then ? Oh ! ask yourselves, ' What will be my view of this matter in the last day ? ' Then even the sins that now seem of no account, will appear most heinous, and the price paid for a momentary indulgence, most prodigal. The selling of a birth- right for a mess of pottage is but a very faint emblem of the folly of those, who for the whole world are induced to barter the salvation of their souls. View things in any measure now, as you will view them at the last day ; and you will rather die a thousand deaths than sin against your God.]
Ps. li. 5. Behold, I loas shapen in iniquity ; and in si?i did my
mother conceive me.
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 a 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