhaps the Lord does worse than that. He suffers a temptation to come when we do not expect it, and then the evil boils up within us, and we who thought we were next door to the cherubs find ourselves near akin to the demons; wondering too that such a wild beast should have slumbered in the den of our hearts, whereas we ought to have known it was always there and to have walked humbly with God, and watched and guarded ourselves. Rest assured beloved, great falls and terrible mischief never come to a Christian man at once, they are a work of slow degrees; and be assured too that you may glide down the smooth waters of the river and never dream of the Niagara beyond, and yet you may be speeding towards it. An awful crash may yet come to the highest professor among us that shall make the world to ring with blasphemy against God, and the church to resound with bitter lamentations because the mighty have fallen. God will keep his own, but how if I should turn out not to be his own! He will keep the feet of his saints, but what if I leave off to watch and my feet should not be kept, and I should turn out to be no saint of his, but a mere intruder into his family, and a pretender to have what I never had! O God, through Christ Jesus deliver each of us from this.

VII. Had time not failed me I meant to speak concerning the seventh and last character, namely, *the ways of the deceived man*.

There are, no doubt, many in the world who will never find out that their ways which they thought to be so clean are all foul till they enter upon another world. There are some men who are Christians in all but this, that they have not true faith in Jesus. There are others who apparently are saved, but they have never been really born again. There are many who have everything but the one thing needful, and who think they have that, and persuade their fellows that they have that. How near a man may come to being a Christian and yet miss salvation it were difficult to tell; but certainly he may come so near that no man nor yet the angels of God shall be able to tell the difference between him and a saved soul, only God shall discern the difference when he comes to weigh the spirits.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. It is this: let us come my brethren, all of us, to the place of confession of sin and acknowledge that we have broken God's law, and deserve his just displeasure. Let us go by the help of his Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of supplication, and let us confess the depravity of our nature and the error of our hearts. Let us pray that instead of thinking our ways clean, we may know them to be foul, may mourn over them, and may learn to see them as God sees them, as crooked ways and wrong ways in themselves not to be boasted of, but to be remembered with shame and confusion of face. Blessed is he who is delivered from any rejoicing in himself. Happy is that man who can see no speck of soundness in his own flesh, but who feels that the leprosy of sin has covered him without and within from head to foot. And brethren, if we come to such deep humiliation of spirit, the next word is this: let us go together to the great salvation which God has provided in the person of Christ Jesus. Come, linking hand in hand, saint and sinner, now all sinners consciously, let us stand and see where sin has pierced the body of the blessed Substitute with yonder bleeding wounds. Let us read the lines of grief written upon that blessed face; let us gaze into the depth of his soul filled with an ocean of anguish, lashed to a tempest of suffering; let us believe that he suffered in our stead and so roll our sin and our sinfulness on him. Jesus, accept a sinner, a poor sinner still; though these twenty years I have known thy name, yet still a sinner I come to thee, the chief of sinners! Ah, brethren and sisters, we are never safer I am sure, never healthier, never in a better frame than when we are right flat down on the ground before the cross. When you feel yourself to be utterly unworthy you have hit the truth. When you think you are doing something and are rich and flourishing, you are poor, and naked, and miserable; but when you are consciously weak and sinful, then you are rich. When you are weak you are strong; but O God, save us from letting our ways seem clean in our own sight, but may we weigh our spirits by the help of thy Spirit, and condemn ourselves that we may not be condemned of the Lord.

The Lord bless you richly and freely for his name's sake. Amen.

*Portion of Scripture read before sermon*—Psalm 51.

A sermon (Number 849) delivered on Lord's Day morning, January 10th, 1869, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, by C. H. Spurgeon.

"All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weighs the spirits." — Proverbs 16:2.

