---

Self-examination is to many disciples a kind of first point in practical religion. It is heard and read on all sides. But there are only two Scripture passages which can be at all cited for it, one of which (2 Corinthians 13:5) certainly has no such meaning; and the other (1 Corinthians 11:28) carries no sufficient authority for the practice. Scripture sends us to God: "Examine me, O Lord"; "Search me, O God"; "The Lord trieth the heart."

I. GOD CERTAINLY CAN EXAMINE US, and we cannot in any but the most superficial and incomplete sense examine ourselves. For —

1. Our memory is too short and scant to recall or restore the conception of one in a hundred million of the acts that make up our lives.

2. Even if we could recall them, everyone, we could never go over the survey of such vast materials, so as to form any judgment of them or of ourselves.

3. And since the understanding of our present state is impossible without understanding all the causes in our action that have fashioned the character and shaped its figure, our faculty is even shorter here than before. Omniscience only is equal to the task.

II. IN WHAT IS FREQUENTLY UNDERSTOOD BY SELF-EXAMINATION THERE IS SOMETHING MISTAKEN OR DECEITFUL which needs to be carefully resisted.

1. It is a kind of artificial state, in which the soul is drawn off from its objects and works, and its calls of love and sacrifice, to engage itself in acts of self-inspection.

2. He may even be so engrossed in self-examination as to become morbidly selfish in it; for nothing is more selfish than to be always boring into one's self.

III. HOW MUCH IS IMPLIED IN A HEARTY WILLINGNESS OR DESIRE TO HAVE GOD EXAMINE US AND PROVE US. A mind seeking after truth, ready to receive it; more, a soul already found to be in God's friendship, sealed with the witness of His acceptance.

IV. THERE IS A WAY OF COMING AT THE VERDICT OF GOD WHATEVER IT MAY BE. God designs always to give us the benefit of His own knowledge of our state. He never intended us for, and never puts us to, the task of testing our. selves. He expects to do this for us. We are complete only in Him. He is, and is ever to be, our Light, and we only know ourselves in Him. God is manifested in the consciousness of them that love Him and are right towards Him. They will know God by an immediate knowledge or revelation. They will have His Spirit witnessing with theirs. God has planned our life so as to bring us into a perception of the many defects and errors lurking in us, and to set us in the same judgment of them that He has Himself, proving us at every turn, trying even the reins and heart, that our most secret things may be revealed. If there should be any legitimate place for self-examination it is in the field where we go to discover our faults and the sins that require to be forsaken or put away.

(Horace Bushnell, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: Examine me, O LORD, and prove me; try my reins and my heart.

WEB: Examine me, Yahweh, and prove me. Try my heart and my mind.