ut that had only made him the more miserable. 'When I kept
silence, my bones waxed old through my daily complaining. For Thy
hand was heavy on me night and day: my moisture was turned to the
drought of summer.' Then he had tried sacrifices. He had fancied,
I suppose, that he could make God pleased with him again by showing
great devoutness, by offering bullocks and goats without number, as
sin-offerings and peace-offerings; but that made him no happier. At
last he found out that God required no sacrifice but a broken heart.
That was what God wanted--a broken and a contrite heart; for David
to be utterly ashamed of himself, utterly broken down and silenced,
so that he had nothing left to plead--neither past good deeds, nor
present devoutness, nor sacrifices: nothing but, 'O God, I deserve
all Thou canst lay on me, and more. Have mercy on me--mercy is all
I ask.'

There was nothing for him, you see, but to make a clean breast of
it; to face his sin, and all its shame and abomination, and confess
it all, and throw himself on God's mercy. And when he did that,
there, then, and at once, as Nathan told him, God put away his sin.
As David says himself, 'I said, I will confess my sins unto the
Lord, and so Thou forgavest the wickedness of my sin.'

As it is written, 'If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'

And now, my friends, what lesson may we learn from this? It is easy
to say, We have not sinned as deeply as David, and therefore his
story has nothing to do with us. My friends, whether we have sinned
as deeply as David or not, his story has to do with you, and me, and
every soul in this church, and every soul in the whole world, or it
would not be in the Bible. For no prophecy of Scripture is of
private interpretation; that is, it does not only point at one man
here and another there: but those who wrote it were moved by the
Holy Ghost, who lays down the eternal universal laws of holiness, of
right and good, which are right and good for you, and me, and all
mankind; and therefore David's story has to do with you and me every
time we do wrong, and know that we have done wrong.

Now, my friends, when you have done a wrong thing, you know your
conscience torments you with it; you are uneasy, and discontented
with yourselves, perhaps cross with those about you; you hardly know
why: or rather, though you do know why, you do not like t