The veil is taken away!
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"For being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they didn't subject themselves to the righteousness of God." Romans 10:3
What a motley monster is man in his natural state—full of evil—continually committing sin—daring God to His face by a thousand crimes—and yet setting up his own righteousness! We might just as well expect that a felon in prison, who is there awaiting in the condemned cell the merited punishment of his aggravated crimes—of his murders, robberies, and continued outrage against all human laws—should hope to come out of prison by his good deeds and obedience to the laws of his country—as expect such a vile wretch as man to hope to climb up to heaven by the ladder of his—good words—good thoughts—good works—and good intentions.
Self-righteousness in all its forms is so interlaced with every thought of our heart, so intertwined with every fibre of our natural mind, that though we know ourselves to be sinners, yet self-applause and self-complacency bid us do something to gain God's favour! O, in what a sunken state man is! We never can abase man too much.
O, the gulf of misery and ruin into which he has fallen! O, the depths of depravity into which he has been hurled! O, the bottomless abyss of destruction and guilt into which, when Adam fell, he cast himself and all his race!
But though so awful is man's state, yet, "the veil" upon his heart prevents him from seeing the depths of his own fall. This is one of the worst features of man's ruin—that it is hidden from him—and that he knows nothing of it until, through a miracle of grace, he is plucked out of the pit of horror, and saved from going down to the abyss of hell, with all his sins and crimes upon his head!
Ministers, therefore, can never abase man too much, nor point out too clearly the awful abyss of ruin and degradation into which he has fallen. But "the veil" on man's heart hides from him his own ruin! And until the veil in a measure is removed—he never knows, never sees, never feels one truth aright.
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