Psalms 51

The instruction of the Psalm abides; it has not lost its force. The sacraments and ordinances of the Christian Church may become to us what sacrifice and offering were to the Jews, a mere opus operatum; a man may give all his goods to feed the poor, and yet have no love; a man may be punctual in his attendance at all holy ordinances, and yet cherish iniquity in his heart, and, upon occasion, secretly practise it. Hence the Psalm is truly prophetic—that is, universal in its character. It deals with “the sinners and the hypocrites in Zion,” but it reaches to all men, in all places, to the end of time. P.

FOR THE CHIEF MUSICIAN. A PSALM OF DAVID: WHEN NATHAN THE PROPHET CAME UNTO HIM, AFTER HE HAD GONE IN TO BATH-SHEBA.

1. HAVE mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: According to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.2 Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: And my sin is ever before me.4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, And done that which is evil in thy sight: That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, And be clear when thou judgest.5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me.6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.8 Make me to hear joy and gladness: That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.9 Hide thy face from my sins, And blot out all mine iniquities.10 Create in me a clean heart, O God;And renew a right spirit within me11 Cast me not away from thy presence, And take not thy holy Spirit from me.12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation And uphold me with a free [willing] spirit.13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; And sinners shall be converted unto thee.14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation; And my tongue shall sing aloud of thy right- cousness.15 O Lord, open thou my lips; And my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.16 For thou delightest not in sacrifice; else would I give it: Thou hast no pleasure in burnt offering.17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.18 Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: Build thou the walls of Jerusalem.19 Then shalt thou delight in the sacrifices of righteousness, in burnt offering and whole burnt offering: Then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

THE Psalmists run with a rapid hand over the whole scale of the affections of the human spirit seeking after God. We may pass the hardest judgment upon David; yet the tenderest, purest, saintliest, most virgin souls—Augustine, St. Louis, Ken, Keble, Leighton—have found nothing more suitable in life or death than words of his. Nay, it was chiefly with them that our All-Holy Lord broke the silence of Calvary. Bishop Alexander.

A tradition as old as Origen gives to a cluster of Psalms (6, 32, 37, 51, 102, 130, and 143) the title of Penitential, as being peculiarly expressive of sorrow for sin. But one of these far exceeds the rest in fulness and depth and intensity. It is the theme of the famous Miserere, which, as sung during Passion Week in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, is a strain of the most powerful, heart-moving pathos ever heard by mortal ear. It is the cry of a broken spirit, a bleeding heart, prostrate under a sense of the dreadful evil of sin, and every line bears the token of genuine, unaffected emotion, the exact transcript of a living experience. Nowhere else in the Old Testament or the New is there so complete an exhibition of the nature, grounds, extent, and results of the grace of repentance. The penitent confesses his sin (vs. 1-3), states its enormity (vs. 4-6), entreats forgiveness (vs. 7-9), seeks a renewed nature (vs. 10-12), expresses it in holy resolutions (vs. 13-17), and intercedes for the whole Church (vs. 18-19). Chambers.

This Psalm is the expression of a deep and unfeigned repentance. It is a prayer, first, for forgiveness, with a humble confession of sinful deeds springing from a sinful nature as their bitter root; and then for renewal and sanctification through the Holy Ghost; together with vows of thankfulness, for God’s great mercy to the sinner, and holy resolutions for the future. It is the first of a series of Psalms (51-65) which, in the second Book of the Psalter are ascribed to David, and, according to the title, was written by him after his great sin, when the words of the prophet Nathan roused his conscience from its uneasy slumber. P.

A whole year had elapsed between David’s crime and David’s penitence. It had been a year of guilty satisfaction not worth the having; of sullen hardening of heart against God and all His appeals. The thirty-second Psalm tells us how happy David had been during that twelve-month, of which he says, “My bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy on me.” Then came Nathan with his apologue, and with that dark threatening that the sword should never depart from his house, the fulfilment of which became a well-head of sorrow to the king for the rest of his days, and gave a yet deeper poignancy of anguish to the crime of his spoiled favorite Absalom. The stern words have their effect. The frost that had bound his soul melted all away, and he confessed his sin, and was forgiven then and there. “I have sinned against the Lord,” is the confession as recorded in the historical books; and, says Nathan, “The Lord hath made to pass from thee the iniquity of thy sin.” Immediately, as would appear from the narrative, that very came day, the child of Bathsheba and David was smitten with fatal disease, and died in a week. And it is after all these events—the threatening, the penitence, the pardon, the punishment—that he comes to God, who had so freely forgiven, and likewise so sorely smitten him, and wails out these prayers. A. M.

So profound a conviction of sin, so deep and unfeigned a penitence, so true a confession, a heart so tender, so contrite, a desire so fervent for renewal, a trust so humble, so filial in the forgiving love of God, are what we find nowhere else in the Old Testament, but what we might surely expect from “the man after God’s own heart.” This Psalm, indeed, and the thirty-second, justify the title thus given him. In them we see the true man. Great as had been his sin, it was not the sin of a hardened nature, of the merely selfish sensualist, of the despot to whom all men were but as tools to minister to his pleasures and his crimes. And, therefore, when the prophet comes to him he turns to God with a real sorrow, and God meets him, as the father in the parable meets his erring son, with a free forgiveness. P.—Here the broken spirit casts off its heavy load and opens itself without reserve to the re-creating influence of the Holy Spirit. Better might the Christian heart deny itself the comfort of such a Psalm as the twenty-third than part with this deep-toned Miserere which appeals to a still more active consciousness and voices a sorer need. E. C. B.

We must have a fifty-first Psalm put always within reach for time of need. For this is not the last man upon the earth that shall come thus before God. At what time have there not been many such as he, whose wretchedness might have been voiceless and despairing without such a prayer as this? Not so marvellous is the inspiration that enabled him, this royal poet, long after he had sinned and received pardon, to reproduce truly and in suitable accents his pleadings before God, as the far-seeing wisdom and grace that had brought him up into a position of great temptation to indulge every evil passion of his nature, in the almost irresponsible power of royalty, and had then withheld the grace that up to that time had strengthened his heart in honor, and purity, and truth. How poorly furnished for us miserable sinners our Book of Prayer would have been without the Penitential Psalms! De Witt.

