How Self-Examination is Possible

“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?”—2 Corinthians xiii. 5.

The etymology of the word “reprobate” is not generally present to our minds when we use it. But it is better preserved in the dialect of common life than in that of theologians. When we speak of a man being an utter reprobate, we mean that various experiments have been made for his reformation, and that all have failed. He has been proved and found worthless. Divines, at least of one school, have given the word quite a different, almost an opposite, signification. They have supposed a reprobate to be one whom God has sentenced without trying or proving him; one who comes into the world with a mark of condemnation stamped upon him, which is known from the first to his Maker, is gradually discovered to himself, finally is declared to the Universe.

Our translators have not adopted this sense of the word in their version of my text. It is evident that they have adhered strictly to the etymology. For no considerate person can doubt that they intended “reprobate,” in one clause of this sentence, to correspond with “prove” in the other. So they have made an ingenious attempt to express the relation between the words δοκιμάζετε and ἀδόκιμοι in the original. There can be no doubt, I think, that we must try to preserve that relation if we would preserve the sense of the passage. And the more we reflect on the other applications of the word ἀδόκιμος by St. Paul, the more, I think, we shall perceive how much justification they had for the force which they have given it here. The ground which has often drunk in the rain, and has brought forth nothing but briars and thorns, is called in the Epistle to the Hebrews ἀδόκιμος. St. Paul keeps his body in subjection, lest, having preached to others, he himself should become ἀδόκιμος. Those who will not retain God in their knowledge are said, in the Epistle to the Romans, to be given over εἰς ἀδόκιμον νοῦν. In all these cases there has been a trial; the result is worthlessness. Only you will perceive that the result corresponds to the nature of the thing on which the experiment is made. The ground is found to be barren: that is a natural thing. That which answers to barrenness in a moral being is incapacity of discernment; the loss of power to prove himself. This further sense must not be forgotten in the text before us.

I. We shall forget it if we are not observant of the Apostle’s first words. If we substitute for the command, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith,” this: “Examine yourselves, whether ye have a right to be in the faith,” we shall alter the passage vitally and essentially. St. Paul does not say to the Corinthians: “Examine yourselves, whether you have passed through certain states of feeling and experience which entitle you to call yourselves Christians or Believers. See whether you have that in your minds which gives you a warrant to claim the privileges which you profess to claim for yourselves in your Baptism.” But he says: “Try yourselves,—bring yourselves to the strictest inquiry,—whether you are actually claiming these privileges, whether you are believing that which you say you believe.” This would appear to be the natural signification of the words, “if you are in the faith.” The Corinthians would have some cause to complain of the Apostle for misleading them in a most serious matter, if he meant them to understand that perhaps after all they would be wrong in applying to themselves the truths and the promises which they heard of in the Gospel of Christ. He had said, in all his discourses, what he said in the lesson this evening: “God had sent forth His Son, made of a Woman, made under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of Sons.” If the Corinthians were to examine whether these words excluded or comprehended them,—whether they were within or without the circle of that adoption which had so deep and wide a ground,—he should surely have given them some hints for carrying on the inquiry; he should have told them in what way they were to ascertain the limitations of words which sounded so universal; how they were to know who were cut off from blessings which he had spent his life in declaring to be intended for men of all races and kindreds, of all intellectual conditions, of all moral conditions. And he should not have used the words, “Examine yourselves.” He should have said, “Examine the terms of God’s covenant, to discover the flaws in it, to see whether you do not come under some of the exemptions from its general amnesty, whether you are really admitted to the condition of citizens, and not on some plea or other still retained as bondmen.” And then he should have shown them how, if their examination ended in the discovery that they were not within the range of the Divine Mercy and help, they were to bring forth any of the fruits which he called them to bring forth, seeing that, according to his uniform teaching, they must have faith in God, and He must work in them, in order that they might bring forth these fruits. If the trial issued in the conviction that they were in a most evil moral state, how were they ever to be raised out of it? What hand was to help them, if the longest and most careful consideration led them to feel that God’s Hand was not held out to them—that they stood in no relation to Him at all?

