SERMON XX.

SECRET FAULTS.

Psalm xix. 12. Who can understand his errors? from secret faults.

Cleanse thou me

SECRET FAULTS.-Men are usually much less anxious to be free from them than they are to be restrained from open transgression. Yet, they enter deeply into the character, and will enter into the future judgment. It is important, therefore, that we should understand our own secret propensities to evil; and important that we should urge, with fervor and sincerity, the petition of the text, "Cleanse thou me from secret faults."

The following points will be considered in illustrating this subject:

I. What are secret faults;

II. By what means they are concealed; and,

III. Why should we desire and pray to be delivered from them?

I. What are secret faults? They stand opposed to open and "presumptuous transgressions;" to such as are seen and known by the world. They pertain to the motives, the feelings, the intentions of the heart. They relate particularly to such sins as the following:

(1.) To the secret bias of the heart to evil. There may be what may be called latent guilt; a propensity of the soul to sin which has never been developed, and of which, except in the feeblest degree, we may be scarcely conscious ourselves. Many a parent is surprised to see his son, in some new situation in life, evince a propensity to some form of vice which he had never suspected. The reason was, that he was not before placed in a situation to develop the peculiar depravity of his heart. Many a man discovers a propensity to evil suddenly springing up in his own soul, which is equally surprising to himself and to his friends. To his own amazement, he finds himself suddenly growing covetous, or ambitious, or proud, and

wonders at the extraordinary power which the apparently new-born propensity has over his mind. The reason is, that the strong native inclination of his soul has not before been in circumstances to develop itself. It has been held in check and abeyance, and no opportunity has occurred where he could act out his nature. No man knows what latent propensities to evil there may be in the soul, until he has been thrown into a variety of circumstances fitted to test his character, and show him what he is. The human heart is a great deep. No line has been found long enough to sound it; and as it is in regard to the bottom of the ocean, so no one has fully told us what lies buried in the depths of the soul of man.

(2.) Secret faults consist of the unholy thoughts which we intend no other person shall know. Some of those are usually of so gross a character, that the great body of persons at once reject them, and strive to be free from them. But others are such as the mind indulges in, with little effort to remove them, and with little sense of their evil. They go materially into the formation of the character as it is seen by God, and as it is ultimately developed before men, but they are often long indulged before there is any very decided effort to remove them, or any very deep conviction that they are evil. Most unconverted minds are in the habit of indulging in trains of thought which they would by no means be willing that the world should know of, and not a few such thoughts are suffered to pass through the minds of those who are professedly of pure life, which they are anxious to conceal from their fellow-men. Few, indeed, are the hearts that would bear the revolution of its workings for a single day without exciting a blush; and few are the inhabitants of this world, if there are any, who would be willing that their secret views, and thoughts, and plans, for any considerable period of their lives, should be laid open before their best friends.

(3.) Secret faults are those sinful emotions and affections which rise up in the best hearts almost involuntarily, and against which a mind wishing to be pure struggles. They are the operations of a nature deeply depraved. They are the streams that flow forth from the corrupt fountain, the heart. They are the result of former habits

of thinking, and of the former course of life. There is much in habit, whether for good or evil, which we cannot understand. Essentially we mean by it the facility for doing any thing which results from having often done it; and when once a man has acquired the habit of sinning, it will follow him and annoy him until contrary habits are formed. A man who has been in the habit of profaneness, will long after find the words of blasphemy rising in his mind almost involuntarily and irresistibly. He who has been an infidel, will find infidel thoughts and associations torturing his peace for years after he becomes a true Christian. He who has been proud, and irritable, and selfish, and stubborn, and self-confident, and fault-finding, and censorious before his conversion, will find a constant tendency to these sins afterwards, and will detect himself in their indulgence almost before he is aware of it. He who was covetous or avaricious before his conversion, will find the mighty remains of these sins in his heart after he becomes a Christian, and will be subjected to their secret operation, even when his general course of life is that of a man of benevolence. We are beset with two classes of evils-there is the evil of our original bias to transgress-the powerful tendency with which we came into the world; and there is the evil arising from long indulgence in habits of sin. He who commences the Christian life in youth, will have the least trouble from either of these sources; he who is converted at middle or advanced life must expect a furious warfare that shall cease only at death.

