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Roughly classified, the causes that are tried in ordinary courts of law are of two sorts, those in which the person accused is guilty and those in which he is innocent. The effort of judicature, the end and aim of courts, judges and juries, is to distinguish aright between these two classes of cases, to determine whether, in any given instance, the man on trial is to be held blameworthy or without blame. Under which of these two heads are we to count the "causes of the soul"? It may surprise you to have me reply, Under both of them.

I. TAKE, TO BEGIN WITH, THOSE CAUSES OF THE SOUL IN WHICH SHE ACKNOWLEDGES HERSELF GUILTY. There are a great many ways of trying to explain away the sense of guiltiness in the human heart. There is a rooted reluctance in every soul to take upon the lips frankly, and in the spirit of genuine contrition, the words, "Father, I have sinned." And yet deeper down even than this reluctance lies the conviction that such confession ought to be made. This is the acknowledgment of the men and women of fullest, strongest, ripest nature. You say, Oh, no! I am acquainted with scores of people who have no such consciousness, make no such acknowledgment. They think too well of God to believe that He will ever punish, if indeed it must be conceded that He exists, which they doubt. Yes, it must be admitted that there are a great many such people, and they are often very agreeable people, accomplished, versatile, cultivated it may be; at any rate, people who are, as we say, exceedingly pleasant to meet. The question is, Do such people adequately represent human nature in its heights and depths? Testimony is of weight in proportion to the familiarity of the witness with the facts about which he testifies. To put the ease strongly, picture to yourself an aged man, who has see, n much of the trials and troubles of this mortal life, whose face is seamed with marks that tell of mental struggle, of conflict with doubt, with difficulty, with pain, whose eye has lost the flash that once belonged to it, but keeps still the glow and penetrative power that tell of active life within, call him a-Kempis, if you will, or St. Augustine, or Keble, or Muhlenberg. Now set opposite him some fresh-cheeked, light-hearted, cheery-voiced young fellow, who knows not very much of life, to be sure, but is quick-witted and intelligent, thoroughly well read, informed as to the very latest phase of contemporary thought, literary, social, political, able to instruct you on a thousand points of scholarship in almost any department you may choose. To which of the two, let me ask, should you the more naturally, or with the more confidence turn, were the question to be discussed, not one about rocks or shells, or pictures, or pottery, or artist's proofs, or first editions, but a question of the powers and possibilities of the human heart? Which of them would be the best authority, say you, on such a point as this one before us now, namely, the soul's attitude toward God its Maker as respects innocence and guilt? But now the question comes up, and it is certainly worth looking at, Why should one whoso cause is a guilty cause care to have it pleaded? Why not confess judgment, and take the consequences? "O Lord, Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul." Is this a thing to be desired, that the Lord should take up or help forward the cause of the offender? High-minded advocates sometimes refuse to defend a criminal when it is perfectly evident that the offence charged was really committed. Let the law take its course, they say. And ought it not to be so in men's relations to their Maker? If they have really broken His law, ought they not to be willing to meet the penalty, instead of expecting or desiring any one to plead their cause? To all which I merely answer that if it be indeed so, then is the word Gospel emptied of meaning, and the title "our Saviour" robbed of all its power to charm. For what element of good tidings is there in the message, Do wrong, and you shall be punished? And what need have we of a Saviour, if there be nothing evil from which it is possible for us to be saved? That ancient sufferer whose words make the substance of our text was reaching after, and had partly grasped, a truth which Jesus Christ came into the world to make so clear that every one might grasp it, namely this, that with God there is forgiveness, not, indeed, the weak-minded, easy-tempered condoning of sin which it is an insult to forgiveness to call by that name, but a costly forgiveness involving intensest suffering. "O Lord, Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul." If sympathy and that intimate identifying of one's self with another, which advocates know something of, when seeking with all their might to save the life of a defendant in a capital ease — if these can, as they sometimes do, involve keen suffering, can we wonder at men's putting a similar interpretation on the agony and bloody sweat, the Cross and Passion? The truth is, there is a feeling deep down in the human heart that if we are to be helped at all, the help must come from some source higher than our own level. It is all very well to say complacently that men ought to be willing, and not only willing but glad, to bear the punishment of their sins, and so to expiate them. But is it quite certain that when we allow ourselves to use language of this sort we at all appreciate what the punishment our sins deserve would be, or what it would mean to bear it? That Christ came down into human life, dwelt with us, shared our sorrows, toiled, suffered, and all in order that He might be the more closely identified with us, and so the better be our advocate, the better plead the causes of the human soul, — this is the Gospel, this is the glad news, and how different it all sounds from the bare, Be good and thou shalt be rewarded, be bad and thou shalt be punished.

II. TAKE NOW THE CAUSE WHERE THE ACCUSED HAS BEEN THE VICTIM OF SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES AND REALLY NOT THE GUILTY PERSON HE SEEMS TO BE. No men escape wholly misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Perhaps it would not be putting the matter too strongly to say that there is probably no time when a man is not in a false position as regards some of those about him; no time when, on all sides, and by every observer, he is seen precisely as he really is. The atmosphere through which men look at the actions and the lives of the other men about them is never so absolutely clear that there is no distortion, no undue foreshortening or misplacement in the picture received into the eye. Ordinarily this is tolerable enough; we expect a certain measure of misunderstanding, are prepared for it, and do not mind encountering it. But there are times in the lives of some men when misapprehension and unjust judgment seem to hem them in on every side. Innocent at heart, and sure that they are innocent, they yet bend and waver under the crushing load of suspicion which adverse circumstance has laid upon their shoulders. Then it is that the soul, helpless to free itself from its calamitous entanglement, calls out to God for aid. And how is it that the Lord does plead the cause of such a soul as this environed one we have in mind? He does it by His providence, by His ordering of events. Our help cometh from the Lord. It is not by cultivating an introspective, self-analysing habit of mind that we are likely to find the way to peace. We are living out these lives of ours too much apart from God. We toil on dismally, as if the making or the marring of our destinies rested wholly with ourselves. It is not so. We are not the lonely, orphaned creatures we let ourselves suppose ourselves to be. The earth, rolling on its way through space, does not go unattended. The Maker and Controller of it is with it, and around it, and upon it. We cannot escape Him. Why should we desire to do so? He knows us infinitely more thoroughly than we know ourselves. He loves us better than we have ever dared to believe could be possible. Conscience-stricken, guilty, perplexed, spoken against, misjudged, there is no one we can turn to with such confidence as to Him; no advocate so trustworthy. He pleads the causes of the soul.

(W. R. Huntington, D. D.)

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KJV: O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.

WEB: Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul; you have redeemed my life.