Sadducees and Pharisees were not the only brood of vipers. We ourselves are,—let the truth be spoken,—the generation of vipers, the serpent's brood.
Therefore we cannot but recognize the fact that we cannot rely upon ourselves, at any time, to say nothing of our being unreliable when the storms of evil thoughts are harrassing us. But even when the sky of our mind is, as it were, entirely clear and perfectly cloudless, we can not depend upon ourselves in the least degree. There are some people who, trusting to their own intellect, declare that they are trying to cultivate their own moral natures; others give out that they are courageously struggling for the advancement of their spiritual nature, basing their work upon their own virtue. But they forget the fact that a dark shadow is always lurking in the corner of our intellect, however clear it may be. They are unaware that the seed of corruption is conceived in the womb of our moral nature, however pure and unspotted it may be. There is no absolute purity in this
