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(with John 8:32): — The same word, "truth," stands in both texts and yet represents in each its own particular matter. "Thou desirest truth in the inward parts;" which means that God looks to find in us a kernel of personal truthfulness, a sound core, a fragment of the aboriginal veracity of God, an oaken knot of probity that can take a blow without flinching, sterling metal that will sound with a long, clear, ringing tone of reverberation. The other is a little apart from this, "The truth shall make you free." This denotes the truth outside of us coming to us, telling upon us, working its emancipation in us. The other was the sterling metal; this is the hammer that sets the wire ringing, the plectrum that sets the metal quivering and humming. The two answer back to each other; they understand each other — the truth that is structural within us, and the truth that comes to talk to us. They are correlates, like the eye and the light that saturates it; the ear and the melody that sings into it. We are never quite discouraged about a man, so long as there remains still in him one single solid atom that retains the old crystalline lines and angles; a rigid basis upon which presented truth can be laid, and into which it can be mortised; a truth-sense to which we can address and press our appeal. It is like dealing with an old and withered building; the window-lights may be shattered, and the paint discoloured, and the casings awry; the flooring seamed, and the joints warped; but, though you may have to tear down a good deal, and replace and pretty thoroughly renovate it, yet there is great vantage secured, if decay and disintegration have not eaten into the foundation, and the masonry lies intact in its bottom courses. It is this which justifies the confidence we always have in a boy that is truthful; he may be full of roguery and tease his sister and torment his parents; he may easily get angry, and pound the boy that lives across the way; and show himself precocious In nothing so much as in his genius for resisting knowledge and palsying the efforts of his instructors; but, if he is truthful, if truth is in his inward parts, the pith of the matter is in him, a sound core, the spinal marrow; and there is something to address yourself to with assurance, when the time comes for appeals that are more strenuous and exacting. Bye-laws have no grip that is not guaranteed them by the vigour of the constitution. "God desireth truth in the inward parts." An impure heart issues in impure thoughts. Yes; but also impure thoughts issue in impure hearts. Intellect creates thought, but thought turns round and creates intellect. The interior and the exterior are parents and children of each other. Deed expends power, but deed also makes power. To that degree and in that sense we are all of us daily climbing up and down the ladder-rounds of our own actions, feelings, thoughts. So it is with this precious, unspeakably precious, nucleus of personal truthfulness, "truth in the inward parts." We make it more by speaking the truth, doing, thinking, and feeling the truth; we make it less by speaking, doing, thinking, and feeling that which is false. We are confessedly making a good deal of this matter of rectitude, straight-linedness; but it is the plumb-line dropped into us from above, and so must shape and direct all our aspirations towards God; and it is in the plumb-line from which we have to calculate the horizontal that shall determine our dealings with men. Truth is thus the core of piety, and it is the pith of charity. A promise is a promise, whether made in a matter of groceries or Gospel. I cannot go to a man and promise to help him in an enterprise, and then do as I like about keeping my promise. A promise is as holy a thing as Mount Sinai, and as holy as the law that was given on it, and the Lord that came down in thunder and lightning upon it. There are not even so many professed Christians as we might suppose who can be relied on to do as they say they will do, when it is not quite to their taste or convenience to do as they say they will do. Their word is not as good as their bond; and they proceed on principles which, if they were to apply them on the street, would cost them their seat in the Stock Exchange every day.

(C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)

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KJV: Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

WEB: Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.