All these extravagant contradictions, which, monstrous as they are in logic, are far more so in experience and in their moral effect, proceed, you perceive, not from construing St. Paul’s words literally, but from fearing to do so, from unwillingness to take them and obey them just as they stand. If he desired them to understand, as you would suppose he did, that they ought to be in the faith, that it was their duty to call upon God as their Father, and to acknowledge themselves as His children, the Apostle is at least consistent with himself. The Prophets of old had told the Jews that they were continually forgetting the Covenant of their God, distrusting Him Who had called them to trust Him. All Jewish history, the Apostle had told the Corinthians, was an ensample to them, upon whom the ends of the world had come. They were as liable to forget the new and better Covenant, as their forefathers were to forget the inferior one. They were as likely to think that they were not the children of God, as those who were under the Law that they were not His servants. The consequences would be the same in kind, worse in degree,—heartlessness, idolatry, division, self-exaltation, alternating with despondency. It was most needful for them to examine themselves, whether they were getting into this state of indifference and forgetfulness, to see whether outward as well as inward tokens did not show that it was creeping upon them, whether they were not conscious of a continual and growing degeneracy, whether the loss of brotherly feelings towards men did not accompany the loss of filial feelings towards God.

Such a trial would be, in the strictest sense, one of themselves, not of God’s words or deeds, for it presumed these to have the largest, freest, most gracious signification. Not of other men, of whose inner state they could know very little, but of their own very selves. And this was the more abundantly necessary from the very nature of God’s New Covenant, and of the relation in which it said they stood to Him. For it was to themselves, to their spirits, that He had spoken, with these He had established His intercourse and fellowship. He had redeemed them from the dominion of visible things, that He might set up His Kingdom within them.

II. Therefore St. Paul goes on: “Or know ye not your own selves, that Christ is in you?” I am afraid that many readers of our version suppose that this question has no direct connection with the previous command, and that your own selves is not here in the accusative, as it was before, but in the nominative. Such a separation, still more such a construction, would be fatal to the sense of the passage.

The Apostle has been speaking of self-examination; now he speaks of the self-knowledge which justifies that examination, which makes it a reasonable, a possible exercise. Let me dwell a little on this subject; it is one of personal interest to us all, and one which has caused infinite perplexity, at least to many of us.

If we take up almost any religious book,—especially any book which is written to assist us in turning the season of Lent to good account,—we meet with exhortations to the duty of self-examination, and with certain rules or hints which are to assist us in performing it. Our consciences bear witness to the reasonableness of the admonition; we feel that we are liable to the most grievous moral falls if we are not watching our steps; that we are not claiming the dignity of spiritual beings, if we are ignorant of the acts and movements of our own spirits. We cannot deny that the suggestions which are offered us are the fruit of much experience, and must be valuable to us if we could avail ourselves of them. But when we make the effort, this terrible contradiction is forced upon us. We commence this task that we may be honest, and yet it seems to involve us in dishonesty. In the trial we are affecting to conduct, are not plaintiff, defendant, witnesses, judge, all one? Are we really proving ourselves, really passing judgment on ourselves? Are we not continually bribed to overlook acts which require distinct and solemn condemnation? Do we not indulge much remorse for trifles that ought not to occupy us? Are we not losing our sense of the distinction between right and wrong,—are we not learning to magnify, to reduce,—to distort, through the very process which we are told is the security for our seeing objects in their just proportions?

And then another doubt occurs. Is this self-consciousness a good thing? Does it not hinder action, destroy energy? Does it not cultivate a habit of mawkishness, an indelicate desire to expose the most secret passages of our souls, even to the public gaze? The rage for that kind of confession is not perhaps as great in England now as it was some years ago, though it is by no means extinct. But in how many other ways do men testify that they feel this self-consciousness to be a disease which will destroy them if they cannot be cured of it! What numbers does it bring to the feet of the spiritual director! How it tempts others into speculations about the “I” and the “not I,” when the “I” means every one except the person who is playing with the philosophical puzzle, and the “not I” nothing at all! What multitudes, who find comfort in neither of these expedients, try, in a whirl of business or of pleasure, to become torpid, to lose the pressure of life in a dance of death!