(4.) Secret faults include those plans of evil which are not prosecuted to their completion. They are formed, and there is an intention of executing them, but the opportunity does not occur; or some unexpected barrier is thrown in the way; or the heart fails; or death breaks up the scheme. Of all the plans of evil that have been formed on earth, but a small proportion have ever been executed; and great as is the aggregate of iniquity, the amount would have been much more vast if all the purposes of wickedness had been accomplished as was desired by their projectors. Bad as the world is, and much occasion as there is to mourn over it, yet but little of the evil that has in fact existed has appeared to any but

to the all-seeing eye of God. This is one reason why his estimate of the human character in the Bible, seems to be so much more severe than that which men form. He looks upon the heart; sees all the unexecuted plans of evil; knows what man would do if he were unrestrained; and forms his view of the human character from what he sees in the secret chambers of the soul, and will judge men according to that.

In speaking of secret faults, I might go on to speak of the crimes that are perpetrated in darkness; of those which escape the eye of the most vigilant police; of those which have been committed and which are forgotten; and of those which are perpetrated under the specious name of virtue, and which pass for virtue among men. But the enumeration already given will furnish an idea of what I mean, and will prepare the way for considering the propriety of prayer for deliverance from them in another part of this discourse. I proceed, therefore, to show,

II. In the second place, some of the ways in which sin is concealed, or in which our faults are hid from detection, so that they remain unknown to others.

(1.) I begin with observing that men design to conceal them. A power to hide our purposes is essential to the existence of society, and grows out of its very organization. The body becomes the shield of the soul to guard our plans from the observation of other minds, and to bury our thoughts from the notice of all but the Omniscient Eye. It becomes a right which every man has, to conceal those of his plans in his own bosom which he is unwilling the world should know. This power we hold for good. It is essential often to the accomplishment of our virtuous purposes, which would be defeated if we could not hide them from others; it is vital to the performance of contemplated deeds of benevolence-for if the wicked could. see them they would often defeat them. It constitutes individuality in the midst of society, that we are known only so far as we wish to be known; and that we may walk among thousands and be the depositories of our own secrets, and keep our individual aims hidden from the world.

The power of concealment is, therefore, originally an

arrangement for good. But it may be abused for purposes of evil; and my observation now is, that a large part of the plans of wickedness in this world are concealed of design. There is a course of discipline in vice to accomplish this, and it is often successful. God has placed in the human frame by nature certain indications of secret guilt; and he meant that where that guilt existed it should betray itself for the well-being of society. He designed not only that the conscience should check the offender, but he implanted in the frame itself, certain indications. of guilt which he intended also to be a safeguard of virtue. The blushing cheek-the mysterious rush of blood there which no man can account for except on the supposition that there is a moral government and a God-he intended should be an index of guilt-and in a novice in iniquity it is so. The eye-tremulous, and abashed, and turning away he intended, should betray the secret wickedness of the soul-a fact also which no one can account for except on the supposition that there is a God. The trembling frame, the hand palsied by the consciousness of crime when raised to commit a deed of wickedness, he designed should reveal the guilty purpose of the soul. See a brow calm, and an eye serene, and a frame composed, and a hand steady, and a walk erect and firm, and you are struck with the indications of conscious innocence. The reverse indicates guilt. Now, one great art in this world is to obliterate the natural marks of guilt from the human frame, and to counterfeit the indications of innocence. The object is so to train the eye that it will not reveal the secret conviction of crime; so to discipline the cheek that it will betray the guilty by a sudden rush of blood there; so to fortify the hand and the frame that they will not by trembling disclose the purposes of the soul. One of the first lessons which the guilty attempt to learn is this; a lesson most difficult, and yet sometimes learned with great skill. That young man when he leaves his father's house to go to the theatre or to the gambling room, or to associate with the vile, begins at once to study how he may control his eye and his cheek, as well as his words, in such a manner that they will not betray him. -Nature would reveal the deed as soon as he comes into the presence of his father or mother, if he would allow