It is this truth of human feeling which makes the Psalms more than any other portion of the Old Testament the link of union between distant ages. The historical books need a rich store of knowledge before they can be a modern book of life; but the Psalms are the records of individual experience. Personal religion is the same in all ages. The deeps of our humanity remain unruffled by the storms of ages which change the surface. This Psalm, written three thousand years ago, might have been written yesterday—describes the vicissitudes of spiritual life in an Englishman, as truly as in a Jew. “Not of an age, but for all time.” F. W. R.—After the lapse of thirty centuries its living words still quiver with the emotion of the broken-hearted penitent, and its wail of godly sorrow instructs while it quickens the thoughtful reader. It sees sin as no uninspired man ever saw it, and it apprehends mercy as no mere child of this world ever conceived it. Chambers.

This man mixes with the world’s sins in such sort that we shudder. But he draws near the majesty of God and becomes softened, purified, melted. It is good to observe this, that we rightly estimate: generously of fallen humanity, moderately of highest saintship. In our best estate and in our purest moments there is a something of the devil in us which, if it could be known, would make men shrink from us. The germs of the worst crimes are in us all. In our deepest degradation there remains something sacred, undefiled, the pledge and gift of our better nature; a germ of indestructible life, like the grains of wheat among the cements of a mummy surviving through three thousand years, which may be planted, and live, and grow again. F. W. R.—David had fallen into sins enough—blackest crimes. Unbelievers sneer and ask, “Is this your man after God’s own heart?” The sneer seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what the outward detail of a life, if the inner secret of it, if the remorse, the temptations, the true often baffled, never-ended struggle of it, are to be forgotten? Of all acts is not for a man repentance the most Divine? The deadliest sin were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death. David’s life and history as written for us in those Psalms of his I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best—struggle often baffled down as into entire wreck; yet ever with tears, repentance, true unchangeable purpose begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man’s walking, in truth, always a succession of falls? Man can do no other. In this wild element of a life he has to struggle onward; now fallen, deep abased; and ever with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onward. That his struggle be a faithful, unconquerable one; that is the question of questions. Carlyle.

Happy for every man that the battle between the spirit and the flesh should begin in him again and again, as long as his flesh is not subdued to his spirit. If he be wrong, the greatest blessing which can happen to him is that he should find himself in the wrong. Whatever anguish of mind it may cost him, it is a light price to pay for the inestimable treasure which true repentance and amendment brings; the fine gold of solid self-knowledge, tried in the fire of bitter experience; the white raiment of pure and simple heart; the eye-salve of honest self-condemnation and noble shame. If he have but these—and these God will give him in answer to prayer, the prayer of a broken and contrite heart—then he will be able to carry on the battle against the corrupt flesh and its affections and lusts in hope, in the assured hope of final victory; “For greater is He that is with us than he that is against us.” He that is against us is ourself, our selfish self, our animal nature; and He that is with us is God—God and none other; and who can pluck us out of His hand! C. Kingsley.

A noble nature, stung before its sin and seared before its time, contending between the whirlpool of passion and the strong, still impulses of poetry and faith, ruling all spirits except his own, and yet forever seeking to regulate it, too, sincere in all things—in sin and in repentance—but sincerest in repentance—often neglecting the special precept, but ever loving the general tenor of the law, unreconciled to his age or circumstances, and yet always striving after such a reconciliation, harassed by early grief, great temptations, terrible trials in advanced life, and views necessarily dim and imperfect—David, nevertheless, retained to the last his heart, his intellect, his simplicity, his devotion—above all his sincerity—loved his God, saw from afar off his Redeemer; and let the man who is “without sin” among his detractors cast the first stone. His character is checkered, but the stripes outnumber the stains, and the streaks of light outnumber both. In his life there is no lurkingplace—all is plain; the heights are mountains—“the hills of holiness,” where a free spirit walks abroad in singing robes; the valleys are depths, out of which you hear the voice of a prostrate penitent pleading for mercy, but nothing is, or can be, concealed, since it is God’s face which shows both the lights and shadows of the scene. David, if not the greatest or best of inspired men, was certainly one of the most extraordinary. Gilfillan.

It was the decidedly God-seeking and God-honoring disposition of his heart which made him the true David—the beloved of the Lord. It was his faith in Jehovah as the only God of heaven and earth, as the only source of salvation, happiness, and blessing. Even his sins brought out all the clearer that the key-note of his soul was a thirst after holiness, a perfect peace of the heart through union with the Holy One of Israel. This “thirsting after God” characterized him throughout his whole life. We observe it in him from the first moment we make his acquaintance. It was because the Lord “looketh on the heart” that the young shepherd was preferred above his brethren. And no wonder. That young shepherd, when following the sheep, found his delight in tuning his harp to the praise of his God. It was not the prospect of being praised by the people, and rewarded by the king that prompted him to take up his sling against Goliath, but his burning zeal for the honor of the God of Israel, whose holy name he had heard reviled. To him God is his life’s beginning and end, the only true foundation and rock. When he breaks out into exultation it is because he knows himself near to Him, and when he pours out his heart in doleful lamentations it is because he feels that his sins have made a separation between that God and his soul. De Liefde.

More is to be learned of God and of our relations to Him from this single Psalm of David than from all the heathen philosophers taken together. The living God, subject to no fate, reigning with no divided empire, blotting out transgressions, inhabiting eternity, yet dwelling with the humble and contrite to revive the spirit of the humble, abiding with us when father and mother forsake, and satisfying the soul by himself alone, was not known. In the heathen philosophy, with its expositions of law and duty, there is no sure word of consolation for the dying thief, the penitent prodigal, the publican groaning under the burden of sin. There is no authorized hope that can light up the dark valley of death for a sinner. Many fine and beautiful things Augustine said he found in Plato; but not the words, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” G. P. Fisher.

TITLE. To the Chief Musician. A Psalm. By David. When Nathan the Prophet came unto him, as he (i.e., David) had come unto Bathsheba. The first inscription was particularly necessary here, to show that the Psalm was designed for permanent and public use, since it might otherwise have been regarded as expressive of mere personal emotions. It has reference to the one great crime of David’s life, noted as such in the inspired history itself (1 Kings 15 : 5), and involving the guilt of both adultery and murder. The significant repetition of the phrase came unto in v. 2 is lost in the English and most other versions. As is not a mere particle of time, simply equivalent to when, but suggests the ideas of analogy, proportion, and retaliation. A.—Assigned to “the chief musician” for perpetual use in the service of song before the congregation of Israel, it testifies that no false modesty and no indulged pride withheld him from making his confession as public as his sin had been notorious. He had sinned before the nation; so he would have his repentance go forth before not the nation only, but the world. C.

