And let us first fix our minds upon something which at first sight seems so simple, but yet seems to have struck every generation of statesmen as a thing almost supernatural--and that is _her marvellous truthfulness_. Said a great statesman, "She is the most perfectly truthful being I have ever met." "Perfect sincerity" is the description of another. Now what that must have meant to England, for generation after generation of statesmen to have had at the centre of the empire a truthful person, a person who never used intrigue, who never was plotting or planning, or working behind the backs of those who were responsible to advise her--to have had someone perfectly sincere to deal with in the great things of state--that is something which must be left for the historian who chronicles the Victorian era thoroughly to paint. No, my friends, our task now is far simpler: it is to ask what is the secret of this marvellous truthfulness, can we obtain it ourselves, and does God demand it? Let us take the last question first, and we take it first because it is the question directly answered in our text. The answer is given by someone who understood human nature, by someone who had sinned, had been forgiven, had been roused out of the conventionalities of life by a great experience, who had looked out of the door of his being and had seen God. And he tells us, as the result of his experience, and as the basis of his repentance, these words "Behold, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts." It is one thing to say words which, understood in a certain sense, are true, it is one thing to avoid direct breaches in our action of the law of honour, but it is another thing to be in ourselves absolutely sincere, to look up into the eyes of God, as a truthful child looks up into the eyes of its mother, to possess our own hearts like a flawless gem, with nothing to hide, nothing to keep back, and nothing to be ashamed of--that is to have truth in the inward parts, and that is what God demands. It is what He found in Christ, one of the things which made Him say time after time, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased"; He found ever reflecting back His Face as He looked down upon Him a perfectly sincere Person, true through and through. That was the secret of His marvellous influence, that was why little children came and crept under the ample folds of His love, that was why young men came and told Him their secrets, that was why everybody, except the bad, felt at home with Him, that was why women were at their best with Him, that was why Herod the worldly found he could not flatter Him, and Pilate the coward found Him devoid of fear; it was because right through, not only in His words and actions, but in His being He not only had, but He was, Truth in the inward parts. And it is because our Queen, with her simple and beautiful faith in her Saviour, caught from childhood this attribute of her Lord,