Complaining of others when we ourselves are in the wrong.
This is familiar enough to all who have the management of families. The child in a temper is always ready to complain of his mother's temper. The child who has done wrong is quick to make out that somebody else was in fault. The same thing is found in business and social relations. Servants complain of masters. One class of society complains of another class. More than half the sorrows of humanity would be removed if men would only look at home, and set themselves upon the correction of their own faults, the remedying of their own failings. In this parable nothing can be plainer than the fact that this man with one talent had been wilfully neglecting what he knew to be his duty. It was duty he could do; duty he ought to do. But when the day of reckoning came, he tried to hide his shame by complaining of his master, and calling him hard names. How that excused him nobody can see.
I. IN MAN IS AN INVETERATE DISPOSITION TO RESIST THE CONVICTION OF SIN. It is the hardest thing we ever try to do, to say, "I am wrong." It is the hardest thing we ever undertake, to persuade another to say he was wrong. A man will set himself upon all sorts of guileful schemes, and readily yield to all kinds of self-delusions, rather than admit himself to be in the wrong. The man who has the quickest and keenest sense of sin in others is often utterly dull to any sense of his own sin.
1. It is this which partly explains the general conception of the devil. He is a convenient "other one" outside ourselves, on whom we can shift all responsibility for the sins which we ourselves plan and commit.
2. It is this that accounts for the gracious promise of the Holy Ghost as the "Convincer of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment."
3. This disposition is strengthened by every successful act of stifling conviction.
4. The disposition is even to be found in Christian people, and may be illustrated in relation to specific Christian sins. The one talent man represents a disciple.
II. THE COMMONEST SIGN OF RESISTANCE IS COMPLAINING OF OTHERS.
1. This turns our thoughts away from ourselves. It is not safe for a wilful man to have his eye turned inward. He shrinks from. reading over his own story. He likes to hear about other people's faults; and will dwell with much satisfaction upon his disabilities and lack of opportunities. Men are so hard, and men deal so hardly by him. If a man speaks harshly of others, it is well to suspect him of being guilty of the fault he condemns.
2. This turns other people's thoughts away from us. See in the parable. The master is searching out the wilfulness of the one talent man. But he seems to say, "Think about yourself, and then you will leave me alone."—R.T.