1-3. David uses here and in all the Psalms which refer to his great guilt three words, which comprise all the characteristics of sin committed by an offender against God’s law, save one, that of wilful, impenitent wickedness. Our A. V. is generally careful in observing the distinction, “iniquity” (acon), or “perversity;” “transgression” (pesha), the breach of God’s law; “sin” (hattath), as a defilement. He does not use the word wickedness (resha), nor is it in any case imputed to a servant of God. (See Psalms 32 : 1, 2 ; 38 : 18 ; 39 : 8-11 ; 40 : 12.) Cook.

1. The prayer for forgiveness. According to Thy lovingkindness. In all godly sorrow there is hope. Sorrow without hope may be remorse or despair, but it is not repentance. Hence the true penitent always looks to the lovingkindness of God, even at the very time when he feels most deeply how he has sinned against it. The cry on his lips is, “My Father,” even when he confesses, “I am no more worthy to be called Thy son.” P.—Mercy, lovingkindness. The first word is strong; it implies kindness, graciousness; but the second is much stronger; it speaks of deep, tender, parental sympathy, of an abundance and overflow of those feelings which assure the penitent child of his mother’s unalterable love, of her yearnings for his return to her bcom. Cook.

His whole hope rests upon God’s own character, as revealed in the endless continuance of His acts of love. He knows the number and the greatness of his sins, and the very depth of his consciousness of sin helps him to a corresponding greatness in his apprehension of God’s mercy. This is the blessedness of all true penitence, that the more profoundly it feels our own sore need and great sinfulness, in that very proportion does it recognize the yet greater mercy and all-sufficient grace of our loving God. And for us who have the perfect love of God perfectly expressed in His Son, that same plea is incalculably strengthened, for we can say, “According to Thy tender mercies in Thy dear Son, blot out my transgressions.” A. M.

We need always to keep in mind that it is through Christ only that forgiveness is possible. God’s character, as revealed by Christ, is seen to be one of holiness and love. Love says, “Forgive,” but holiness, of which righteousness and justice are an integral part, says: “Evil is foreign to me; I cannot condone it or have fellowship with it.” Christ is the reconciling factor that makes it possible for love to forgive without violating righteousness and justice. It does not make much difference about our theory of the Atonement if we only keep in mind that only in Christ crucified “mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” It must be remembered, too, that this promise of forgiveness is conditional. God will forgive no unrepentant man. There must be unequivocal hatred of sin. There can be no denial of the reality of sin, nor of responsibility for it, nor of the fact of sin in our case. The humiliating reality of it all must be acknowledged along with our helplessness. The old life must be left behind; our eyes must be turned heavenward, not earthward, and the aim and desire of our heart must be to live a life such as God would have us live. Only on that condition can we claim the promise. Then we feel that we are not our own, but bought with a price. Divine pardon has made us debtors to Divine favor. That debt can be quit only by making others debtor to the favor of love and service that we bestow. Interior.

2. Without one word or thought of self-defence or even extenuation, admitting everything, confessing all, and humbling himself low before God, he pleads for mercy—mercy simple and pure—nothing else. Yet he would add, not in the line of self-vindication, but of conscious weakness and of inexpressible longings to be kept pure henceforth and forever: “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity; cleanse me from my sin.” Take away from me not only the condemnation under which my guilty soul might justly sink, but the very spirit of sinning—that pollution of soul which makes sin morally possible. “Cleanse me”—that I sin no more. C.—Wash me thoroughly. Heb., multiply to wash me; by which phrase he implies the greatness of his guilt, and the insufficiency of all legal washings, and the absolute necessity of some other and better thing to wash him, even of God’s grace and the blood of Christ. M. Pool.—Abiding sorrow for sin is quiet. It is all from God, and all of God. We love because much has been forgiven, and we always remember how much it was. We love because the softness of sorrow is akin to the filial confidence of love. David gives it a voice, “Wash me more and more, O Lord;” and the whole Church throughout the world has adopted his Misere, and is continually crying, “Wash me more and more.” Anon.

My sin. In all the petitions we see that the idea of his own single responsibility for the whole thing is uppermost in David’s mind. It is my transgression, it is mine iniquity, and my sin. He has not learned to say with Adam of old, and with some to-day: “I was tempted, and I could not help it.” A. M.—It is sin as sin, not its punishment here nor hereafter, not simply any of its evil consequences; but sin against God, the daring impiety of my breaking the good and holy law of this living, loving God. Thomas Alexander.

3. I acknowledge my transgressions.** Whilst he would not consider confession as giving a claim to the favor of God, he knew it was a condition of forgiveness. He who does not confess his sins with a broken, penitent, contrite heart has no reason to hope for absolution. It is sin, not its consequences that he deplores. Sin is the abominable thing. D. Thomas.—My sin is ever before me. A man’s sins must come before him at some time or other; and whenever they do come before him it is a very solemn time. To some, by God’s grace, that meeting comes in mid-life; to some on a deathbed; to some, for the first time, as far as their consent goes, in another world. J. V.

4. To Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done the evil in Thine eyes, to the intent that Thou mayest be just in Thy speaking, and be clear in Thy judging. The particle at the beginning denotes general relation, as to, or respecting. It does not therefore directly and explicitly substitute God for man as the injured party, which is the only sense that can be put upon the English phrase against Thee. This idea, however, is undoubtedly implied, as well as perfectly consistent with the usage of the Scriptures in describing all sin as committed against God. Even murder, the highest crime that can be committed against man, is condemned and punished as the violation of God’s image (Gen. 9 : 6). A.

