involuntary or ignorant--and deliberate sins; providing atonement for
the former, not for the latter. The word in my text rendered 'errors' is
closely connected with that which in the Levitical system designates the
former class of transgressions; and the connection between the two
clauses of the text, as well as that with the subsequent verse,
distinctly shows that the 'secret faults' of the one clause are
substantially synonymous with the 'errors' of the other.

They are, then, not sins hidden from men, whether because they have been
done quietly in a corner, and remain undetected, or because they have
only been in thought, never passing into act. Both of these pages are
dark in every man's memory. Who is there that could reveal himself to
men? who is there that could bear the sight of a naked soul? But the
Psalmist is thinking of a still more solemn fact, that, beyond the range
of conscience and consciousness, there are evils in us all. It may do us
good to ponder his discovery that he had undiscovered sins, and to take
for ours his prayer, 'Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.'

I. So I ask you to look with me, briefly, first, at the solemn fact
here, that there are in every man sins of which the doer is unaware.

It is with our characters as with our faces. Few of us are familiar with
our own appearance, and most of us, if we have looked at our portraits,
have felt a little shock of surprise, and been ready to say to
ourselves, 'Well! I did not know that I looked like that!' And the bulk
even of good men are almost as much strangers to their inward
physiognomy as to their outward. They see themselves in their
looking-glasses every morning, although they 'go away and forget what
manner of men' they were. But they do not see their true selves in the
same fashion in any other mirror. It is the very characteristic of all