lurking beneath the stones, and they are none the less poisonous because
they live and multiply in the dark. 'I know nothing against myself, yet
am I not hereby justified. But he that judgeth me is the Lord.'

II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to look at the special perilousness of
these hidden faults.

As with a blight upon a rose-tree, the little green creatures lurk on
the underside of the leaves, and in all the folds of the buds, and
because unseen, they increase with alarming rapidity. The very fact that
we have faults in our characters, which everybody sees but ourselves,
makes it certain that they will grow unchecked, and so will prove
terribly perilous. The small things of life are the great things of
life. For a man's character is made up of them, and of their results,
striking inwards upon himself. A wine-glassful of water with one drop of
mud in it may not be much obscured, but if you come to multiply it into
a lakeful, you will have muddy waves that reflect no heavens, and show
no gleaming stars.

These secret faults are like a fungus that has grown in a wine-cask,
whose presence nobody suspected. It sucks up all the generous liquor to
feed its own filthiness, and when the staves are broken, there is no
wine left, nothing but the foul growth. Many a Christian man and woman
has the whole Christian life arrested, and all but annihilated, by the
unsuspected influence of a secret sin. I do not believe it would be
exaggeration to say that, for one man who has made shipwreck of his
faith and lost his peace by reason of some gross transgression, there
are twenty who have fallen into the same condition by reason of the
multitude of small ones. 'He that despiseth little things shall fall by
little and little'; and whilst the deeds which the Ten Commandments