JOB IX. 20.

If I justify myself, mine own month shall condemn me; if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse."

HERE is a passage intended to have, and which undeniably has, no personal reference to any other individual but Job himself. Personal confessions have no application but to the person confessing, and prove nothing, whatever, in regard to any other individual. If this personal confession of Job proves that no saint or believer in Jesus ever was, or ever will be, perfect in the sense of the word as here employed, then the personal confessions of David in the 51st Psalm, prove, undeniably, that every such saint has been, or will be, guilty of the sins which David there confesses. There is no escaping this conclusion.

Nor is Job here speaking of his own moral and spiritual state at the time when he uttered these words, or at the time when God affirmed that he was "a perfect man." Job, on the other hand, is speaking of his past life, and of entering into judgment with God in regard to the same. He had been a sinner and knew it. To deny the fact would prove his perverseness, and be adding sin to sin. This is the exact meaning of this confession. To attempt to make anything more of it, and above all, to reason from that confession---a confession exclusively personal, to the universal conscious sinfulness of all saints and believers to the end of time---is a most palpable and flagrant violation of all the laws of sound interpretation on the one hand, and of sound reasoning on the other.