d out, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
The charge of folly brought against oneself only proves that we feel
bitterly for having lost our own self-respect. It is a humiliation to
have forfeited the idea which a man had formed of his own
character--to find that the very excellence on which he prided
himself, is the one in which he has failed. If there were a virtue for
which Saul was conspicuous, it was generosity; yet it was exactly in
this point of generosity in which he discovered himself to have
failed, when he was overtaken on the mountain, and his life spared by
the very man whom he was hunting to the death, with feelings of the
meanest jealousy. Yet there was no real repentance there; there was
none of that in which a man is sick of state and pomp. Saul could
still rejoice in regal splendour, go about complaining of himself to
the Ziphites, as if he was the most ill-treated and friendless of
mankind; he was still jealous of his reputation, and anxious to be
well thought of. Quite different is the tone in which the Publican,
who felt himself a sinner, asked for mercy. He heard the contumelious
expression of the Pharisee, "this Publican." With no resentment, he
meekly bore it as a matter naturally to be taken for granted--"he did
not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven;" he was as a worm which
turns in agony, but not revenge, upon the foot which treads it into
the dust.

Now this sorrow of Saul's too, works death: no merit can restore
self-respect; when once a man has found himself out, he cannot be
deceived again. The heart is as a stone: a speck of canker corrodes
and spreads within. What on this earth remains, but endless sorrow,
for him who has ceased to respect himself, and has no God to turn to?

II. The divine power of sorrow.

1. It works repentance. By repentance is meant, in Scripture, change
of life, alteration of habits, renewal of heart. This is the aim and
meaning of all sorrow. The consequences of sin are meant to wean from
sin. The penalty annexed to it is in the first instance, corrective,
not penal. Fire burns the child, to teach it one of the truths of this
universe--the property of fire to burn. The first time it cuts its
hand with a sharp knife, it has gained a lesson which it never will
forget. Now, in the case of pain, this experience is seldom, if ever,
in vain. There is little chance of a child forgetting that fire will
burn, and that sharp steel