Over the past two years, some of the most celebrated commercial reputations have been completely destroyed. Men in the great world of trade who were trusted for hundreds of thousands of pounds, whose characters carried no shadow of suspicion or doubt, have proven themselves to be reckless and without principle. The fiery trial has consumed the wood, hay, and stubble of many a massive firm. Businesses that seemed built on solid rock, as permanent as England itself, have been shaken to their foundations and collapsed with a tremendous crash. On all sides we see the wreckage of great reputations and enormous fortunes. There is weeping in the palaces of pretense, and ruin in the halls of deception. Bubbles are bursting, windbags are collapsing, paint is cracking, and the gilding is peeling off. We will likely see more of this — more revelations of supposed wealth hiding insolvency, the way decorative wallpaper covers a mud wall; clever schemes that deceived the public with profits that were never real, luring them into deeper speculation, just as a desert mirage mocks a thirsty traveler. Month after month we have seen in the papers fresh exposés of the financial methods used by the villainy of this age to rob people respectably and commit crimes with an air of respectability. We have been stunned and amazed at the vile tricks and shameless devices to which men of prominence have stooped. And yet we have been forced to listen to justifications of massive frauds, and have even been compelled to believe that those who committed them did not consider themselves to be acting dishonorably — their own prior successes and the low state of public morality had together lulled them into a condition where conscience, if not dead, was thoroughly asleep. We may well see even more of this school of dishonesty, but it is a shame that we should — and entirely unnecessary — for the whole craft of financial fraud can now be studied by any diligent observer, with more than enough real examples to illustrate every aspect of the art. Some eras have been great in science, others in art, and others in war, but our age surpasses every other in the skill of its scoundrels. This is the golden age of fraud, the classic era of trickery. Give a man a corrupt heart, a seared conscience, and a smooth manner, and let him set out to swindle the public out of millions — he need not travel far to learn how. He can find examples close to home among the prominent and highly regarded. My friends, the noise of towers falling on the right, the sound of crumbling walls on the left, the cries of the shipwrecked all along the shores of trade — these have not only stirred in me many thoughts about themselves and the rottenness of modern society, but they have led me to reflect on similar disasters that happen continually in the spiritual world. Unrecorded in the newspapers and unmourned by unregenerate people, there are failures, frauds, and spiritual bankruptcies of the soul that are terrible to contemplate. There is a kind of spiritual trading just as pretentious and apparently just as successful as any celebrated financial scheme, but just as rotten and just as certain to end in total ruin. Speculation is a spiritual vice just as much as a commercial one — trading without capital is common in the religious world, and self-promotion and deception are everyday practices. The outer world always mirrors the inner one. The life that clusters around the exchange illustrates what gathers within the church. If our eyes were opened and our ears could hear, the sights and sounds of the spiritual world would interest and sadden us far more than the dealings that begin in corporate boardrooms and end no one knows where. We would see enormous religious fortunes melting into abject spiritual poverty. We would see prominent professors of faith — widely respected and held in high regard — brought to shame and eternal contempt. We would see those counted wealthy in divine matters, whom people have unwisely trusted as guides for their souls, unmasked and exposed as thoroughly false. It seems to me right now as though I am looking into the world of spiritual things, and I see many a tower of Babel tottering and ready to fall — many a fair tree decaying at the heart, many a glowing face undermined by hidden disease. I hear a sound of people within the church who appear rich and prosperous, but who are in fact naked, poor, and miserable — great figures whose towering glories are nothing but a fading flower. Such people have always existed, there are many of them now, and they will remain until the end.

The supply of self-deceivers is certain to be maintained, because the text tells us that all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes — there is a tendency in human nature that leads people, even when most wrong, to judge themselves most right. At the same time, the text points toward the terrible conclusion that all self-deception must eventually reach. A person's judgment about himself is not final. A day is coming when the Lord who weighs the spirits will overturn the verdict of a lying conscience, and the person will no longer stand in the false light that his own pride has cast around him, but in true light — a light in which all his imagined glory will vanish like a dream.

Some time ago I was traveling on an iron steamboat to the Continent when the captain told me that the compass was far from reliable with so much iron all around, and that sometimes, even when he believed he had steered correctly, he found himself significantly off course. Though the compass was mounted high up to keep it as far as possible from the metal's magnetic pull, the deflections and errors in his particular compass had at times been remarkable. In the same way, our conscience — as it originally came from God — was no doubt an accurate standard of right and wrong, and if we had followed it faithfully we would have reached safe harbor. But conscience now operates in connection with a corrupt nature that prevents it from working accurately. If the laws of nature could adjust themselves to compensate for a faulty compass, the errors would not matter. But when a sailor is led astray by a defective needle, he may unexpectedly strike a rock and be just as surely wrecked as if he had ignored the compass altogether. In the same way, if God's law could be bent to accommodate the errors of our judgment, it might not matter. But God's laws stand firm and unchanging, and if we deviate from the right path through our false judgment, we will be no less guilty — and our fate will be no less terrible. For this reason I approach this subject this morning with greater urgency and earnestness on your behalf, and with deeper brokenness and humility on my own — longing to speak to the various kinds of people among you, urging you not to be so flattered by your own view of your condition that you drift off the course you should be steering. I beg you to remember that however convincingly you may reassure yourself that your way is clear and right, the inevitable day of judgment will come and bring all delusions — however pleasant — to an end. Spiritual traders, I speak to you today, reminding you of the great accounting that is coming fast, and warning you not to make a fine show for a time and then collapse in ruin. I am sure there is much rotten spiritual trading all around, and to save you from it I pray that the Holy Spirit will help me speak plainly and searchingly this morning.

With God's help, I intend to address the text to different kinds of people. We will aim to be practical throughout the sermon, pressing vital truth home with earnestness to each one.

I. The ways of the openly wicked are clean in their own eyes, but the Lord will weigh their spirits.

At first glance, this statement seems rash. The drunkard, the blasphemer, the Sabbath-breaker — can it really be that these people think they are in the right? Solomon was a profound student of human nature, and when he wrote this sentence you can be sure he knew what he was saying. Those who know people best will tell you that self-righteousness is not the peculiar sin of the outwardly virtuous. Remarkably, it thrives most where there appears to be the least ground for it. The people who, by any fair judgment, have nothing to boast of are often the very ones who, when you search their hearts, are quietly trusting in an imagined goodness they have dreamed up for themselves. Spend a moment with someone who is openly immoral and try talking with them about their sins, and you will find they have a habit of calling their faults by very different names than Scripture and common sense would use. They don't call drunkenness "drunkenness," for instance — it's "having a drink." They wouldn't for a moment defend outright blasphemy, but it's "strong language a fellow has to use if he's going to get anywhere," or "letting slip an ugly word because you were pushed so far." They disguise vice to themselves as pleasure. They label their impurity as gaiety, their filth as lightheartedness. They speak of their sins as though there were nothing serious about them — trifles light as air, worthy at most of a gentle laugh rather than a sharp rebuke. Beyond this, most of them will claim they are not as bad as others. There is some area in their life where they have not gone as far as some of their companions, and they find great comfort and satisfaction in this. They will confess they are sinners — without meaning it for a moment. If you press them on specifics, they will concede one fault after another — but only up to a certain point, where they plant their feet with righteous indignation. "Here I am beyond all reproach — indeed, deserving of praise. My sin has gone this far, but surely I must be sound at heart, since I have never let it go further!" This self-imposed limit is often so peculiar in where it falls that no one but the person himself can see any reason or consistency in it, and those who observe human folly find it a rich target. Yet to that man himself, his stopping there is the saving clause of his life — he regards it as the anchor of his character. A woman whose reputation has long been ruined will still boast of some boundary to her behavior that she counts as merit — merit enough, in her own eyes, to make all her ways clean.

Furthermore, even the worst of people believe they have some virtues and good qualities that, if they do not fully atone for their faults, at least greatly reduce how much blame they deserve. The man is a spendthrift, "But sir, he was always generous — no one's enemy but his own." The man, it is true, would curse God, but then — well, it was just a habit, he was always a bold character but meant no harm. Besides, he was never as much of a liar as So-and-So, and he would never stoop to lying in a business matter. Another has cheated his creditors, but he was such a pleasant man — and although he never could keep accounts or manage money, he always had a kind word for everyone. The immoral man, if he sat down to write his own character description with all the partiality he can muster, would say: I am a sorry fellow in some ways, sowing a great many wild oats, but deep down I have a fine character that will surely come out one day, so that my end will be bright and glorious in spite of everything. That last point I hinted at is very often the one righteousness of men who have no other — namely, their intention to reform and improve someday. To make up for their present lack of righteousness, they draw a bill on the future. Their promises and good intentions function as a kind of paper currency on which they imagine they can trade for eternity. "Isn't it done in business all the time?" they say. "A man with no present income may have a future inheritance coming to him — he gets advances on it. Why can't we do the same?" So the open sinner, soothing his all-too-willing conscience with an imagined picture of future repentance and reform, begins to feel himself already worthy and defies all the warnings of God's Word.