I dare not deny that there is a Self-Consciousness, cultivated not unfrequently by religious as well as philosophical teachers, by religious as well as philosophical books, which has this evil character, and leads to these evil results. But I believe that that Self-Consciousness is the very opposite of the Self-Knowledge which has been said to descend from Heaven, and that the Self-Knowledge which St. Paul speaks of in the text is the one effectual deliverance from it. The old Greek teacher thought that he could only extricate his young fellow-citizens from the philosophical webs which had been spun about them, and which were entangling their consciences as well as their intellects, by leading them to Self-Knowledge. The path in which he led them was through questionings about common things, and the words they were using continually. But he believed that he had only risen to any knowledge himself by the aid of an ever-present demon, whom he could not confound with himself, who was his faithful monitor, telling him of his dangers, rebuking him for his follies; who was showing him how he might rise above accidents and circumstances, and his own narrow conceptions, and embrace that which is and which abides. That faith appears to have given sincerity to his own mind, and power over others. For they too, he was sure, must have such a guide; if they tried to act rightly, they would find that they had.

This faith of Socrates, if it was as true as the simplicity and manliness of his own life and death prove it to have been, demands an expounder. Who can tell us of this unseen guide? Who can say what he has done and is doing and would do for each of us? Who can inform us whether he cares only for some favoured individuals, or for the race? St. Paul boldly meets the demands. He speaks out the Name of the invisible Lord and Teacher of his own spirit; he says to each man, “He is the Lord and Teacher of thy spirit.” He says that He has come into the world, and taken the nature of men upon Him, and died the death of men, and risen from the dead as Man, and ascended on high as Man, and is ever living as Man at the right hand of God. He says to the Corinthians, “Know ye not your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?”

Here is the true Self-Knowledge; here is that which makes Self-Examination a reality and not a fiction. The Plaintiff, the Defendant, and the Judge are now not the same. A Judge is standing at the doors of our hearts, Who can discern the thoughts and intents of those hearts; Who is acquainted with our most solitary acts, with our most secret thoughts; Who can distinguish with clear infallible insight the precious from the vile, the treacherous from the sincere; Who desires that we should distinguish them: Who is inspiring us continually with love for the one, with hatred of the other. If we confess Him as our Lawgiver and Judge, we confess One Who cannot be misled by any pretensions, Who will never yield to our self-flatteries; but Who has no wish to condemn us, Who never charges us with wrong but that He may show us the way out of it; never shows us that we are fallen, without helping to raise us up; never convinces us that we are sunk in death, without setting before us the promise and assurance of Life.

Therefore St. Paul uses very singular and striking language on the subject of Self-Consciousness, when he is declaring to us the relation in which we stand to Christ. He speaks of dying to ourselves, of our rising again as new creatures in Him. He does not represent this death as the effect of some mystical or theosophic process of annihilation. He does not represent this resurrection as a high effort of an individual soul, grasping at some distant blessing which is far beyond the ken of the vulgar. He teaches us that this is our proper, human state. The revelation of Christ, according to him, was nothing less than the revelation of a Universal Brother of men, in Whom each man has his life, apart from Whom each man has only death. Therefore he tells all baptized men, that since by a simple act Christ has owned them as His brothers, as of that race of which He is the Head, they are to “count themselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.” They are to rise up as redeemed, regenerate men; to enter, in that character, in that strength, upon the hard fight of life; to repulse in that name all the enemies that have overpowered them, and that will daily threaten to overpower them.

