But when one hears a man always talking about his own sinfulness, one suspects—and from experience one has only too much reason to suspect—that he is simply saying in a civil way, ‘I am a better man than you; for I talk about my sinfulness, and you do not.’ For if you answer such a man, as old Job or David would have done, ‘I will not confess what I have not felt. I have tried and am trying to be an upright, respectable, sober, right-living man. Let God judge me according to the innocency that is in me. I know that I am not perfect: no man is that: but I will not cant; I will not be a hypocrite; and if I accuse myself of sins which I have not committed, it seems to me that I shall be mocking God, and deceiving myself. I will trust to God to judge me fairly, to balance between the good and the evil which is in me, and deal with me accordingly.’ If you speak in that way, the other man will answer you plainly enough, ‘Ah! you are utterly benighted. You are building on legality and morality. You have not yet learnt the first principles of the Gospel.’ And with these, and other words, will give you to understand this—That he thinks he is going to heaven, and you are going to hell. Now, my dear friends, you are partly right, and he is partly right. St. Paul will show you where you are right and where he is right. He does so, I think, in a certain noble text of his in which he says, ‘I judge not mine own self; for I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord.’ Now remember that no man was less self-righteous than St. Paul. No man ever saw more clearly the sinfulness of sin. No man ever put into words so strongly the struggle between good and evil which goes on in the human heart. In one place, even, when speaking of his former life, he calls himself the chief of sinners. Yet St. Paul, when he had done his duty, knew that he had done it, and was not afraid to say—as no honest and upright man need be afraid to say—‘I know nothing against myself.’ For if you have done right, my friend, it is God who has helped you to do it; and it is difficult to see how you can honour God, by pretending instead that he has left you to do wrong.