The words are to be explained by David’s deep conviction of sin as sin. Face to face with God, he sees nothing else, can think of nothing else, but His presence forgotten, His holiness outraged, His love scorned. Therefore he must confess and be forgiven by God before he could even think of the wrong done to his neighbor. But, secondly, this deep feeling of the penitent heart, of the heart which loves God above all things, has its root in the very relation in which God stands to His creatures. All sin, as sin, is and must be against God. All wrong done to our neighbor is wrong done to one created in the image of God; all tempting of our neighbor to evil is taking the part of Satan against God, and, so far as in us lies, defeating God’s good purpose of grace toward him. All wounding of another, whether in person or property, in body or soul, is a sin against the goodness of God. In like manner, all love to our neighbor is love to God, whom we love in Him. On this principle we shall be judged: “Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.” It is not, therefore, enough to explain these words of David, “Against Thee only,” by saying that they are the expression of his own deep sense of his guilt and the dishonor done to God. That feeling rested upon the eternal truth of which it was the expression—a truth on which, as Hengstenberg observes, the Decalogue itself is based: “Thou must honor and love God in Himself, in those who represent Him on earth (Deut. 5 : 12), in all who bear His image (vs. 13, 14). Earlier still, in Gen. 9 : 6, the punishment of murder is grounded on this, that man bears God’s image.” “How must David have trembled,” says the same commentator “how must he have been seized with shame and grief, when he referred everything to God, when in Uriah he saw only the image of God, the Holy One, who deeply resented that injury—the gracious and compassionate One, to whom he owed such infinitely rich benefits, who had lifted him up from the dust of humiliation, had so often delivered him, and had also given him the promise of so glorious a future!” P.

Against thee, thee only. The word

“only” is striking, considering how David had cruelly injured his fellow-men, and the terrible results of his guilt; but sin, as such, is directed primarily against God. His law is broken, His name dishonored, and the special heinousness even of such offences as that of David consists in their antagonism to God’s will. At the same time the Hebrew idiom must be remembered, which represents secondary and subordinate objects as absolutely nothing compared with the first and highest. Whatever guilt David might have contracted toward man; in the mind of a true Israelite it was absolutely nothing compared with his sin against God. Cook.—Our first parent Adam might justly have said to God: “Against Thee only have I sinned,” who never sinned against any other; but for David to say it, who had committed two notorious sins against his neighbor and faithful friend Uriah, what unfitter speech could possibly be devised? These actions of David were great wrongs indeed, and enormous iniquities against Uriah; but can we properly say they were sins against Uriah? For what is sin but a transgression of God’s law? And how then can sin be committed against any but against Him only whose law we transgress? R. Eaker.

True penitence is not a dead knowledge of committed sin, but a vivid consciousness of it, as a source of restlessness and anguish; and although this penitential sorrow is not a merit which earns grace, it is nevertheless the condition without which no bestowal of grace is possible. Such true recognition of sin regards all sin directly as sin against God, and in the last analysis as sin against Him alone; for all the relationships in which man stands to men are only forms in which is manifested his fundamental relationship to God; and sin is “that which is evil in God’s sight;” it is a contradiction of the will of God, the sole most high Law-giver and Judge. So the case stands, as David confesses, with his sin. D.

The core and essence of the criminality in every case, even in transgressions of the second table of the Law, lies in this, that they are offences against God; this the penitent offender recognizes, That Thou mightest be right in Thy speaking, mightest be pure in Thy judging. God suffered him in His holy providence to go on unchecked, involving himself in one sin after another, revealing the depravity of his heart in open acts to such an extent that he was stripped of every excuse and subterfuge, and was himself obliged to own the justice of the fearful sentence pronounced upon him by the mouth of Nathan, and of any infliction with which God should see fit to visit him hereafter. This passage is quoted in Romans 3 : 4, in evidence of God’s unimpeachable rectitude. W. H. G.

To make David say, I have sinned against thee, O God, to the end that, or in order that, thou mayest be justified in condemning me, is to miss his meaning egregiously. But that he should say, I make this fullest possible confession of my sins as specially against Thee, so that thou mayest be vindicated in the severest inflictions upon me therefor, is germain to his state of feeling, is in itself intrinsically right, and is therefore to be accepted as his meaning. C.—That God may stand justified when He decisively speaketh and judgeth, that He, the Judge, may carry His point in opposition to all human judging—this is the ultimate issue of David’s confession of sin and of the whole history of humanity, and more especially of Israel. D.—This recognition of God’s righteousness is the first and most certain proof that a man is in a true position and is capable of justification. Justify God by admitting that man has no hope whatever but in His free forgiveness, that nothing is due to man but punishment, and He will justify man by taking away the imputation of sin. Cook.

God sees sin not in its consequences but in itself; a thing infinitely evil, even if the consequences were happiness to the guilty instead of misery. So sorrow, according to God, is to see sin as God sees it. The grief of Peter was as bitter as that of Judas. He went out and wept bitterly; how bitterly none can tell but they who have learned to look on sin as God does. But in Peter’s grief there was an element of hope; and that sprung precisely from this—that he saw God in it all. Despair of self did not lead to despair of God. [Thus was it with David.] F. W. R.

Paul, near the close of life, spoke of himself as the chief of sinners. He was not so much comparing himself with his fellow men as noting his relation to God and His Christ. The expression conveys, without extravagance or exaggeration, the literal truth in regard to Paul as he saw himself under the illumination of the Divine Spirit. It is no question between man and man, or concerning degrees of criminality, but between the soul and infinite holiness. And when the light of infinite purity has flooded the inmost life, when every secret chamber of the soul, with its actual guilt and its horrible possibilities of sin is laid open to view, each may adopt the language as his own—“sinners, of whom I am chief.” C. W. Miller.—Every believer who has attained a right knowledge of himself will acknowledge, with blessed Bradford the martyr, that “the seeds of every sin that ever was or can be committed are in his own heart and nature.” This knowledge affords the Christian great cause of humility. But it affords him greater still, that the Lord hath loved him in his state of rebellion and apostasy; yea, hath washed him so pure in the blood of His Son that the moral law itself can find no speck of sin upon him; and that by the power of the Holy Ghost he chooses God for his portion. Hill.

Into true penitence the idea of punishment never enters. If it did it would be almost a relief; but oh! those moments in which a selfish act has appeared more hideous than any pain which the fancy of a Dante could devise! when the idea of the strife of self-will in battle with the loving will of God prolonged forever has painted itself to the imagination as the real infinite hell! when self-concentration and the extinction of love in the soul has been felt as the real damnation of the devil-nature! F. W. R.

