PRAYER AGAINST SINS OF INFIRMITY AND PRE- SUMPTION.
Ps. xix. 12, 13. If^ho can understand his errors ! Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall He upright ^ and I shall he innocent from the great transgression.
THE moral law, as revealed in the Scriptures, is a perfect transcript of the mind and will of God ; and is therefore a mirror in which we may see how deformed we are throuoh the introduction and do- minance of sin. It was from a contemplation of its transcendent excellence that the Psalmist was led to bewail his want of conformity to it, and to implore mercy at the hands of God for his innumerable violations of it, and grace, to preserve him from any wilful opposition to it in future. And the more we study it, the more shall we be disposed to adopt the petitions in our text, *' Cleanse me" from the guilt I have already contracted; " Keep me" from falling a sacrifice to my sinful propensities.
We all need to be delivered from,
I. Sins of infirmity —
These are innumerable —
[It is not of gross outward sin that we are here to speak, but of "errors" and '* secret sins," that is, such sins as escape the notice of ourselves as well as of others.
Consider tlie sins avWiug Jrom defect. The law requires that we love God with all our heart, and all our mind, and all our soul, and all our strength ; and our neighbour, under whatever circumstances, as ourselves. Now, if we trace the whole extent of our duty to God, as our Creator; to the Lord Jesus Christ, as our Redeemer ; and to the Holy Spirit, as our Sanctifier ; if we furtlier pursue into all the different relations of life our duty to our fellow-creatures, and reflect that the smallest short-coming in the performance of it is sin ; and then, if we reflect how great our short-comings are, even when we exert ourselves to the utter- most to fulfil the will of God; we shall see that, under this head alone, our sins are more numerous than the sands upon the sea shore ; since, in fact, we have been doing nothing but sin from the very first moment that we came into the world.
But besides the guilt we have contracted through defect, consider that which has arisen from deviations from the pre- cise line of duty which we should have followed. We may conceive of an arrow shot in the right line towards an object, though it fall short of the object itself: and so we may conceive of our attempts to serve God, as perfect in point of aim, though defective in force and energy. But there is a bias in our fallen nature which causes innumerable aberrations from the perfect line of duty. In duty, of whatever kind it be, the principle ought to be as pure as the light itself: but in us it never is so : some- what