It is not
a prayer of that kind. It is rather the prayer of a man who is
weary with the burden of sinful mortality; who finds it very hard
work to do his duty, even tolerably well; who is dissatisfied with
himself, and ashamed of himself, not about one great fault, but
about many little faults; and who wants to be cleansed from them;
who is tempted to be fretful, anxious, out of heart, because things
go wrong; and because he feels it partly his own fault that things
go wrong; and who, therefore, wants peace, that he may serve God
with a quiet mind. Now then, dear friends, did I not speak truth,
when I said, this is a prayer for every one of us, and for every
day? For which of us does his duty as he ought? I take for
granted, we are all trying to do our duty, better or worse: but I
take for granted, too, that the more we try to do our duty, the more
dissatisfied with ourselves we are; and the more we find we have
sins without number to be cleansed from. For the more we try to do
our duty, the higher notion we get of what our duty is; the more we
do, the more we feel we ought to do; and the more we feel that we
leave undone a great many things which we ought to do, and do a
great many things which we ought not to do, and that there is no
health in us: but a great deal of disease and weakness;--disease of
soul, in the way of conceit, pride, selfishness, temper, obstinacy;
weakness, in the way of laziness, fearfulness, and very often of
sheer stupidity; we do not see, or rather will not take the trouble
to see, what we ought to do, and how to do it.
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