The apostle said, “I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified.” 1 Cor. 4:4, Revised Version. In other words, his conscience was void of offense toward God. He was trying in honesty and fidelity to serve the Lord, who had called him by his grace. But the fact that he knew nothing against himself was no ground of justification, for the Lord might know a dozen things against him which he, as yet, was too ignorant or blind to understand. Paul could not forget that when he was living “in all good conscience toward God” he was at the same time persecuting the church, and “breathing out threatenings and slaughter,” and that though in days past he verily thought he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, he was at the same time guilty of grievous sin. Sincerity is no proof of righteousness; and the fact that a man knows nothing against himself, affords him no ground for self-justification and self-gratulation. The psalmist says, “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults!” And he also prays, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” The law of Moses most distinctly recognized that men were guilty of sins of ignorance. They were not merely “mistakes,” they were sins. Man was not only bound to confess his known sins, and offer sacrifices for them, but also to acknowledge his sins of ignorance, and bring an offering to the Lord for sins which had left no feeling of guilt upon the conscience. It is well to be free from all consciousness of guilt, but we are not hereby justified. Nor are we to confound the dullness of an unenlightened conscience, the insensibility of a conscience perverted by willfulness, or the quiet stupor of a conscience benumbed by self-righteousness and seared by long persistence in wrong-doing, with the peace and rest that comes to a conscience purged with blood, and “void of offense toward God and men.”—Sel.