I may be speaking to some whose situation these remarks describe precisely, and if so, I pray they lead to serious reflection. Friend, you know — or a few honest moments of thought would make you know — that there is no truth in the excuses, rationalizations, and promises by which you are now silencing your conscience. Your peace is built on a lie, and it is upheld by the father of lies. While you go on recklessly breaking God's laws in your daily life and taking pleasure in sin, you are most certainly under God's anger. You are storing up wrath for the day of wrath, and when your measure of iniquity is full, you will receive the terrible reward of transgression. The Judge of all the earth will not be swayed by the shallow excuses that currently silence your conscience. He is not like a human being who can be flattered the way you flatter and deceive yourself. You would not have the nerve to bring these excuses before Him. Would you dare to kneel down right now before the great God in heaven and recite all these fine things you are using to smooth your downward road? I hope you have not yet reached such a brazen level of audacity — but if you have, let me remind you of the second part of my text: "The Lord weighs the spirits." A just and accurate scale will be used on you before long. When the Lord puts people like you on the scale, there will be no need for delay. The verdict will go forth immediately, and from it there will be no appeal: "You are weighed in the balances and found wanting." And then, my friend, when that conscience of yours wakes up, how it will torment you! It sleeps now, drugged by the opiates of your ignorance and stubbornness. But it will spring up soon like a giant refreshed with new wine — and then, with a strength and fury you never imagined, it will pull down the temple of your peace around your ears, just as Samson struck down the Philistines. A conscience fully awakened in another world is the worm that never dies and the fire that can never be quenched. It is a dreadful thing to be handed over to your own conscience when that conscience has taken the side of truth. Old tyrants had their grim executioners with masked faces carrying a bright and gleaming axe. The old inquisitors had their officers dressed in robes and hoods, from whose openings fierce eyes glowed like wolves. But no tormentor — indeed, no demon of hell — can ever prove more terrible to a person than his own conscience when its lash is corded with truth and weighted with honesty. Have you ever thought long and hard about the burning meaning of the word remorse? Within that single word lies hell with all its torments. If even a stirring sermon or a sudden death only partly arouses you, how wretched you feel — and how desperately you plunge back into distraction and indulgence to drown your thoughts. But what will you do with thoughts that no distraction can drown, and memories that no laughter can drive away? What will it be to be haunted by your sins forever and ever? What will it mean when it becomes certain that there is no way of escape from guilt and punishment — ever?

You who fondly imagine that the broad road to destruction is actually the path upward to heavenly bliss — I urge you, learn wisdom and listen to the voice of instruction. Consider your ways and seek the precious blood that alone can wash away your sins.

2. A second class I will now address. The ways of the godless man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirits.

The godless man is often exceedingly upright and moral in his outward dealings with other people. He has no religion, but he prides himself on a range of other virtues. It is sadly true that many people are quite pleasant and agreeable in their dealings with fellow human beings, yet at the same time unjust and unloving toward the one Being who deserves their love most — the One who should have been honored above all others. How often have I met the ungodly man who says, "You talk to me about fearing God! I don't know Him, and I don't concern myself with Him — but I am far better than those who do." He will sometimes say, "Your religion I regard as a complete farce. I think Christians fall into two categories: con artists and fools. They are either deceived by others, or they are deceiving others for their own purposes. All this talk about God, sir, is hollow religion. I'll grant that with some it isn't quite that, but then those people simply lack the intelligence to realize they've been misled. On the whole, the entire thing is nonsense. If people just behave rightly toward their neighbors and do their duty in their station in life, that is enough." There are thousands — indeed hundreds of thousands — in this city of London who consider this sound reasoning. They would be astonished if anyone dared to suggest that such a way of life is anything but the best and most commendable. And yet, if they would only think it through, nothing could be more unsound than their life and its supposed excellence. Here is a person created by God and placed among fellow human beings. Surely the first duty he owes is to his Creator. His very life depends entirely on that Creator's will — so it must be his primary duty to regard the One in whose hands his every breath rests. Yet this man not only refuses to obey his Creator's law or honor God in his daily actions — he turns to his neighbors, who are mere creatures like himself, and says: I will respect you, but not God. Any laws of the state that govern my treatment of you I will obey, but any laws describing my relationship to God I will not consider — except perhaps to mock them. I will be obedient to anyone but God. I will do right by anyone but the Most High. I have a sense of right and wrong, but I will confine it to my relationships with other people. When that sense of right and wrong comes into contact with anything concerning God, I will erase it entirely. Now if there were no God, this man would be reasonable enough. But since there is a God who created us and who will certainly come in the clouds of heaven to call every one of us to account for everything we have done in the body, what do you think the verdict will be for this unfaithful servant? Will he dare say to his King: "I knew You were my Maker and Lord, but I thought that if I served my fellow servants it would be enough. I knew what was right toward them, but I ignored doing anything right toward You"? Shall not the answer come: "You wicked and faithless servant, you knew right from wrong, and yet toward Me — who had the first claim on you — you acted unjustly. While you bowed your neck to others, you would not yield to Me. Depart from Me; I do not know you. You did not know Me, and I do not know you. I weigh you in the balances and find you utterly worthless. You are cast away forever." Ungodly man, if you are here this morning, let this warning sound in your heart as well as your ears. No longer defy your Creator or live in neglect of Him. Instead, say: "I will arise and go to my Father. I will confess that I have forgotten Him and despised Him, and I will seek peace through the blood of Jesus Christ."

3. Further, I will address another kind of person. In every era of the church — and especially today — there are many people who are outwardly religious, but whose religion goes no further than the outward. To some of us it seems astonishing that a person could be living wickedly and yet consider his ways clean because he takes a sacrament or attends a certain place of worship. I confess it strikes me as a very strange thing that intelligent men in this world could know their own conduct is entirely blameworthy and yet feel perfectly at ease because they have diligently observed a chosen set of rituals — as if bowing and scraping, singing or groaning could substitute for holiness of heart. Look at the Pharisee and tell me if he is not a moral wonder. He preys on widows' houses and is ready to exploit everything within reach. He is a detestable hypocrite, and yet the man is perfectly at ease — because he has made the borders of his garments broad, because he fasts twice a week and strains out gnats from his wine. He is quite satisfied with himself, all his ways seem right to him — so right, in fact, that he passes by better men with contempt, careful to protect his own superior standing. He thanks God that he is not like other men, when by any fair judgment he is ten thousand fathoms deeper down in dark damnation through his horribly hypocritical character. And yet, brothers and sisters, some version of this is very common. All the ways of a man seem clean to him once he gets the idea that outward religion, religious talk, or religious profession can compensate for moral sin. This evil may even creep in among ourselves. Let us not be too quick to condemn the Pharisee when the same sin may pollute our own souls. I have known a man counted a sound Calvinist, holding very high doctrine, who lived a very unholy life. He despised "Arminians," as he called them — though some of those despised people lived very close to God and walked in holiness and integrity. The Arminian, poor man, godly as he was, would be lost — or so this self-righteous orthodox man thought. Meanwhile, he himself could drink and cheat, yet believed he would be saved because he had grasped the truth of certain doctrines — doctrines which the devil grasps just as well. I have known another man who prided himself on deep and memorable spiritual experience and could talk at length about the depravity of his heart. Some people thought he should indeed know something about depravity, since he proved it by his life. Yet because he could repeat religious phrases and had picked up rich expressions of spiritual experience from books, he sincerely believed he was not only as good as others but a model for others to follow. Such men will hurl criticism and condemnation at the best and most earnest of saints. They are the men who think wisdom will die with them. Holiness being already dead within them, it is no wonder that wisdom should die too. Take care, then, lest you and I absorb the same spirit in a different form. Preacher, your preaching may be fine and sound and right — it may even edify God's people and stir the unconverted. But remember, God will not judge you by your sermons but by your spirit. He weighs not your words but your motive, your desire, your purpose in preaching the gospel. Deacon of the church, you may have walked honorably for many years and be universally respected, with your office faithfully maintained in all its outward duties. But if your heart is not right — if some secret sin is cherished, if there is a hidden corruption on your profession that only you know about — the Lord who weighs the spirit will count your deaconship for nothing. He will take no account of your carrying the cups and bread at communion; you will be found wanting and cast away. You too, brother elder — your labors and your prayers count for nothing if the heart is evil. You may have visited others, instructed them, and passed judgment on their spiritual state. Still, if you have not served God and His church out of a pure desire for His glory, you too, when placed on the scales, will be rejected with abhorrence. I often pray — and I wish I prayed it more — that none of us here will be talked into thinking we are all right when we are all wrong. It is not your coming to the Tabernacle, not your joining the church, not your being baptized, not your attending prayer meetings, not your doing anything — none of this will matter in the slightest. What matters is truly giving your heart to God and living in conformity with your profession. Unless God's grace is genuinely given to you and actually helps you to do this, your ways may seem clean to you because of your outward profession. But the Lord who weighs the spirits will make short work of these empty bubbles. He will shatter these confections, smash these shams to pieces, and leave the man who should have had a palace over his head for eternity sitting in the ruins of his Babylon — weeping and wailing among dragons and fiends.

