Village Preaching for a Year Author:Sabine Baring-Gould Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Sermon XLI. THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. '4th Sunday After Trinity.) S. Luke vi. 41—42. "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but percei... more »veet not the lam that is in thine own eye? Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull ont tha mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not th beam that is in thine own eye." Our Blessed Lord has just been speaking of the spiritually blind, of blind leading the blind, and He has pointed out-how self-conceit, hatred and anger, follow in the train of a spirit of judging others. He has shown the consequences of indulging in that fault. Such sins blind the eye, and cloud the heart of man, rendering him wholly unable to guide others, or even to keep himself in the right way, perishing himself, and causing the fall of all those who have trusted in him. And now having shown us that judging others is an offence against God, our Lord would take from us even the wish to do so, by directing us to look into our own hearts. At Wragby, in Yorkshire, in the vestry of the Church is a very curious old painted window, representing in coloured glass the subject of my text; a man with a huge piece of wood before his eyes is trying diligently to extract a mere speck from the eye of another man. And this picture is most appropriately placed in the vestry, as it reminds to the priest, whose ministry it is to declare to the people their faults and sins, that he should closely examine himself, lest, after he has preached to others, he himself should be a cast-away. And it is touching a similar temper of mind to that spoken of in the text, and depicted in the stained glass, as I have described to you, that S. Paul launches forth his forcible denunciation,—" Behold, thou art called "a Jew, and restest ...« less