arm of that equitable law which protects us all from insulting violence. In the other case I can suppose it would be no trouble to you to forgive. You would say, “My dear fellow, I know we are all hasty sometimes — there, now, I do not care at all for it; you did not mean it.” But in this case, where a man has dared and defied you without any provocation whatever, you would say to him, “Sir, you have endeavoured to injure me in respectable society; I can forgive you as a Christian, but as a man and a citizen, I shall demand that I am protected against your insolence.”
16. You see, therefore, in the cases that occur between man and man, how there is an excess of guilt added to a sin by presumption. Oh! you who have sinned presumptuously — and who among us has not done so? — bow your heads in silence, confess your guilt, and then open your mouths, and cry, “Lord, have mercy upon me, a presumptuous sinner.”
17. III. And now I have nearly done — not to weary you by too long a discourse — we shall notice THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THIS PRAYER — “Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.”
18. Will you just note, that this prayer was the prayer of a saint, the prayer of a holy man of God? Did David need to pray thus? Did the “man after God’s own heart” need to cry, “Keep back your servant?” Yes, he did. And note the beauty of the prayer. If I might translate it into more metaphorical style, it is like this, “Curb your servant from presumptuous sin.” “Keep him back, or he will wander to the edge of the precipice of sin. Hold him in; Lord he is apt to run away; curb him; put the bridle on him; do not let him do it; let your overpowering grace keep him holy; when he wishes do evil, then draw him to good, and when his evil propensities would lead him astray, then check him.” “Check your servant from presumptuous sins!”
19. What, then? Is it true that the best of men may sin presumptuously? Ah! it is true. It is a solemn thing to find the apostle Paul warning saints against the most loathsome of sins. He says, “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, idolatry, inordinate affection,” and such like. What! do saints need warning against such sins as these? Yes, they do. The highest saints may sin the lowest sins, unless kept by divine grace. You old experienced Christians, do not boast in your experience; you may trip yet, unless you cry, “Hold you me up, and I shall be safe.” You whose love is fervent, whose faith is constant, whose hopes are bright, do not say, “I shall never sin,” but rather cry out, “Lord, lead me not into temptation, and when I am there do not leave me there, for unless you hold me fast I feel I must, I shall decline, and prove an apostate after all.” There is enough tinder in the heart of the best men in the world to light a fire that shall burn to the lowest hell, unless God should quench the sparks as they fall. There is enough corruption, depravity, and wickedness in the heart of the most holy man that is now alive to damn his soul to all eternity, if free and sovereign grace does not prevent it. Oh Christian, you need to pray this prayer. But I think I hear you crying, “Is your servant a dog that I should do this thing?” So said Hazael, when the prophet told him that he would kill his master; but he went home, and took a wet cloth and spread it over his master’s face and stifled him, and did the next day the sin which he abhorred before. Do not think it is enough to abhor sin, you may yet fall into it. Do not say, “I never can be drunk, for I have such an abhorrence of drunkenness”; you may fall where you are most secure. Do not say, “I can never blaspheme God, for I have never done so in my life”; take care; you may yet swear most profanely. Job might have said, “I will never curse the day of my birth”; but he lived to do it. He was a patient man; he might have said, “I will never murmur; though he kills me yet will I trust in him”; and yet he lived to wish that the day was darkness when he was born. Do not boast, then, oh Christian: by faith you stand. “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.”
20. But if this needs to be the prayer of the best, how ought it to be the prayer of you and me? If the highest saint must pray it, oh mere moralist, you have good need to utter it. And you who have begun to sin, who make no pretensions to piety, how much need is there for you to pray that you may be kept from presumptuously rebelling against God?
21. Instead, however, of enlarging upon that point, I shall close my few remarks this morning by just addressing myself most affectionately to such of you as are now under a sense of guilt by reason of presumptuous sins. God’s Spirit has found some of you out this morning. I thought when I was describing presumptuous sin that I saw here and there an eye that was suffused with tears; I thought I saw here and there a head that was bowed down, as much as to say, “I am guilty there.” I thought there were some hearts that palpitated with confession, when I described the guilt of presumption. I hope it was so. If it was, I am glad of it. If I hit your consciences, it was that I meant to do it. Not to your ears do I speak, but to your hearts. I would not give the snap of this my finger to gratify you with mere words of oratory, with a mere flow of language. No, God is my witness. I never sought effect yet, except the effect of hitting your consciences. I would use the words that would be most rough and vulgar in all our language, if I could get at your heart better with them than with any other; for I consider that the chief purpose of a minister is to touch the conscience. If any of you feel then that you have presumed against God in sinning, let me just bid you look at your sin, and weep over the blackness of it; let me exhort you to go home and bow your heads with sorrow, and confess your guilt, and weep over it with many tears and sighs. You have greatly sinned, and if God should blast you into perdition now, he would be just, if now his fiery thunderbolt of vengeance should pierce you through, if the arrow that is now upon the string of the Almighty should find a target in your heart, he would be just. Go home and confess that, confess it with cries and sighs. And then what should you do next? Why, I bid you remember that there was a Man who was a God. That Man suffered for presumptuous sin. I would bid you this day, sinner, if you know your need of a Saviour, go up to your bedroom, cast yourself upon your face and weep for sin; and when you have done that, turn to the Scriptures, and read the story of that Man who suffered and died for sin. Do you think you see him in all his unutterable agonies, and griefs, and woes, and say this —
My soul looks back to see
The burdens you did bear,
When hanging on th’ accursed tree,
And hopes her guilt was there.
Lift up your hand, and put it on his head who bled, and say —
My faith would lay its hand
On that dear head of thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And there confess my sin.
Sit down at the foot of his cross, and watch him until your heart is moved, until the tears begin to flow again, until your heart breaks within you; and then you will rise and say —
Dissolved by his mercy I fall to the ground,
And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found.
Oh sinner, you can never perish, if you will cast yourself at the foot of the cross. If you seek to save yourself you shall die; if you will come, just as you are all black, all filthy, all hell deserving, all ill deserving, I am my Master’s hostage, I will be answerable at the day of judgment for this matter, if he does not save you. I can preach on this subject now, for I trust I have tried my Master myself. As a youth I sinned, as a child I rebelled, as a young man I wandered into lusts and vanities: my Master made me feel how great a sinner I was, and I sought to reform, to mend the matter; but I grew worse. At last I heard it said, “Look to me, and be saved all the ends of the earth”; and I looked to Jesus. And oh! my Saviour, you have eased my aching conscience, you have given me peace; you have enabled me to say —
Now