5. Sin is now regarded in its source. From my very earliest being sin has been with me. Sinfulness consists not merely in so many several sinful acts, but in a sinful and corrupt nature. The depth of the abyss of sin is here opened before the eyes of the penitent with a distinctness of which the instances are comparatively few in the Old Testament. (Compare, however, Job 14 : 4 ; Gen. 8 : 21.) Manifestly not in extenuation, but in aggravation of his sin does David thus speak. “He lays on himself the blame of a tainted nature, instead of that of a single fault; not a murder only, but of a murderous nature. ‘Conceived in sin.’ From first moments up till then, he saw sin—sin—sin; nothing but sin."—(Robertson.) Luther says: “If a man will speak and teach aright of sin, he must consider it in its depth, and show from what root it and all that is godless springs, and not apply the term merely to sins that have been committed. For from this error, that men know not and understand not what sin is, arises the other error that they know not nor understand what grace is. . . . According to this Psalm, then, we must say that all is sin which is born of father and mother, and from so evil a root nothing good can grow before God.” And Stier says: “Men may say what they will, the doctrine of original sin is contained in this passage;” and so it is precisely in that sense in which alone it is true—that sinfulness is innate, that corrupt parents can only have corrupt children. P.

David thinks of himself as of a sinning race, born of sinning parents, born with the antecedent temptations and occasions of sin (not the efficient and necessitating causes) existing in himself, and consequently under circumstances which induced sin at the earliest moment possible. This fact is pertinent here, not as an extenuation of his guilt, but as suggesting his own moral frailty, his danger of falling again before temptation’s power, and his pressing need—a want that seemed almost crushing—of most thorough moral cleansing and of most effective moral succor from God’s Spirit that he may stand henceforth in purity. In this view of it his meaning is fully in harmony with the words that immediately follow, as we shall see. In this construction the passage classes itself with Job 31 : 18, and Psalm 58 : 3, as evincing a special Hebrew idiom or proverbial expression in the sense of doing a thing from the earliest practicable moment. Job said : “From my youth the fatherless was brought up with me as with a father, and I have guided her from my mother’s womb;” the Psalmist : “The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.” C.

6. Behold!** Lo, on one hand I have seen sin as I never saw it before! on the other, lo, I have learnt that truth is what Thou desirest in the secret heart! P.—Truth in the reins signifies the firm establishment and rule of truth and right in a man’s deepest and most inward experiences and emotions, in his most secret life, the life of his conscience and heart. D.

“In the inward parts,” “in the hidden part,” are expressions precisely equivalent to our usage of the word heart. God seeks an honest, pure, truthful heart. Behold, his approving eye is only upon true sincerity! He abhors all hypocrisy. The sincerely honest heart he will teach true wisdom. This verse, therefore, gives us God’s standard of holiness. His ideas of what it really is. Consequently, the opposite of this is sin. C.—Reality, sincerity, true holiness, heart fidelity, these are the demands of God. He cares not for the pretence of purity; He looks to the mind, heart, and soul. Always has the Holy One of Israel estimated men by their inner nature, and not by their outward professions; to Him the inward is as visible as the outward, and He rightly judges that the essential character of an action lies in the motive of him who works it. S.

Obedience must be sincere. An action may look like a friendly act when there is nothing of friendship and good-will in the heart. Every precept requires not only an outward but an inward conformity, not only a bodily action but a spiritual frame. God would not have the skin of a sacrifice without the flesh, nor the carcass of obedience without truth in the inward parts. Charnock.—There are at least three forms of conspiracy against truth observable in human character: hypocrisy, “cant,” insincerity. Truth of heart is that heavenly principle whereby each soul is guided to a blessed result, under the action of the law of life in subjection to which we prepare to meet our Redeemer and our Judge. God is truth, and God is reigning. They who “will to do His will shall know.” Seek above all to be true, for truth is the first condition of a soul’s perfection. J. Knox Little.

In the hidden part shall make me to know wisdom. The inward and hidden parts are mentioned as opposed to the mere outside. Wisdom, Divine illumination, without which no correct view either of sin or holiness is possible. Thou wilt make me know, involves a prayer, although in form it is an expression of strong confidence. A.—“Truth in the inward parts” shall be rewarded with “wisdom in the hidden part.” The more your knowledge of what is right is carried out into action, the more shall that knowledge be increased. It is like what Peter says: “Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge.” Diligently practice all that you scripturally believe to be right, and your knowledge of what is right shall increase. Anon.

7. Purge me** (literally, Thou wilt purge me). The language, not merely of prayer, but of confident expectation. The word is used of purgation by expiatory sacrifice or by purifying rites. It is not employed of the removal of the lighter kinds of defilement, for which the law prescribed simply bathing in clean water, but as in the case of leprosy (Lev. 14 : 49, 52, where the same word is rendered cleanse). To this also the hyssop points, which, as the symbol and the appointed means of purgation, was used in the same service. W. H. G.—The Hebrew words for “purge” and for “hyssop” come from the sacrificial system, and indicate that moral cleansing from sin of which those sacrifices and rites were typical. “Purge” means, take sin out of me: set me free from its presence and power. C.

Here is majesty in misery; a king in penitence; a monarch of the earth at the footstool of mercy. David, as a miserable sinner, polluted with the complicated crimes of adultery and murder, is here ascribing honor to the blood of the Lamb by pleading of faith. True faith manifests itself in the heart, by its turning away from every other ground of deliverance, and turning to that blessed fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. Not my tears of repentance, but Thy precious blood, O Lamb of God, can wash me. Precious word! W. Mason.—It is not the language of one who felt himself to be a castaway. It is anything else than the language of despair; it is that of a child who knows that he is still beloved, although he has grievously offended. He expresses no dread of utter and final condemnation; but his cry is that of a wanderer who longs to get back; a captive who cries for deliverance. He sees and feels his guilt, and prays, “Purge me, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” J. Copley.

While there is but one Sacrifice, there are many sprinklings. As long as we live, and every day that we live, our rising evils of heart and life are such as would destroy all peace, if it were not for the hyssop-branch in the hand of the Spirit. There is a twofold application to the soul of Christ’s atoning righteousness by the Holy Spirit; one, which is single, and never repeated, the effect of which is to interest such soul in the redemptive acts; the other, which is perpetually renewed, the effect of which is to give peace to the soul under a sense of pardon. That experience may justly be distrusted in which there is no going again and again to the blood of Jesus for new applications. Thousands have used the words of the great penitential Psalm with a feeling of their necessity. The royal sinner knew that he had received the Holy Spirit, for he prays that he may not lose the gift. He knew that he had possessed the joy of God’s salvation, for he implores that it may be restored. But at the same time he sues for fresh pardons: “Blot out my transgressions;” “Purge me with hyssop;” and for new peace of conscience, “Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.” The Divine affusion of the sacred blood upon the heart and conscience, tends, as the Christian life goes on, to make the subject a more obedient and a happier Christian. J. W. A.

