The Manifestation of Hidden Things.
I. We all know that such is necessarily the imperfectness of human legislation, that a great deal of crime passes undiscovered, and that what is discovered often goes unpunished; and whilst an active system of government represses or prevents much wickedness, its unavoidable incapacity of finding out all crime and fastening it upon the perpetrator, encourages many to commit it with the hope of impunity. There is hardly anything so widely powerful in the encouragement to sin as the expectation of concealment. It is virtually this which produces the chief mass of wrong-doing.
II. There is not one of us who would not be thoroughly shocked at having what passes through his mind in a single day laid bare for public inspection. And yet there is nothing hid that shall not be revealed revealed either as ground of accusation against those brought to Christ's bar, or as material of vindication of the sentences which have been passed. In either case, what hope have you of escape. Look on the right hand, look on the left; what is to hide you from wrath, when the disclosed impurity of a thought is all that is needed to provoke its visitation. No living man can endure such a scrutiny, unless he have applied to his conscience that blood which "cleanseth from all sin"; and surely therefore there is no one who can be easy in the prospect of such a scrutiny, until he has prepared for it by making Christ his Advocate with the Father.
III. All of you can understand and appreciate the motive to right doing, which we thus fetch from the sublime scenes of the last great assize. If the certainty of being found out would keep you from crime, if the shame of being detected in anything vile and dishonourable help to make you shun what would forfeit good opinion, then believe and remember, that when the Lord cometh, He will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the hearts.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1,096.
References: Mark 4:24. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 59; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 113.Mark 4:24; Mark 4:25. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 119. Mark 4:26. F. W. Robertson, The Human Race,p. 71.