4. But moving on — there is another character that must be addressed. "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes" — and so are the ways of the covetous professor.

It is remarkable to many of us that a man whose entire purpose in life is merely to accumulate money — and who withholds what he has from the cause of God — would profess to be a Christian. No vice is more directly opposed to true religion than covetousness. Where in Scripture can you find a single saint who ever fell into covetousness? Into every other sin they have fallen, but I cannot recall one child of God mentioned in Scripture who ever sank into this one. Grace may exist alongside many occasional sins, but never alongside a settled, habitual covetousness. Consider Paul's words: "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor those who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God." Luther used to say, "I have been tempted to every sin but covetousness." He so despised it that he gave away gifts people brought him, lest he accumulate any portion in this world. Adams, in his book on Peter, makes a telling observation: "Noah was once drunk with wine, but never with the world. Lot fell into incest twice, but was never covetous. Peter denied his Master three times, but it was fear of the world, not love of it, that brought him to it. David was once overcome by the flesh, but never by covetousness. Why did these men not purge themselves from adultery, anger, and such things? Because into these sins the infirmities of a saint may fall, but if a man falls into covetousness, there is nothing of a saint left in him — not even the name. Covetousness bears the full brand of God's hatred on its forehead." "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." And when a professor shows love of the world in its crudest form — when he becomes the slave of Mammon, the lowest of the fiends — he gives evidence to all who judge rightly by Scripture that the love of God is not in him and cannot be in him. The two things are incompatible. And yet, strangely, we do know more than a few whose ways seem very clean to them. They squeeze money here and there — now from their servants, now from their customers. The widow and the orphan would not be safe from them if they could pick their bones. What they scrape together is held with an iron grip. Let souls be lost — they will not fund a missionary to reach them. Let London fester with sin, let it be covered with the ulcers of the most terrible depravity — they are never moved to contribute anything toward healing the city's wounds. And yet while their damnation is certain, and their condemnation stares them in the face as plainly as the sun in the sky, their ways seem clean to them. Strange as it is, the Lord weighs the spirits — and what a weighing that will be when those who escaped church discipline, because their sin was not the kind the church could formally deal with, are found guilty before God and cast away. Their claims of having eaten and drunk in God's house will be worthless, for the answer will come: "I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was naked and you did not clothe Me. I was sick and in prison, and you did not minister to Me. Truly I say to you, I do not know you!" Let this truth — for truth it is — pierce like a two-edged sword through the heart of anyone here who is beginning to give in to this damning vice. Cry out to God that as He gives you possessions, you may use them for His glory. Ask Him that you may never perish with a millstone around your neck — for even if that killing weight is made of gold, it will make the drowning no better.