The “mystery of the blood” David may not have fathomed. What Old Testament writer has clearly done so, if we except Isaiah (chap. 53)? But could he have reached a higher level of revelation or of experience than he has done in this petition, “Un-sin (Thou) me with hyssop and I shall be clean: Wash (Thou) me and I shall be whiter than snow.” He sees in the rite only a symbol, it is true, and not a type. But the rite he does not fail to see, or the essential thing about it whether as symbol or type, that it is to the Priest-King Jehovah, to whom he must look for pardon, and that to him he will not look in vain. In this circumstance, after all, we find the culmination of biblical teaching, both of the old covenant and the new. E. C. B.

8. Thou shalt make me to hear. Not said with reference to God’s announcement of forgiveness by the Prophet Nathan, or as made in His Word, but rather with reference to those public festivals in which the whole congregation would unite in praising God, and in which David hoped now, as a forgiven sinner, to take his own part. He would be one of those who, with a heart full of thankfulness, would openly testify that thankfulness. P.

The emphatic figure, crushed or broken, expresses, in a very lively manner, the disorder and distress produced by consciousness of aggravated and unexploited guilt. The change from this condition to a sense of safety and reconciliation with God, is not too strongly represented by the bold but most expressive figure of broken bones rejoicing. A.—The bones; not merely instead of the heart, but as constituting the strength and framework of the body; the crushing of the bones being a very strong figure, denoting the most complete prostration, mental and bodily. P.

9. The two clauses of this verse are essentially parallel, both giving the idea of true forgiveness, which is that of overlooking sin, regarding it no longer as demanding punishment, but passing it over, “remembering it no more.” It amounts therefore to the same thing whether the Lord hides His face from sin or blots the sin out; in either case He is thought of as putting the sin away from His mind’s eye and looking upon the sinner in a sense as if he had not sinned. For this the penitent soul of David longed exceedingly, for it seemed to him unendurable that God should hold his sin continually before the eye as if too bad to be forgiven. C.—What he longs for is that God would hide His face from the sin which He is now punishing in him, so that it be, as it were, no more existent for Him; that He would wipe out all his iniquities, so that they should no more bear witness against him. D.—Beginning with the first Psalm and going straight through till we come to the end of the collection, there is nowhere any lack of evidence that in the Psalmist’s mind there is nothing that God loathes like sin, and that to be a friend of God and enjoy His favor he, too, must loathe it and put it away. E. C. B.

10. The prayer for justification is followed by the prayer for renewal. A clean heart is a heart undisturbed by sin and the consciousness of sin; a steadfast spirit is a spirit assured of its standing in grace and well-grounded therein. David’s prayer is for that very thing which is promised by the prophets as a future deed of salvation to be wrought by God the Redeemer upon His people (Jer. 24: 7; Ezek. 11: 19; 36: 26). D.—A pure heart create for me (oh) God, and a fixed (or settled) spirit renew within me. The petition in the first clause involves a confession of impurity, and of dependence on almighty power and sovereign grace for its removal. A pure heart is a familiar scriptural figure for affections free from the taint of sin. A.—The creation of a pure heart, free from the taint and consciousness of sin, is altogether an evangelical doctrine, prefigured in old symbolical rites, but first anticipated by the yearnings of a soul smitten to death by sin.

Renew a right spirit. A steadfast spirit, one not disquieted by fears or doubts, a mind stayed on the Lord, and therefore kept in perfect peace. Cook.—The thing David prayed for was precisely a spirit, a mind, fixed, settled, established in piety. This is the sense of the Hebrew word for “right”—“a right spirit.” David prayed to be kept steadfast in obedience, as opposed to a fickle, changeful mind, easily seduced into sin by temptation. C.

Create in me a clean heart, O God. This “creation” is from nothing. David uses the same word of our creation which Moses uses of “the creation of the heaven and the earth.” Our creation “in Jesus Christ” is no mere strengthening of our powers, no mere aiding of our natural weakness by the might of the grace of God; it is not a mere amendment, improvement of our moral habits; it is a creation out of nothing, of that which we had not before. There was nothing in us whereof to make it. We were decayed, corrupt, dead in trespasses and sins. What is dead becometh not alive except by the infusion of what it had not. What is corrupt receiveth not soundness save by passing away itself and being replaced by a new production. “The old man” passeth not into the new man, but is “put off.” It is not the basis of the new life, but a hindrance to it. It must be “put off” and the new man “put on,” “created in Christ Jesus.” Pusey.—Nothing under a thorough change will suffice; neither tears nor trouble of mind, neither good desires nor intentions, nor yet the relinquishment of some sins, nor the performance of some good works, will avail anything, but a new “creature,” a word that comprehends more in it than words can well express; and perhaps after all that can be said of it, never thoroughly to be understood by what a man hears from others, but by what he must feel within himself. South.

He that can in truth say, with David, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew within me a right spirit,” hath the beginnings of eternal life. He that laments the disorders of his heart and inward thoughts, and wishes and strives to be delivered from them, hath the sparks of Divine love, and the tokens of Divine grace; for there can be no such thing as preparation for heaven with an allowed indulgence of sin. It is in being “perfect in holiness,” unblamable in holiness, that this mechness consists; for the preparation must be of the same sort with the final condition; the change must be of the same nature as that in which the character is perfected. R. Hall.

The Bible notion of what men need in order to be pure and good is very different from the superficial notions of worldly moralists and philanthropists. We hear a great deal about “culture,” as if all that were needed were the training and strengthening of the nature, as if what was mainly needed was the development of the understanding. We hear about “reformation” from some who look rather deeper than the superficial apostles of culture. And how singularly the very word proclaims the insufficiency of the remedy which it suggests! “Re-formation” affects form and not substance. It puts the old materials into a new shape. Exactly so—and much good may be expected from that! They are the old materials still, and it matters comparatively little how they are arranged. It is not re-formation but re-inovation, or to go deeper still re-generation that the world needs; not new forms but a new life; not the culture and development of what it has in itself, but extirpation of the old by the infusion of something new and pure that has no taint of corruption, nor any contact with evil. “Verily, I say unto you, ye must be born again.” All slighter notions of the need and more superficial diagnosis of the disease lead to a treatment with palliatives which never touch the true seat of the mischief. A. M.

