Ps. xxxii. 1 — 6. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. fVhen I kept silence, my bones waxed oldy through my roaring all the day long : (for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me) my moisture is turned into the drought of summtr. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine hiiquity have I not hid : I said, I ivill confess my transgress sions unto the Lord ; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee i& a time when thou mayest be found.
TO have the experience of David in all the diver- sified conditions of life faithfully submitted to us, is an advantage for which we can never be sufficiently thankful. There was scarcely any trouble, either of a temporal or spiritual nature, which he was not called to endure, and under which he has not stated to us the workings of his mind. We.are accustomed to hear of his sins and his penitence, his sorrows and his joys : but there is one particular frame of mind,
in
in which he continued for many months, which we are apt, for the most part, to overlook, or to pass by with a mere transient observation ; I mean, his state of impenitence and liardness of heart alter the com- mission of his sin in the matter of Uriah. But this is an exceedingly profitable point of view in which to behold him, because of the general tendency of sin to harden the heart : and to see how he obtained peace at last is also of great advantage, inasmuch as it will shew us, how we may obtain peace, even after the commission of the greatest transgressions. When he wrote this psalm he had regained that happy state from which he had fallen : and he here records, for the instruction of the Church in all future ages,
I. Wherein true blessedness consists —
A man who has no prospects beyond this present world, will seek happiness in the things of time and sense. But " a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth." We are immortal beings, and are hastening to a state, where a period will arrive, at which our present existence, even though it should have been con- tinued a thousand years, will have been only as the twinkling of an eye. 'In that state either happiness or misery awaits us, according as we enter upon it under the guilt of our former sins, or with our sins forgiven. We may justly say, therefore. True happi- ness consists, as our text informs us, in having our sins forgiven. To elucida'.e this topic, let us con- sider the blessing here spoken of,
1. As a non-imputation of sin —
[Who that is in the smallest degree conscious of the number and heinoustiess of his transgressions, and of the awful punish- ment due to him on account of ihem, must not regard it as an unspeakable mercy to have them all blotted out from the book of God's remembrance ? What in the whole universe can in his estimation be compared with this ? if he could possess the wliole world, yea, if he could possess ten thousand worlds, what com- fort would the acquisition give him, if he had the melancholy prospect of being speedily plunged into the bottomless abyss of
bell ?