Psalms 51:5-7

Psalms 51:5-7. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me. and · shall be whiter than snow.

"Behold," says he, as if to go to the bottom of it, and to show that sin was not an accident with him, but that he himself was sinful. It was a grand faith - it was an Abrahamic faith - that when a man had such a sense of sin as David had, he at the same time could believe in the cleansing power of the blood. For you do not know what sin is, and who have never groaned beneath the burden, to talk about the pardoning blood - oh! it is easy enough, and there is nothing in it; but for a soul that knows the guilt and feels it. and is burdened by it, still to believe in the power of the atoning sacrifice - this is faith indeed. David had seen the priest take the bunch of hyssop and dip it in the warm blood of the goat or the bullock, and then sprinkle it; and he says, "Lord, do the same with me - with that richer blood of divine atonement " - that blood which, in David’s day, was yet to be shed. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."