Here, then, is the real deliverance from that self-consciousness which wise men denounce, and which their very denunciations help to cultivate; which we fly hither and thither to escape from, and which starts up in newer and darker and more terrible shapes out of every den in which we hide ourselves. Are you tormented by the accusation of some Christian preacher? Does he call you by names which you think are not applicable to you? But will you be treated better if you betake yourself to the philosophical observer? Will Rochefoucauld deal more kindly with you? Will he make more pleasant discoveries to you about yourselves? Be angry with the preacher, be angry with the philosopher; thou hast a right to be, if thy anger is on behalf of thy race, if thou meanest to say that humanity is libelled, when it is represented as capable only of what is base or mean. But that thou mayest vindicate the cause of humanity, be true to thyself. The preacher torments thee, the keen-sighted critic of acts and motives torments thee, because thy conscience is half-responding to his words, because it is saying, “Yes, thou hast thought, thou hast felt, even as he describes. There has been this low grovelling pleasure in even the sufferings of thy friends; thou art disposed to sacrifice family, country, the universe, to thy own interest or pleasure; thou art inclined, as Adam Smith testifies, to care less for the ruin of an empire than for a pain in thy own finger.” Is there something else in thee besides that? Art thou sure of it? Yes, verily, thou wast told so of old when thou wert a child. Thou heardest then that thou wast a member of Christ. Thou heardest that He was in thee. And that is true still. That is the reason why thou canst not submit to be treated as an alien and outcast; why thy blood rises in thee when thou art told that thou art susceptible of nothing but foul impressions, that thou art influenced only by grovelling motives, that thou canst not deny thyself for the sake of the highest ends. It is a lie. Hold fast thy conviction that it is. But who told the lie? The preacher? Rochefoucauld? No! thou hast told the lie. Thou hast acted as if it were impossible for thee to be anything better than they say thou art. For thou hast forgotten what thou art. Thou hast exchanged the heavenly self-knowledge that which comes from the revelation that Christ is the Head of every man, that thou art a very member incorporate in His body, for the earthly self-knowledge, that which comes only from the consideration of all the acts which men do when they are acting upon the dream and delusion that each is apart from his neighbour, that he can work out a scheme of existence of his own, that we are moving amidst a whirl of atoms, in a chaos, not a universe.

That is the miserable faith to which we all have a natural tendency, which will certainly overtake us and possess us if we have no higher faith to set against it. Oh, then, let us examine ourselves, whether we are in that higher faith! let us prove day by day our right to abide in it! This examination involves no wretched poring over our own motives. It leads us at once to turn from the accusing spirit, which tells us that we are yielding to some vile motive which will lead to some vile act, and to ask for the inspiration of Him in Whom are the springs of all right action. This examination involves no neglect of plain work for the sake of morbid contemplation. It is in work we learn what we are liable to become if we have no helper, if we are left to ourselves. It is in work we learn to trust Him and depend upon Him. The temptation to be fretful and to be cowardly, to utter keen and bitter words, to feed upon flatteries, to feed upon thoughts of malice or lust, to palter with dishonesty in common acts, to lie for the sake of a worldly end or of a godly end, the temptations of each particular craft and calling, the temptations of domestic life, of national life, of ecclesiastical life—these are the schools in which men have learnt to examine themselves, in which they have learnt the feebleness of mere rule, the necessity of a present living Teacher, in which they have found what that old nature is, which has to be mortified and crucified, what that new and true man, whom Christ would renew in us day by day.

In that school they have learnt the force of those last words to which I alluded first, “Except ye be reprobate.” They have learnt to put on them a meaning not less serious and awful, though far more practical, far less dishonourable to God, than that which they sometimes bear in the dialect of those who think they may apply them to all people except themselves. Oh! let us apply them strictly to ourselves! Let us believe that by a habit of indifference, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness, we may become ἀδόκιμοι, utterly worthless, after we have undergone all discipline, —giving signs of that worthlessness by losing the power of discerning good from evil, unable to know that mighty, blessed truth, that Christ is in us the giver of strength, the hope of glory. That this state may not come upon us, let us be continually assuring ourselves, assuring each other, that this is a truth, an everlasting truth, a truth upon which we can act, a truth which enables us to face the problems of our existence and of the world’s existence, and not to shrink from them; a truth which will give us victory.

If people will teach us any other belief that will help us to live, we may consider it, but we have no time for endless, wearisome speculations about this subject or that. The world is moving on too fast, the energies which we need for action are too surely and evidently wearing themselves out. We need One Who can invigorate them, Who can pour His own Divine energy into them, Who can fit us for any new condition into which His world may come, and fit us to survive the dissolution of it. We need One Who will not hastily cast us off as worthless or reprobate because we have resisted one warning after another, one mercy after another, but Who will try every method which an Infinite Wisdom can devise to bring us under His gracious yoke, to overcome the self-will which is our destruction, to make us like Himself, to prepare us for that Day when He, Who has been working secretly upon our hearts and spirits, will be known openly; when He, Who for our sakes submitted to be tempted by the Evil Spirit, shall be revealed as the Deliverer from all temptations, as the Conqueror of all His enemies and ours.