and willing too, to assist you ? And if you will not seek his assistance, does not the blame rest wholly with yourselves? Know that, however you may justify yourselves now, there is a day coming when you will stand speechless before him.]
2. How little ground is there for the fears of the desponding ?
[We are but too apt to faint in difficulties, and to think them insurmountable : but if we would habituate ourselves more to look at the power of God, we should proceed with confidence and courage. " Let the weak then say, I am strong." Let them " know in whom they have believed, that He is able to keep that which they have committed to him^."]
" 2 Tim. i. 12.
Ps. Ixix. 1 — 4. Save me, O God ! for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink iii deep mire, where there is no stand- ing : I am come into deep ivaters, ivhere the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying ; my throat is dried : mine eyes fail, ivhile I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head : they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that ivhich I took not aivay.
SACRED is the retirement of a penitent^ and hal- lowed is the sanctuary where he is pouring out his soul before God : nor could the most obdurate sinner overhear his confessions and supplications, his cries and tears, his importunate pleadings and heart-rend- ing groans, without being filled with awe and re- verence. Let us draw nigh then with holy awe to the recesses of that chamber, where, not a sinful creature like ourselves, but our incarnate God, the Saviour of the world, is pouring out his soul under a load of sins imputed to him, and of sorrows the punishment of sin^ He it is that in the psalm before us is saying, " Save me, O God ! for the waters are come in unto my soul." David, it is true, was the writer of the psalm ; and in parts of it may be con- sidered as speaking chiefly, if not entirely, of himself:
^ Heb. v. 7.