[3] Is there anything more terrible than a false confidence? It is an awful thing to wake up and find that what we have been trusting in is rotten. To embark gaily in a ship that on mid-ocean proves to be worm-eaten, and leaky; for a man who believed himself to be wealthy to receive tidings that the failure of a bank has made him a beggar; for a sick man rejoicing in the cessation of his pain to be told by his physician that that is due only to the setting in of mortification that precedes death;--what horrible disappointments are these! But what poor and faint image they furnish of the horror of that man who lives in a state of delusion as to his spiritual condition, who dies in peace, imagining falsely that he is Christ's, and who, when he has traversed the valley of the shadow of death--when he has reached that point from which there is no return, finds that the doors of heaven are shut against him, discovers that he is shrouded by thick darkness, and begins to feel the fires of hell kindling upon him! Can you picture to yourself his astonishment, his terror, his despair? Do not tell me that such a case is not conceivable--Christ declares that such cases are frequent (Matt. vii. 21-25). [4] "Examine yourselves:" A metaphor from metal, that is pierced through to see if it be gold within. Self-examination is a spiritual inquisition set up in one's soul: a man must search his heart for sin as one would search a house for a traitor: or as Israel sought for leaven to burn it.--_Watson,_ 1696. This duty of examining and proving supposes that there is some sure standard, which if we go by, we are sure not to be deceived. Not that rule is the Word of God. But as in matters of doctrine men have left the Scripture, the sure rule, and taken up antiquity, universality, tradition, and the like for their pride, and by this means have fallen into the ditch; so in matters of godliness, when we should try ourselves according to the characters and signs that the Scripture deciphers, we take up principles in the world, the applause of others, the conversation of most in the world. And thus it is with us as men in an hospital, because every one is either wounded or lame, or some way diseases, therefore none are offensive to each other.--_Burgess._ Men compare themselves with men, and readily with the worst, and flatter themselves with that comparative betterness. This is not the way to see spots, to look into the muddy streams of profane men's lives; but look into the clear fountain of the Word, and there we may both discern and wash them; and consider the infinite holiness of God, and this will humble us to the dust.--_Leighton,_ 1611-1684.