ay the joys of Divine communion, darkens his
soul, ends his prosperity, brings down upon his head for all his
remaining years a cataract of calamities, and makes his name and his
religion a target for the barbed sarcasms of each succeeding generation
of scoffers. "All the fences and their whole array," which God's mercies
and his own past had reared, "one cunning sin sweeps quite away." Every
obligation of his office, as every grace of his character, is trodden
under foot by the wild beast roused in his breast. As man, as king, as
soldier, he is found wanting. Lust and treason, and craft and murder,
are goodly companions for him who had said, "I will walk within my house
with a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes." Why
should we dwell on the wretched story? Because it teaches us, as no
other page in the history of God's church does, how the alchemy of
Divine love can extract sweet perfumes of penitence and praise out of
the filth of sin; and therefore, though we turn with loathing from
David's sin, we have to bless God for the record of it, and for the
lessons of hope that come from David's pardon.

To many a sin-tortured soul since then, the two psalms (li., xxxii.),
all blotted with tears, in which he has sobbed out his penitence, have
been as footsteps in a great and terrible wilderness. They are too
familiar to need, and too sacred to bear, many words here, but we may
briefly note some points connected with them--especially those which
assist us in forming some image of the psalmist's state of mind after
his transgression. It may be observed that of these two psalms, the
fifty-first is evidently earlier than the thirty-second. In the former
we see the fallen man struggling up out of the "horrible pit and miry
clay;" in the latter he stands upon the rock, with a new song in his
mouth, even the blessedness of him "whose sin is covered." It appears
also that both must be dated after the sharp thrust of God's lancet
which Nathan drove into his conscience, and the healing balsam of God's
assurance of forgiveness which Nathan laid upon his heart. The
passionate cries of the psalm are the echo of the Divine promise--the
effort of his faith to grasp and keep the merciful gift of pardon. The
consciousness of forgiveness is the basis of the prayer for forgiveness.

Somewhere about a year passed between the crime and the message of
Nathan. And what sort of a year it was the psalms tell us. The coarse
sa