14. A Looking-glass for Faults

A Looking-glass for Faults

You can see great faults in others, but, my dear brother, be sure to look in the looking-glass every morning, and you will see quite as many faults, or else your eyes are weak. If that looking-glass were to show you your own heart you would never dare look again. I fear you would even break the glass.

Old John Berridge, as old as he was good, had a number of pictures of different ministers round his room, and he had a looking-glass in a frame to match. He would often take a friend into the room and say, "That is Calvin, that is John Bunyan," and when he took him up to the looking-glass he would add, "and that is the devil."

"Why," the friend would say, "it is myself!" "Ah," said he, "there is the devil in us all." Being so imperfect, we ought not to condemn.