5. Another character must have a word as well: we will now consider the ways of the worldly professor.

It is remarkable how some people who profess religion manage to reconcile their conscience to the way they actually live. You could not find, even with a microscope, any difference between them and ordinary worldlings — and yet they are convinced there is a vast difference, and they would be offended if you did not acknowledge it. Here they come to the house of God today — but what entertainments have they been attending all week? How are they dressed? How are their children being raised? Is there any family prayer? Is there anything in the household that is distinctly Christian? Look at them in their business. Do they not trade in exactly the same way as those who make no religious profession at all? Ask their workers — go and watch them yourself. Can they not tell convenient lies just as easily as others? Are they not, in every respect, as alike to unconverted and unregenerate people as two peas in a pod? And yet their ways seem very clean to them — very clean indeed — and their conscience does not trouble them in the slightest. I have only this one word to say to such people, with all genuine affection and earnest desire that they may be pulled back from this danger: "The Lord will weigh the spirits." He knows the whole of our lives. He will not judge us without evidence. When He comes to the accounting, He will not be like a judge who must first learn the facts of the case. He will come to the final judgment having already seen with those eyes of fire every secret thought and private motive of our lives. God be merciful to us sinners — we may all say that. But God, save us especially from being like the ungodly.

6. Yet another word — and this one is addressed to all who profess faith here, to varying degrees: it is a solemn word about the ways of secure backsliders.

Brothers and sisters, do you not know that very often our ways seem clean to us when they are not? I have learned through painful personal experience that I am not at all qualified to judge my own spiritual health. I have thought myself gradually advancing in the ways of God when I was actually going backward. I have had the thought cross my mind that I had finally overcome a certain besetting sin, only to find to my surprise that it returned with greater force than before. Fellow believer, you may think right now that you are walking very rightly and doing quite well — but let me ask you a few questions. Are you not spending less time in private prayer than you used to? Do you not rush through it now? Do you not sometimes skip it altogether? Do you not often come away from your private prayer time without having truly spoken with God — having merely gone through the form to quiet your conscience? Your way may seem clean, but is it not foul when the mercy seat is being neglected? What about your Bible — is it read as it once was? Are the promises as sweet to you as they used to be? Do they ever seem to rise from the page and speak to you? If your Bible is being neglected, my friend, you may be just as diligent in attending the house of God as ever — but is yours not a sad state of decay? Let me press closer still. Is there the same vitality in your faith that there once was? There are some in this house this morning who, if they could speak, would tell you that when they fell into sin — to their great sorrow — it was because their devotion had been slowly losing its force and life little by little. They have been restored, but their bones still ache where they were broken, and I am sure they would say to their fellow believers: "Guard against letting a gracious spirit evaporate by slow degrees." Watch it carefully, lest you settle on your lees — never being stirred, never poured from vessel to vessel — and gradually grow spiritually numb, and then eventually fall into outright sin. I want to ask some of my friends here a question — one I have asked my own soul and answered with many tears. May not some of us be growing harder in heart toward the salvation of our fellow people? Do we not love less now than we used to those who are crying out to us, "Come over and help us"? Are we not beginning to think of ourselves as seasoned saints? We are no longer the poor sinners we once were. We no longer come broken-heartedly to the mercy seat as we once did. We have begun to judge other Christians, and we think far less of them than we did years ago — when we nearly loved the very ground that God's saints walked on, thinking ourselves less than nothing in their sight. Now if we saw this pattern in others — growing proud, turning cold, hardening in heart — we would say, "They are in great danger." But what about ourselves, if that is exactly our own condition? For my own part, I dread the thought of coming to this pulpit merely to preach because the time has come and I must fill an hour or an hour and a half of worship. I dread becoming a mere preaching machine without my heart and soul being genuinely engaged in this solemn duty. And I dread the same for you, my dear friends who hear me regularly — lest attending these services becomes a mere routine, and you sit in your seats at certain times each week, patiently enduring the noise I make in your ears. We must have vital godliness. That vitality must be maintained. The force and energy of our faith must keep growing day by day. Otherwise, though our ways may seem very clean, the Lord will soon weigh our spirits — to our eternal shame. You should know that when the Lord weighs His own people in fatherly discipline, it is sobering work. He can reveal our true weight to our own conscious awareness — and when we imagined we weighed pounds, He can show us we barely reach ounces. "There," He says, "see what you are!" He begins to strip away the veil of self-conceit, and we see the wretchedness and falsehood of our nature and are utterly dismayed. Or perhaps the Lord does something even harder. He allows a temptation to come when we least expect it, and then the evil boils up within us. We who thought we were practically among the angels find ourselves near kin to the demons — surprised that such a wild beast was sleeping in the den of our hearts. And yet we should have known it was always there. We should have walked humbly with God, and watched, and guarded ourselves. Be assured, dear friends, that great falls and terrible disasters never come to a Christian all at once. They are the work of slow, gradual degrees. Be assured also that you may glide along smooth waters and never dream of the Niagara ahead — yet be speeding toward it all the same. A terrible crash may yet come to the most prominent professor among us, one that will make the world ring with blasphemy against God and fill the church with bitter grief because the mighty have fallen. God will keep His own — but what if I should turn out not to be His own? He will keep the feet of His saints — but what if I stop watching, my feet are not kept, and I turn out to be no saint of His at all? What if I have only been an intruder into His family, a pretender who never actually had what he claimed? O God, through Christ Jesus, deliver each of us from this.

