OUR aptness to deceive ourselves proceeds entirely from self-love. If it was not that we love ourselves better than our neighbour, we should be as quick-sighted to our own faults as we are to his. But self-love blinds us. As parents are blind to the blemishes of their children, and skreen them often under harmless names, so are we blind to our faults, and have a thousand excuses for them, which neither shew their nature nor our guilt, but merely our own self-love.Perhaps all your neighbours' know you lead a sottish life you spend much of your time, and much of your money, in company and liquor : you lose your business, as few people care to have dealings with a man who can be so little depended on: your family suffers: in short, you have made yourself a very contemptible fellow. Yet still you stand high in your own esteem. You have your excuses always ready. Perhaps you can afford to spend your money, so that you injure nobody but yourself; as if the kinder God is to you, the more right you have to squander what he gives. Or perhaps, though you may have been sometimes guilty of a little excess, yet it has been very seldom, and never without a good reason you were fatigued, and wanted a little H 3 little refreshment; or, you just stepped in to talk with a neighbour on business; or, in short, there was something which makes your offence very trifling in your own eyes, though the real cause was neither more nor less than a love for liquor; and every body sees it but yourself. you Again, it is suspected that you have not always been quite so honest as you should have been ; that your bargains have not always been fair and open; that you have sometimes endeavoured to over-reach a neighbour secretly, where you knew the law could not touch you; that you have taken the advantage of the ignorance of a purchaser, to charge more than you knew your commodity was worth; that you have praised the commodity you sold for qualities which well knew it did not possess. Now, though you know all this to be true, you will probably lessen it in your own eyes, by a thousand little shuffling excuses. Let the purchaser (you may suggest to yourself) mind his business; I mind mine: I do not impose upon him, he imposes on himself: he should examine what he buys; I am not to teach him his business: am I to be both buyer and seller?- there is an art in every thing. there is an art of buying, and an art of selling; and a man must live by his art. By such selfdeceit you can easily impose on yourself; but how are your evasions overturned by one plain question, which an honest conscience would suggest! Suppose a person should treat you in this way? Suppose he should sell you an unsound beast for a sound one, or a piece of damaged goods for what ought to have been perfect, and allege all the excuses which you have just alleged, would you be imposed upon by them? Would you, in short, call him an honest man; or would not you be more inclined, as I verily suppose you would, to think him, with all his fine excuses, an arrant knave? You see then, my brethren, how self-love imposes on us, and makes the same thing, or nearly the same thing, appear trifling in ourselves, which appeared so offensive in our neighbour. You see how difficult it is for any one to say to himself, Thou art the man; though each of us is ready enough to condemn an offending brother. LET me then now, as I proposed, secondly, shew you the great danger of such self-deceit : as it consists in keeping us ignorant of ourselves, we may be wicked, and yet suppose ourselves innocent. But it is not ignorance of our own state, my brethren, that makes us innocent: the state of our souls is balanced like the state of our accounts. It is not merely taking it for granted, that we are in good circumstances that makes us so; we may be involved in debt, for any thing we know, unless we look into our affairs; just so with our souls—if we keep no account between what we do and what we ought to do, the balance, no doubt, may often be on thewrong side. In travelling in the night along dangerous roads, suppose a man could possess himself, through some fool-hardiness or self-deceit, that he was safe, would that, think you, make him safe? If he knew nothing of the ground he trod, nor of the precipices and pits which he approached, in the midst of his fancied security he might be on the brink of ruin. This is just the case of our souls, if we live in self-deceit : we must feel our way we must examine the state of our souls by the rules of the Gospel, or we shall never see our danger while we live, and may die in a kind of guilty security. I do not speak here, observe, of hardened, abandoned sinners they are out of the question; but of those who lead only careless, deluded lives-who can : can see every body's faults but their own: it is not only the man who commits murder and adultery, and never repents, that is in a dangerous condition; sin of all kinds, is more or less dangerous if it be not great in itself, yet multiplied, it becomes great; or it certainly leads to something great, if it be not examined and checked. People, in their worldly affairs, when they find a single farthing wrong, if they are thorough masters of their business, are never at rest till they find the mistake, knowing that one error, though slight, may produce errors that are great. Would to God we were but half as much in earnest in our spiritual affairs. Our forgotten farthings, one should hope, God would pardon; but it is much to be feared, that among the best of us, there is many a pound in our spiritual accounts totally forgotten. SINCE then the danger of self-deceit is so great, let us take the best means we can to prevent it. This was the last point I proposed to consider. As self-love is the great cause of this deceit, let us endeavour to leave ourselves, as much as possible, out of all our actions; and see how those |