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Unrecorded in the journals, and unmourned by unregenerate men, there are failures, and frauds, and bankruptcies of soul. Speculation is a spiritual vice as well as a commercial one — trading without capital is common in the religious world, and puffery and deception are every-day practices. The outer world is always the representative of the inner.

I. THE WAYS OF THE OPENLY WICKED. Can it be that these people are right in their own eyes? They who are best acquainted with mankind will tell you that self-righteousness is not the peculiar sin of the virtuous, but that it flourishes best where there appears to be the least soil for it. The worst of men conceive that they have some excellences and virtues which, if they do not quite atone for their faults, yet at any rate greatly diminish the measure of blame which should be awarded them.

II. THE WAYS OF THE GODLESS MAN. This man is often exceedingly upright and moral in his outward behaviour to his fellow-men. He has no religion, but he glories in a multitude of virtues of another kind. Many who have much that is amiable about them are nevertheless unamiable and unjust towards the one Being who ought to have the most of their love.

III. THE WAYS OF THE OUTWARDLY RELIGIOUS.

IV. THE WAYS OF THE COVETOUS PROFESSOR.

V. THE WAYS OF THE WORLDLY PROFESSOR.

V. THE WAYS OF SECURE BACKSLIDERS.

VII. THE WAYS OF THE DECEIVED MAN. There are many who will never find out that their ways, which they thought to be so clean, are all foul, until they enter upon another world.

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

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KJV: All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits.

WEB: All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but Yahweh weighs the motives.