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I. WHAT ARE THEY? — They stand opposed to open and presumptuous sins. They relate particularly —

1. To the secret bias of the heart to evil. There is what may be called latent guilt; a propensity of the soul never yet developed, but which new circumstances may call forth.

2. To unholy thoughts which we intend no other person shall know.

3. To those sinful emotions and affections which rise up in the best hearts almost involuntarily, and against which the pure mind struggles. Old habits of evil will torture for a long while the renewed soul.

4. To these plans of evil which are not prosecuted to their completion. Providence hinders them, or else they would be carried out.

5. Those crimes which are perpetrated in darkness or under disguise.

II. SOME OF THE WAYS IN WHICH SIN IS CONCEALED.

1. Men design to conceal them. And we have the power to conceal our purposes. Society could not exist if we had not such power. The body becomes the shield of the soul, to guard our plans from the observation of all other minds but that of God. But this power of concealment may be abused for purposes of evil, and often is so. But such concealment of guilt is difficult. God has placed in the human frame by nature certain indications of secret guilt; and He meant that where that guilt existed it should betray itself for the well-being of society. He designed not only that the conscience should check the offender, but He implanted in the frame itself certain indications of guilt which He intended also to be a safeguard of virtue. Now, one great art in this world is to obliterate the natural marks of guilt from the human frame, and to counterfeit the indications of innocence. The object is so to train the eye that it will not reveal the secret conviction of crime; so to discipline the cheek that it will not betray the guilty by a sudden rush of blood there; so to fortify the hand and the frame that they will not by trembling disclose the purposes of the soul. But he drills and disciplines himself, and his eye is calm, and his countenance is taught to be composed, and he speaks and acts as if he were an innocent man, and buries the consciousness of the crime deep in the recesses of the soul. Soon the brow is like brass, and the frame is schooled not to betray, and the living indexes of guilt which God had affixed to the body are obliterated, and the conscience is seared, and the whole man has departed from the beautiful form which God made, and has become an artificial and a guilty thing. Again. The arts of polished and refined life, to a melancholy extent, have the same object. They are so arranged as to conceal rancour, and envy, and hatred, and the desire of revenge. They aim not to eradicate them, but to conceal them.

2. Many secret sins are concealed because there is no opportunity of carrying the purpose into execution.

3. Others, because the man has never yet been placed in circumstances which would develop his character. Were they so placed it would be seen at once what they were.

III. SOME REASONS WHY WE SHOULD ADOPT THIS PRAYER.

1. Because we specially need the grace of God to overcome them. If only by the grace of God we can be kept in the paths of external morality, what protection is there in the human heart against secret sins?

2. Such secret faults are peculiarly offensive to God, and we should therefore pray to be cleansed from them. The guilt of the wicked plan is not annihilated or diminished in the view of the Searcher of hearts, because He chooses to arrest it by His own Providence or because He never allows the sinner the opportunity of accomplishing it.

3. And I add, finally, that we should pray for this, because if secret faults are indulged they will sooner or later break out like smothered fires, and the true character of the heart will be developed. Fires uncap a mountain, because they have been long accumulating, and can be confined no longer. A judge on the bench, like Bacon, shocks the world by the undisputed fact that he has been bribed. The community is horror-stricken, and we feel for the moment like distrusting every man, and doubting all virtue and all piety, and we are almost led to conclude that all our estimates of human character on which we have heretofore acted are false, and we begin to distrust everybody. But such painful disclosures are not departures from the great principles of human nature. There is a maxim that no one suddenly became eminently vile. These lapses into sin are but the exponents of the real character of the man, the regular results of a long course of guilt. And so our cherished faults will one day manifest themselves, unless they are checked and removed by the grace of God and the blood of atonement.

IV. IN CONCLUSION.

1. Distrust yourself, for "Who can understand his errors?"

2. Be humble. Others have fallen, so may you.

3. We have much to dread at the revelations of the day of judgment. With no consciousness of sinfulness but such as I believe common to man, with the recollection of the general aim of my life to do right, with great occasion for thanksgiving that I have been preserved from the open vices that have ruined so many who began the career of life with me, yet I confess to you that if there is anything that I should more than all other things dread, it would be that the record of all my thoughts and feelings should be exhibited to the assembled universe in the last day. That the universe would acquiesce in my condemnation on such a revelation I have no manner of doubt, And if there is any one thing for which I desire to give unfeigned thanks more than others, it is that through the blood of Christ those sins may be blotted out; and that through the infinite mercy of God the secret sins of which I am conscious may never — no NEVER — be disclosed to assembled worlds.

( A. Barnes, D. D.)

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KJV: Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.

WEB: Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors.