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"My sin is ever before me." I desire to make this statement as general as possible, and not to confine it to the instance in which it was first uttered. In one sense no single thought or subject can be perpetually in a man's mind. Nobody needs to be told that. The stormiest heart has moments when the tempest is hushed. The most sorrowful life has moments or hours when the weight of the great sorrow is not present, and the man whose conscience is most deeply burdened with guilt has times of calmness and peace. We all know that. Still, "My sin is ever before me," the penitent soul may say to itself; "for I cannot throw off old memories, or be blind and deaf to inner warnings. I cannot help feeling the bitter effects of old errors and follies, of old habits and acts, which cast a dark shadow over my life, and remind me continually that it is I myself who have offended." There are some circumstances, however, which might seem to destroy this permanent sense of evil.

1. Repentance is one of these. One might suppose that if once a man heartily regretted a wrong act or course, it would cease in any sense of the word to be his. He has disowned it. Still, it is not possible to forget our identity with our former selves; it is not possible to think of what we were and of what we did without pain.

2. Again, it may be thought that the pardon of sin would destroy that perpetual bitterness of its remembrance, and that no man who had really been forgiven could say, "My sin is ever before me." If God has forgiven, people may say, If He has, in the language of Scripture, cast our sins into the depths of the sea, why should we fret about them, as if they could be brought to the surface again and laid to our charge? It seems a logical enough argument, but, after all, it does not come to much; for human feeling and human remorse are not governed by figures of speech, such as the casting of sins into the depths of the sea.

3. There is still another circumstance which might seem to justify our forgetting or leaving out of view our sin, and that is when it has been visited with chastening or punishment. But if neither repentance nor pardon will remove it out of our memory or conscience, neither, finally, will punishment. There is a voice within us which whispers to us, after all our sufferings from our wrong-doing, that it has not ceased to be ours. Penalty for evil-speaking, has not taken away the spirit of uncharitableness and malice. "My sin is ever before me " is the voice of true contrition and humility. There is the deed, or crime, or course of sin "ever before me." Repentance has not destroyed it; pardon, though it has brought consolation, has not destroyed it; nor can punishment blot out its bitter memories.

(A. Watson, D. D.)

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KJV: Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

WEB: Let me hear joy and gladness, That the bones which you have broken may rejoice.