11. “Take not (again) Thy Holy Spirit from me.” The petition expresses the holy fear of the man who has his eyes open to the depth and iniquity of sin, lest at any moment he should be left without the succor of that Divine Spirit who was the only source in him of every good thought, of every earnest desire, of every constant resolution. It is the cry of one who knows, as he never knew before, the weakness of his own nature, and the strength of temptation, and the need of Divine help; and to whom therefore nothing seems so dreadful as that God should withdraw His Spirit. P.—The manifestations of God’s presence are essentially the same as the expressions of His favor and love. Hence David prays here that God would not repel him away from his kind regard because of his great sin. Let me still live before Thee, still walk in Thy light, believe in and enjoy Thy love. The New Testament doctrine, that the Holy Spirit dwells in the heart of each saint, as God of old dwelt in His earthly temple, appears here in its full development. David prayed that God would not take this Divine presence from his soul, but let it return rather and abide in all its power. C.—The acts of breathing which I performed yesterday will not keep me alive to-day; I must continue to breathe afresh every moment, or animal life ceases. In like manner, yesterday’s grace and spiritual strength must be renewed, and the Holy Spirit must continue to breathe on my soul, from moment to moment, in order to my enjoying the consolations, and to my working the works of God. Toplady.

There is nothing shadowy or mystical in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and in the resultant spirituality of life. It is an intelligent and intelligible state, conscious and voluntary. It is the worship of God in spirit and truth, the converse with God which is the natural and habitual outcome of a clear knowledge of what God is and of what you are, the conscious and mutual exchange of thought between an erring, needy, penitent child and its holy, loving Father, who is in heaven. In or out of the Church, that is spirituality, the fixed habit of dealing with invisible and eternal realities. To be filled with the Spirit is simply to be under the dominance of those convictions which give reality to God and the soul, as the two sole factors by which the universe is constituted, and by which time and eternity are shaped. For when the heavens and the earth pass away, God remains and the soul abides. The reason and the will are the sphere of the Divine impact and indwelling; these are not mystical but dynamic, and they are dynamic by illumination of the understanding and by securing voluntary obedience to the revelation. To be filled with the Spirit is the same thing as being guided by the Spirit into all truth; it is to see things as they really are, and to act in accordance with that vision. Spirituality, therefore, is a rational and voluntary state. It begins with mental sanity, piercing through all shams and deceptive appearances, to God as the Holy Father, and to man as His lost and wandering child. It is easy enough to repeat these phrases, but they are not real perceptions unless they become the fixed and habitual temper of your whole mental and moral life, the standard of universal rational judgment and the living law of obedience. With every advance in the clearness of your apprehension of what God is and what man is, there must come the prompt and voluntary practical response. You must live as you think; you must be obedient to the heavenly vision; for God and the soul, fatherhood and sonship, are not figures of speech, the empty generalizations of the speculative understanding, but the only eternal realities in a universe of change. . . . The nature of man is rational, ethical, spiritual. Considered as rational, the quest of the soul is Truth. Its watchword is Reality. Considered as ethical, the soul fixes attention upon a peculiar quality with which truth is invested, giving to it the force of an imperative, demanding personal conformity and enforcing universal self-judgment. Its watchword is Obligation. Considered as spiritual, the soul fixes attention upon God as the eternal fountain of Truth, and the creative source of Moral Law, Himself the uncreated and sovereign Reality and Imperative. Rebrends.

12. In the midst of these abased confessions and cries for pardon there comes with wonderful force and beauty the bold prayer for restoration to “joy and gladness”—an indication surely of more than ordinary confidence in the full mercy of God, which would efface all the consequences of his sin. As before he had ventured to ask for the joy of forgiveness, so now he pleads once more for “the joy of Thy salvation,” which comes from cleansing, from conscious fellowship—which he had so long and deeply felt, which for so many months had been hid from him by the mists of his own sin. The Psalmist’s buoyancy, the gladness which was an inseparable part of his religion, and had rung from his harp in many an hour of peril, the bold width of his desires, grounded on the clear breadth of his faith in God’s perfect forgiveness, are all expressed in such a prayer from such lips at such a time, and may well be pondered and imitated by us. A. M.

Uphold me with a free spirit. It is indeed a prayer for God’s gracious help; but his precise meaning is, Uphold me by quickening in me a willing, obedient, loving, and spontaneously acting spirit, i.e., help me, O Lord, to do right with all my heart and soul, with the most spontaneous outgoing of my soul’s aspirations and endeavors. That is, he is here indicating what he wanted, rather than the agency by which he hoped to get it. C.—A willing spirit is one that obeys the Divine law, not by constraint, nor for the sake of reward, nor from fear of punishment, but spontaneously. His will, in all its impulses and inclinations, is in harmony with the will of God. De Witt.

What a prayer these clauses contain to be offered by one who has so sinned! What a marvellous faith in God’s pardoning love, and what a boldness of hope in his own future they disclose! They set forth a profound ideal of a noble character; they make of that ideal a prayer; they are the prayer of a great transgressor, who is also a true penitent. In all these aspects they are very remarkable, and lead to valuable lessons. A. M.

13. Then will I teach.** The Hebrew implies a longing. I would fain teach transgressors. Thy ways, those who, like me, have committed heinous sins. Such a desire is one of the surest signs of spiritual repentance. Cook.—David fulfilled his own longing and desire by embodying this Psalm, and so making public his own sin and shame and sorrow, in the Praise-Book of Israel and of the world. B.

13. With a conscience set free from guilt, with a heart renewed by the Spirit of God, and full of thankfulness for God’s great mercy, he cannot keep silent, but will seek to turn other sinners to God. Terrible had been the fruit of his sin, not only in the wasting of his own soul, but in the injury done to others. Terrible was his punishment in witnessing this; and therefore the more anxious is he, though he cannot undo his own sin, to heal the breach, and repair the evil of sin in other souls. P.—By this Psalm David is, and will be to the world’s end, teaching transgressors, telling them what God had done for his soul. H.

15. Open my lips.** His lips had been sealed by sin, but God by His free forgiveness would give him fresh cause of rejoicing, and so would open them. Calvin compares 40 : 4, where the Psalmist says that God had put a new song in his mouth. David thus prays God to be gracious, that he may be the loud herald of that grace to others.

