I. THIS A CONDITION VERY COMMON. Sometimes it is through:

1. Mental distress, helplessness, sorrow, despair.

2. Or sickness of body, as Hezekiah.

3. Or outward disaster, as in this psalm.

II. ITS CAUSES GENERALLY TRACEABLE:

1. To ourselves - our own sin or folly.

2. To others with whom we are associated.

See this verse, where "former iniquities" mean the iniquities of people who have lived before us. Parents, ancestors. We all are members one of another, and if one suffer, all others suffer with him. Hence it may be their sin or folly rather than our own.

3. To God. He, as with Job, may see fit to let us be brought very low.

III. ITS REASONS VARIOUS.

1. Punishment.

2. Discipline.

3. For the drawing of the soul nearer God.

4. For opportunity of testifying to God's sustaining grace.

5. To teach sympathy.

IV. BESET WITH PERIL. The devil loves to hit a man when he is down. Hence he assails the mind with thoughts hard, bitter, unbelieving, desperate. Shipwreck of faith and good conscience lies near at hand.

V. BUT MAY BECOME THE MEANS OF GREAT SPIRITUAL ATTAINMENT. Even our Lord "learned obedience" so. - S.C.

The proper translation of this would be, "Remember not to us the iniquities of former men." The text recognizes the fact that men suffer for the iniquities of their fathers and their forefathers. This is an undoubted fact. We may just state five practical purposes which this principle of the Divine government serves to answer.

I. It serves to show the RIGHT WHICH EVERY PHILANTHROPIST HAS TO PROTEST AGAINST THE SINS OF INDIVIDUALS. If evil is handed down from sire to son, the sinner has no right to say, How does my sin concern you? To such we may say, You have no right to do that which injures your brethren; and, in the name of humanity, every man has a right to protest against your sine and to endeavour to restrain you by all moral means from their commission.

II. It serves to show the SOLEMN RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PARENTAL CHARACTER. As our dispositions will be reproduced, and our deeds re-transacted, our actions will vibrate on the hearts of unborn men and women. Man lives, thinks, and throbs in the life of posterity.

III. It serves to show that THE BEST WAY TO ELEVATE THE RACE IS TO TRAIN THE YOUNG. As one generation so forms another, the best way to serve the whole race is to make a generation, physically, intellectually, and morally, what it ought to be. But there is no chance of thus forming a generation, except in the first stages of its life. Concentrate your efforts on the young.

IV. It serves to THROW SOME LIGHT UPON WHAT IS CALLED "ORIGINAL SIN."

V. It serves to INDICATE THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHRIST'S INCARNATION. "To destroy sin in the flesh." To do this, not merely in theories, books, or speech, but in actual human life, is the grand condition of the world's salvation. But inasmuch as sin, by this hereditary principle, is transmitted through physical relationship and social influences, it seems necessary that He who would destroy it, should become a link in the' great chain of humanity, identify Himself with the race, and originate the counteracting influences of truth and righteousness. Hence the world's great Deliverer became the Son of Man.

(Homilist.)