Further, 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 so-called wise thinkers to-day: 'I was tempted, and I could not help it.' He does not talk about 'circumstances,' and say that they share the blame with him. He takes it all to himself. 'It was _I_ did it. True, I was tempted, but it was my soul that made the occasion a temptation. True, the circumstances led me astray, but they would not have led me astray if I had been right, and _where_ as well as _what_ I ought to be.' It is a solemn moment when that thought first rises in its revealing power to throw light into the dark places of our souls. But it is likewise a blessed moment, and without it we are scarcely aware of ourselves. Conscience quickens consciousness. The sense of transgression is the first thing that gives to many a man the full sense of his own individuality. There is nothing that makes us feel how awful and incommunicable is that mysterious personality by which every one of us lives alone after all companionship, so much as the contemplation of our relations to God's law. 'Every man shall bear his own burden.' 'Circumstances,' yes; 'bodily organisation,' yes; 'temperament,' yes; 'the maxims of society,' 'the conventionalities of the time,' yes,--all these things have something to do with shaping our single deeds and with influencing our character; but after we have made all allowances for these influences which affect _me_, let us ask the philosophers who bring them forward as diminishing or perhaps annihilating responsibility, 'And what about that _me_ which these things influence?' After all, let me remember that the deed is _mine_, and that every one of us shall, as Paul puts it, give account of _himself_ unto God.
Passing from that, let me point for one moment to another set of ideas that are involved in these petitions. The three words which the Psalmist employs for sin give prominence to different aspects of it. 'Transgression' is not the same as 'iniquity,' and 'iniquity' is not the same as 'sin.' They are not aimless, useless synonyms, but they have each a separate thought in them. The word rendered 'transgression' literally means rebellion, a breaking away from and setting oneself against lawful authority. That translated 'iniquity' literally means that which is twisted, bent. The word in the original for 'sin' literally means missing a mark, an aim. And this threefold view of sin is no discovery of David's, but is the lesson which the whole Old Testament system had laboured to print deep on the national consciousness. That lesson, taught by law and ceremonial, by denunciation and remonstrance, by chastisement and deliverance, the penitent king has learned. To all men's wrongdoings these descriptions apply, but most of all to his. Sin is ever, and his sin especially is, rebellion, the deflection of the life from the straight line which God's law draws so clearly and firmly, and hence a missing the aim.
Think how profound and living is the consciousness of sin which lies in calling it _rebellion_. It is not merely, then, that we go against some abstract propriety, or break some impersonal law of nature when we do wrong, but that we rebel against a rightful Sovereign. In a special sense this was true of the Jew, whose nation stood under the government of a divine king, so that sin was treason, and breaches of the law acts of rebellion against God. But it is as true of us all. Our theory of morals will be miserably defective, and our practice will be still more defective, unless we have learned that morality is but the garment of religion, that the definition of virtue is obedience to God, and that the true sin in sin is not the yielding to impulses that belong to our nature, but the assertion in the act of yielding, of our independence of God and of our opposition to His will. And all this has application to David's sin. He was God's viceroy and representative, and he sets to his people the example of revolt, and lifts the standard of rebellion. It is as if the ruler of a province declared war against the central authority of which he was the creature, and used against it the very magazines and weapons with which it had intrusted him. He had rebelled, and in an eminent degree, as Nathan said to him, given to the enemies of God occasion to blaspheme.