16. For,** as expressing the reason why he will offer to God the spiritual offering of thanksgiving, a grateful heart and grateful lips. P.—If the sacrifice of animals even by the thousand could have washed away his guilt, or in any way appropriately met his case and the demands of infinite justice, how gladly would he have made the offering! But God had taught him better. C.—They did not confer or convey the remission of sins. They were external, and their efficacy was external. How far the Jewish believer saw into the typical meaning of his sacrifices is a question which cannot now be answered. But the typical meaning and the real efficacy are two very different things. In truth, as has been truly argued, if we assign to the type the virtue of the antitype, if we make the remission of sins procured by the one coextensive with the remission of sins procured by the other, we destroy the type altogether. The sacrifice had no moral value. Hence the Psalmist says, “not sacrifice, but a broken heart.”

17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.** When speaking of thankfulness, we might have expected him to say, “a joyful heart, or a thankful heart,” but instead of that he says, “a contrite heart.” For the joy of forgiveness does not banish sorrow and contrition for sin; this will still continue. And the deeper the sense of sin, and the truer the sorrow for it, the more heartfelt also will be the thankfulness for pardon and reconciliation. The tender, humble, broken heart is therefore the best thank-offering. P.—Though other things may be the worse for breaking, yet a heart is never at the best till it be broken; for till it be broken we cannot see what is in it; till it be broken it cannot send forth its sweetest odor; and, therefore, though God loves a whole heart in affection, yet He loves a broken heart in sacrifice. And no marvel, seeing it is He Himself that breaks it. Therefore, accept, O God, my broken heart, which I offer Thee with a whole heart; seeing Thou canst neither except against that for being whole which is broken in sacrifice, nor except against that for being broken which is whole in affection. R. Baker.—A heart renewed—a loving heart—a penitent and humble heart—a heart broken and contrite, purified by love—that and only that is the rest of man. Spotlessness may do for angels, repentance unto life is the highest that belongs to man. F. W. R.

18,19. These verses are not only appropriate but necessary as a conclusion to the Psalm, and every difficulty is removed by giving them their natural but figurative meaning, as an expression of desire and hope that God would favor His own people and graciously accept their service. A.—It is refreshing to see David’s heart return to its former love for Zion and to prayer in her behalf, with a just sense of his royal responsibilities. Doubtless he felt that his sins had brought great scandal on the name of Israel’s God, and spiritual danger upon the Zion he had once loved and labored for. But now with a broken heart and a sense of pardon from God and of His restored favor, it was most pertinent that his prayer should revert again to those great interests of national worship and national piety which he, alas! had done so much to imperil. Will he not give his spared life and his restored soul afresh to the care of the Lord’s people, and to prayerful sympathy for Jerusalem, the city of his God? God smiling again upon his Zion as well as upon his own long burdened and guilty soul, there shall be within her sacred walls yet many other acceptable offerings and sacrifices to the honor of Israel’s God and for the good of His worshipping people. It impresses us as one of the masterly compensations wrought out in God’s wisdom that so many thousand hearts have prayed and sought mercy of God in the use of these fitting words, and have been lifted out of the depths of despair into peaceful hope by the inspiring power of this Psalm and of this case of forgiving, restoring mercy. C.

Modern blasphemy delights to blacken “the man after God’s own heart.” His was a terrible fall, terrible as well as piteous. He, so blameless in youth—could he, when life had begun to set, be stained so miserably through the passions of youth? It is an intense mystery of sin that man should admit so black a spot where all around was so fair; it is an intense mystery of God’s love that He should have arrested so black a spot from spreading and overcasting and infecting the whole. In one way the sin was irremediable. It changed David’s eternal condition. David, like the blest robber, the first-fruits of the redeeming blood of Jesus, is, through those same merits, glorious with the indwelling glory of God; yet his soul, doubtless one of the highest of much-forgiven penitents, is still a soul which by two insulated acts broke to the uttermost God’s most sacred laws of purity and of love.

How then was he restored? Grace had been sinned away. He was left to his natural self. He had still that strong sense of justice and hatred of the very sins by which he had fallen, which responded so quickly and so indignantly against cruelty and wrong when called out by Nathan’s parable. He must have had remorse. Remorse is the fruit of the most condescending love of our God. Neglected or stifled, it is the last grace by which God would save the soul; it is the first by which God would prepare the soul which has forfeited grace to return to Him.

But remorse, although a first step to repentance, is not repentance. For remorse centres in a man’s self. While it is mere remorse it does not turn to God. And so God, in His love, sent to David the prophet, the very sight of whom might recall to him the mercies of God in the past, His promises for the future, and the memory of those days of innocent service and bright aspirations to which the soul overtaken by sin looks back with such sorrowful yearning. The heavy stone which lay on the choked, dead heart was rolled away; the dead was alive again; the two-edged sword of God’s Word, judgment, and mercy had slain him to himself that he might live to God. The awakened soul burst forth in those two words, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Then was remorse absorbed, transformed, spiritualized into penitent love. But this was the beginning of the renewed life of the soul, not the end. It issued in a constant longing for a re-creation, a reverent fear springing from the sense of what it had deserved, an earnest craving for a more thorough cleansing from every stain or spot of sin, a thirst for the purging by the atoning blood, an unvarying sight of his forgiven sinfulness, spreading far and wide from the core of original sin, a longing to do free, noble, generous service, and all from God to God, from God’s re-creating, renewing, enfreedom, ennobling grace. Pusey.

Thank God we have such an example for our heartening. Lay it to heart, brethren! You cannot believe too much in God’s mercy. You cannot expect too much at His hands. He is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” No sin is so great but that, coming straight from it, a repentant sinner may hope and believe that all God’s love will be lavished upon him, and the richest of God’s gifts granted to his desires. Even if our transgression be aggravated by a previous life of godliness, and have given the enemies great occasion to blaspheme, as David did, yet David’s penitence may in our souls lead on to David’s hope, and the answer will not fail us. Let no sin, however dark, however repeated, drive us to despair of ourselves, because it hides from us our loving Saviour. Though beaten back again and again by the surge of our passions and sins, like some poor shipwrecked sailor, sucked back with every retreating wave and tossed about in the angry surf, yet keep your face toward the beach where there is safety; and you will struggle through it all, and, though it were but on some floating boards and broken pieces of the ship, will come safe to land. He will uphold

you with His Spirit, and take away the weight of sin that would sink you, by His forgiving mercy, and bring you out of all the weltering waste of waters to the solid shore. A. M.