VII. Had time not failed me, I intended to speak about the seventh and last character — namely, the ways of the deceived man.

There are no doubt many in the world who will never discover that the ways they thought so clean are all foul until they enter another world. There are some who are Christians in every respect but one: they do not have true faith in Jesus. There are others who appear to be saved, but have never truly been born again. There are many who have everything except the one thing needful — and who believe they have that too, and convince others they have it. How close a person may come to being a Christian and yet miss salvation is difficult to say. But certainly he may come so close that no human being — nor even the angels of God — can tell the difference between him and a saved soul. Only God will discern the difference when He comes to weigh the spirits.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. It is this: let us come, all of us, to a place of confession of sin and acknowledge that we have broken God's law and deserve His just displeasure. With the help of His Holy Spirit — who is the Spirit of supplication — let us confess the depravity of our nature and the error of our hearts. Let us pray that instead of thinking our ways clean, we may know them to be foul. May we mourn over them, and learn to see them as God sees them — as crooked and wrong in themselves, nothing to boast of, but things to be remembered with shame and humility. Blessed is the one who is freed from any rejoicing in himself. Happy is the man who sees no trace of soundness in his own flesh — who feels that the leprosy of sin has covered him inside and out, from head to foot. And brothers and sisters, if we reach such deep humility of spirit, the next word is this: let us go together to the great salvation that God has provided in the person of Christ Jesus. Come, linking hand in hand — saint and sinner alike, all of us now consciously sinners — and let us stand and behold where sin has pierced the body of the blessed Substitute with those bleeding wounds. Let us read the lines of grief written on that blessed face. Let us gaze into the depths of His soul, filled with an ocean of anguish, lashed by a tempest of suffering. Let us believe that He suffered in our place, and so roll our sin and our sinfulness onto Him. Jesus, receive a sinner — a poor sinner still. Though these twenty years I have known Your name, yet still a sinner I come to You, the chief of sinners! Brothers and sisters, I am certain we are never safer, never healthier, never in a better condition than when we are flat on the ground before the cross. When you feel yourself to be utterly unworthy, you have hit the truth. When you think you are doing well and are rich and flourishing, you are in fact poor, naked, and miserable. But when you are consciously weak and sinful, then you are rich. When you are weak, you are strong. O God, save us from letting our ways seem clean in our own sight. May we weigh our spirits by the help of Your Spirit, and condemn ourselves, so that we will not be condemned by the Lord.

The Lord bless you richly and freely for His name's sake. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before sermon — Psalm 51.