Morning Prayer. FOR ASH-WEDNESDAY, THE THIRD PENI PSALM XXXviii. Domine, ne in furore. 1. Pur me not to rebuke, O Lord, in Thine anger : neither chasten me in Thy heavy displeasure. 2. For Thine arrows stick fast in me and Thy hand presseth me sore. The soul which has seen its sins can for awhile only groan at the wretchedness of the sight. It feels that rebuke and chastisement are its proper lot; it can only cry to the Lord, against Whom it has rebelled, that His rebuke may not be the rebuke of wrath, nor His chastisement that of severe anger. The higher the grace from which it has fallen, and the more effectual the grace which raises it up, the deeper do the memories pierce of the things it has done, and the heavier does the thought weigh upon it of its ungratefulness and vileness. With what sharpness of both shame and fear must those words have struck to David's heart, when God sent to him by the prophet Nathan the message— Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; and I gave thee thy master's house, and the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.' 3. There is no health in my flesh, because of Thy displeasure neither is there any rest in my bones, by reason of my sin. 4. For my wickednesses are gone over my head and are like a sore burden, too heavy for me to bear. Self-distrust and self-contempt have the perfect mastery over him who has thus sinned in despite of God. He feels that there is no counsel, no comfort in himself, that his reliance on himself is less than nothing. His sin and his wickedness is all that is his own. The ever-increasing mass of guilt which his conscience heaps up in witness against him makes him despair; the burden is one which he can never carry home. 5. My wounds stink, and are corrupt : through my foolishness. 6. I am brought into so great trouble and misery that I go mourning all the day long. They are not fresh wounds only with which his 'heart is wounded within him,' and his conscience bleeds, but old, long-forgotten, unrepented crimes come forth again, which have long been festering in the soul and polluting the moral being. How often does a sin done perhaps long ago in youth, and yet never repented of or atoned for, remain hidden in the soul, like an ulcer, poisoning the very springs of the spiritual life, and bringing upon the sinner at the last trouble and misery unspeakable! Not days of mourning, nor nights of tears, can remedy the loss which the folly of unrepentance and carelessness has too often caused. 7. For my loins are filled with a sore disand there is no whole part in my ease body. 8. I am feeble, and sore smitten: I have roared for the very disquietness of my heart. For neglected wilful sins are not merely an outward witness against the sinner, nor even scars and wounds upon his moral nature, but at last they seem to enter into his very being, to get possession of his whole existence. Looking at all that is vile and impure in his doings, in his sayings, in his thinkings, tracing out with self-abhorring truthfulness, how all that he is and all that he does tends to sin, he feels as if he were indeed sin-full, as if he were sin itself. He loathes himself with a most deep. loathing. The whole head becomes sick, and the whole heart faint, at the sight of what he has become. He cries out with the Apostle, 'O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" For to feel sin in its own utter sinfulness, to see it rightly as it really is, is the torture of all tortures and the terror of all terrors. : 9. Lord, Thou knowest all my desire and my groaning is not hid from Thee. God and the heart alone know all that fearful struggle, that intense longing to escape from sin and from ourselves, and to gain some better restingplace, some less poor and treacherous stay. The groans of him who hates his sin, and is yearning for forgiveness, are never lost nor hidden; they may be wrung from a feeble and a broken heart, but they are the very promptings, and even the echoes, of that Eternal Spirit, Which 'Itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.' 10. My heart panteth, my strength hath failed me and the sight of mine eyes is gone from me. He sees then how near sin is to death, and then, too, most when death comes near to him. The shadow of the second death falls over him. His heart throbs but feebly, his strength becomes powerless, like that of a dying man, and the things of life grow dim and small before his dying eyes. The death of the soul is the withdrawal of grace, even as the death of the body is the failing of the breath. 11. My lovers and my neighbours did stand looking upon my trouble and my kinsmen stood afar off. : 12. They also that sought after my life laid snares for me and they that went about to do me evil talked of wickedness, and imagined deceit all the day long. In that foretaste of the wrath to come human help and sympathy avail nothing. He that has sinned by himself must suffer by himself. The heart knoweth its own bitterness,' and neither neighbour nor kinsman can come near with comfort or with cure. We must die alone, and man's kindness or love cannot save us from death; so we must repent alone, and man's companionship or pity cannot save us from the grasp of sin; for that they are sinners too. But though friends are then unable to give aid, our enemies, both seen and unseen, become stronger and fiercer. As the sinner faints, they double their attacks; as he despairs, they multiply their snares. Sin, whom he has served, gives him no respite, for that it is loath to lose a slave over whom it has long had power. 13. As for me, I was like a deaf man, and heard not and as one that is dumb, who doth not open his mouth. 14. I became even as a man that heareth not and in whose mouth are no reproofs. What are charges of wickedness and rebukes for sin to him before whom has been revealed his own guilty state? He hears them not. He knows far more against himself than any reproach that an |