But it may be that our souls are in a pardoned state ; and that God lias " taken a live coal from off the altar, and applied it to our lips, saying. Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged®." If so, what acknowledgments should we make? Verily there can be no circumstances whatever in which such per- sons should not bless God from their very inmost souls ^]
2. His eyes from tears —
[David often found occasion to weep, either on his own account or on account of others s. Indeed his whole life was tempestuous and full of trouble. What the particular affliction was from which he had now been delivered, we do not exactly know. If it was sickness and death, his tears must have pro- ceeded, as Hezekiah's did, from an apprehension of the dis^ traction and misery that were likely to ensue to the whole State by his removal from it at that time**. But whatever it was, his mind was now at ease in relation to it.
And are we at this time free from any great affliction ? Surely we have reason to be thankful for it : for, how numberless are the sources of grief from whence our whole souls may speedily be overwhelmed 1 In our own persons we are exposed to diseases and accidents every moment. In our relative connexions too, how many occasions of sorrow are ever ready to arise ! the mis- conduct of one, the unkindness of another, the misfortunes of a third, the death of one that was to us as our own souls, — alas ! alas ! it is a vale of tears that we are passing through, moaning or bemoaned every hour. Our very pleasures not unfrequently
become
•* Compare Ps. lxxxvi.*13. & Isai. xxxviii. I7.
• Ps. ciii. 3. •» 2 Sam. xii. 13. • Isai. vi. 6, 7.
'' 1 Pet, i. 3, 4. N.B. This is the very commencement of an Epistle written to " Strangers who were, scattered all the world over by cruel persecutions."
P Ps. xhi. 3. 2 Sam.xiii. 36. Sc xv. 30. &: xviii. 33
^ Isai. xxxviii. Q — 14.