evil. Tell the shepherd youth, David, that he has in him the making of
a king and an immortal poet, and he will think you are poking fun at
him. Tell him that he will one day fall into the crimes of adultery
and murder, and make all Israel blush for him, and he will be indignant
enough to strike you to the ground. Speak to the fisherman, Peter, of
the commanding influence which awaits him in some coming kingdom of
God, and he will think you are beside yourself: and then tell him that
he will one day deny and curse his sworn Master and kindest Friend, and
he will ask you, Do you think I am a dog or a devil that I should do
this? Impossible! And yet the thing comes off.

Why do the sacred writers give us so many stories of this kind? Surely
it is because we need both the warning and encouragement. It is to
prove to us that on one side of our nature we are greater than we
think, and on the other side weaker and lower than we believe. It is
to inspire the diffident with courage, and the despairing with hope,
while it pulls up the forward, the careless, and the over-confident
with the wholesome and humbling word, "_Let him that thinketh he
standeth, take heed lest he fall_." These men of the Bible were
strangely mixed. They were conspicuous instances of the contradictions
and surprises which are in us all. For that is the point: the thing
comes home to us.

Believe me, we are all a riddle to ourselves. Each man is to himself,
and each woman too, the greatest of all mysteries save the one greater
mystery, God. None of us know of what elements he is composed, and how
strangely the good and evil mix and mingle and clash and strive in each
day's doings, and through the whole of life. They who believe that the
saint is all saint, and the sinner all sinner, are blindly and pitiably
ignorant of human nature. God has made no man without putting some