May 12

"The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones."—Isaiah 9:10.

IT was difficult to convince these Israelites that they were sinners. Driven from one refuge, they took shelter in another. The bricks are fallen, they said, but we will build with hewn stone.

So I have many subterfuges and coverings for my guilt. Convicted on one indictment, I shape for myself another plea. Forced back from the outer walls, I retreat into the citadel. God finds it hard to humble me.

My imagination paints the ugly thing in fair colours, as the parents of my race hid themselves from God's face among the green leaves and the bright flowers of Paradise. The customs and fashions of the day blind me to my peril, as there were mourners in the Middle Ages who concealed their grief under a dress of purple and gold. The whirl of business dulls the discords and tumults within me, as in the midst of the hot battle the soldier forgets his mortal wound. The round of gaiety and pleasure absorbs me, as sometimes the inhabitants of a plague-stricken city give themselves up to recklessness and riot. My blameless creed and my religious observances hinder me from seeing the leprosy that is eating into my life, as the broad phylacteries and the long prayers of the Pharisees prevented them from confessing that they were whited sepulchres.

Thus, when the bricks are fallen, I build with hewn stone; and when the sycamores are cut down, I change them into cedars. But from all my false refuges may God with loving severity and invincible sweetness drive me—drive me into true self-knowledge, and lowly penitence, and His own everlasting arms.