Ps. H. 5. Behold) I was shapen hi iniquity ; and in sin did my motlier conceive ine.
ONE of the most essential marks of real penitence is, a disposition to see our sins as God sees them ; not extenuating their guilt by vain and frivolous excuses, but marking every circumstance that tends to aggravate their enormity. During their impe- nitence, our first parents cast the blame of their transgression upon others ; the man on his wife ; and the woman on the serpent that had beguiled her : but, when true repentance was given them, they no doubt beheld their conduct in a very different view, and took to themselves all the shame which it so justly merited. The sin of David in the matter of Uriah was great, beyond all the powers of language to express. Yet there were points of view in which none but a real penitent would notice it, and in which its enormity was aggravated an hundred-fold. This is the light in which the Royal Penitent speaks of it, in the psalm before us. Having spoken of it as an offence, not merely against man, but primarily, and almost solely, against Jehovah himself, he pro- ceeds to notice it, not as an insulated act or course of action, but as the proper fruit of his inherent, his natural, corruption. We are not to suppose, that he intended by this to cast any reflection on his mother, of whom he elsewhere speaks in most respectful terms ; nor are we to imagine, that he adduces the nature which he had derived from her, as an excuse for the wickedness he had committed : his intention is, to humble himself before God and man as a crea- ture altogether corrupt, and to represent his wick- edness as no other than a sample of that iniquity of which his heart was full, a stream issuing from an overflowing fountain. This, we doubt not, is the genuine import of the words which we have now proposed to consider ; " Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin hath my mother conceived me."
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