[Hear the desponding complaint of Cain : " My punish- ment is greater than I can bear." He feh himself an outcast from God and man ; and was haunted by a guilty conscience, which was ever tormenting him with its accusations, and caus- ing him to anticipate, with terrible apprehensions, his final doom. The state of Judas was not less appalling than his. The traitor had promised himself much pleasure from the M^ages of his iniquity: but no sooner had he betrayed his Lord, than he was filled with remorse, and constrained to confess his guilt, and could no longer retain the money with which he had been bribed, yea, could no longer endure his very existence, but went and hanged himself.
Previous to the commission, sin appears but a light and venial evil : and, even after it has been committed, often leaves the mind in a state of extreme insensibility and obduracy. But let it once be brought home to the conscience by the operation of the Spirit of God, and it will inflict a wound there, which will be a foretaste of hell itself, even " a certain looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation that shall consume " the soul for ever.]
2. A blacksliding saint —
[The example of Peter may teach us the bitter effects of sin on a mind susceptible of its enormity. What pangs did he feel, when his Divine Master looked upon him, and fixed con- viction on his soul ! No longer able to contain himself, " he went out and wept bitterly." But let us fix ovu' attention more particularly on David, whose words we are considermg. Under a sense of his enormous guilt, "his bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long : for God's hand was heavy upon him, so that his moisture was turned to the drought of summer ^." Hear his cries under the agonies he endured : " O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure : for thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh, because of thine anger ; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone over my head ; as an heavy bm'then they are too heavy for me. I am troubled : I am bowed down greatly : I go mourning all the day long. I am feeble and sore broken : I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart ^." In another psalm he still further complains, " My soul is full of troubles ; and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves ''." Who that hears these bitter wailings must not acknowledge
a Ps. xxxii. 3, 4. ^ Ps. xxxviii. 1 — 8. '^ Ps. Ixxxviii. 3, 6, 7.