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"For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great."

Psalm xxv. 11.

HIS striking prayer is hemmed in, as it were, between two promises. It looks like a fossil embedded in a mass of stone. What means it there? Why is it put in such a peculiar position? The Psalmist is both praising and preaching. How is it he turns to praying? Beloved, I think it was to teach us that prayer is never out of place. When the Apostle Paul was writing the most doctrinal of his Epistles, he sometimes paused in the midst of them to offer a supplication, as when he said-" For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." When engaged in any holy duties you may even refrain from praise for a moment to present a prayer. Nor would it be amiss for us sometimes to break the thread of a sermon, that the people might pause and join with the preacher in asking God's blessing upon the message of mercy, and upon all that hear it. Certainly, my dear friends, you will never find any time inopportune for prayer, if your heart be true and your faith in full force. The Mahometans have their hour for prayer, and when they hear the signal from the minaret of the

mosque, wherever they may be, in the street or in the market-place, they bow their heads to Allah, and repeat their form of prayer. Without their ostentation, you may "pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting." We need not be confined to special seasons when a summons is given, but at all times, and in every place, we may continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving. When your hands are measuring out your goods, when they are pushing the plane, or driving the nail, when you are driving the plough, or threshing the corn, if you are speeding along the iron way, or walking among the corn fields, your heart may have fellowship with him

"Who is within no walls confined,

But habiteth the humble mind,"

who counts all places holy where men are holy, and all spots places for prayer, when the heart is in a prayerful frame. My soul, wait thou upon God in thy daily calling, and think not that thou canst ever approach him at an unseasonable hour, or lift up thy cry to him when he is otherwise engaged, so that he cannot attend to thy petition.

Were it necessary to my present purpose to explain the connection of this prayer with the scope of the psalm it would not be difficult. The promise that the Psalmist had just recited is "to such as keep his covenant." It was the besetting sin of Israel to break the covenant. Do you not see now that the tinge of a condition would shut the door of hope in our face? Therefore, the greatness of the promise often stirs up our deepest anxieties, lest any of us should seem to

come short of it. Depend upon it, brethren, that the prayer for pardon, which is never unfitting at any time, can never be more fitting than when our hearts are lifted up with the loftiest apprehensions of God's covenant. My principal aim, however, to-night, is to bring my hearers, myself, all of us, to feel with David, that our iniquity is great-for this I shall labour. When I have this done, I shall very briefly try to show how the very greatness of our iniquity may become a plea with God: "Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." And I shall close with some earnest entreaties to those who have never sought pardon of sin to seek it now.

I. Well then, first, David declared that his iniquity was great. The word used in the original conveys the idea of quantity as well as of quality. Not simply was his sin great in its atrocity, but there was very much of it; any one sin was great, but it was not one but ten thousand times ten thousand in multitude. His sin was as great in the bulk as it was black in its heinousness. Now, I do not know, although David made one very terrible fall, that any humble-minded person here would consider himself to be superior to David. He was a man after God's own heart, and notwithstanding a great blot upon his sun, we would not hesitate to say he is a sun for all that. For David presents a character so admirable, so all but matchless in the harmony of the different graces, that we think he certainly approaches very near to his great Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Certainly, if David felt his iniquity to be great, it would be very foul presumption in any of us to think ours to be little. At any rate, we have to come out and say, "I reckon myself to be a better man than David was," or else we

ought to subscribe heartily with our hand to the truth, that our iniquity must be great too if David's was.

But leaving David out of the question, not comparing ourselves with others, we will draw some few pictures by which the greatness of our iniquity may be seen. Our sin is great when we consider against whom it is committed. In an army, if a soldier shall strike his comrade, it is, of course, a misdemeanour, but if he should have smitten some petty officer it is considered to be a more grievous offence, and if he should have struck the commander-in-chief it would become so heavy a crime that I know not what penalty short of death might be awarded it. Now, in the world of morals, as God sees it, there is much difference in sin when we consider the difference in the person against whom it is committed. You and I think it is the worst sin that hurts us the most. We have heard, I dare say, the story of the lawyer who was waited upon by a farmer, to ask him what would be the penalty for a man whose horse was always getting into his neighbour's field and eating his corn, whether it would be heavy; he had warned him several times, and he always would do it, and it was his fence, and he ought to have mended it. The lawyer said, of course there would be a considerable fine, no doubt, and so on. "Well," said he, "sir, it is your horse that has done this." "O!" said our friend the solicitor, "that is quite a different question; I did not know it was my horse before I gave my opinion." So it is, generally, with regard to anything that is done amiss, if it hurts you, or if it hurts me, we always feel very indignant about it, but if it only offends the Majesty of heaven we make light of it. What fools

we are! If it shall offend such puny, insignificant creatures as we, then there is something in it; but if the Divine Majesty be itself insulted, we pass it by as though it were a mere trifle. There really is a difference in the sin according to the person against whom it is committed. I will put it thus. A man has just now been striking another, striking him with an intent to do him hurt. "That is bad," say you. "Yes, but it was his own father that he struck." "Ay," now you say, "that is far worse for him, to have injured the man whom he ought to have loved and honoured." So since God is our Creator, any attack that is made upon his government, any wilful violation of his law, is aggravated by the fact that we owe to him such unbounded allegiance. "It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture." Sinners, did ye ever think of it? You have offended against him that made you, in whose hand your breath is, and under whose control are all your ways. When you have used profane words, it has been against the High and Lofty One, against Jehovah, who rides the sky, and launches abroad his thunderbolts, and shakes heaven and earth with his terrible voice; against him, before whom the bright archangels veil their faces and humbly bow themselves, unworthy to lick the dust of his feet; against God thou hast offended! Sinner, thou thinkest it is little, but I tell thee this it is that makes thine iniquity great.

Yet further, sin derives some degree of its sinfulness from the fact that it is an offence against a most just and equitable law. We sometimes read in the newspapers, that persons are severely punished for offences

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