holdest mine eyes waking. . . .  I have considered the days of old, and the years that are past.  I call to remembrance my song, and in the night I commune with my own heart, and search out my spirits.  Will the Lord absent himself for ever, and will he be no more intreated?  Is his mercy clean gone for ever:  and is his promise come utterly to an end for evermore?  Hath God forgotten to be gracious:  and will he shut up his loving-kindness in displeasure?  And I said it is mine own infirmity.  But I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most Highest.’  These sleepless hours taught the Psalmist somewhat; and they may teach us likewise.  And so, again, with these sad and fretful frames of mind.  Even if they do partly come from our bodies, they have a real effect, which cannot be mistaken, on our souls; and they may have a good effect on us, if we choose.  I believe that we shall find, that even if they do come from ill health and weak nerves, what starts them is—­that we are dissatisfied with ourselves.  We feel something wrong, not merely in our bodies, but in our souls, our characters; and then we try to lay the blame on the world around us, and shift it off ourselves; saying in our hearts, ’I should do very well, if other people, and things about me, would only let me:’  but the more we try to shift off the blame, the less peace we have.  Nothing mends matters less than throwing the blame on others.  That is plain.  Other people we cannot mend; they must mend themselves.  Circumstances about us we cannot mend; God must mend them.  So, as long as we throw the blame on them, we cannot return to a cheerful and hopeful frame of mind.  But the moment we throw the blame on ourselves, that moment we can have hope, that moment we can become cheerful again; for whatsoever else we cannot mend, we can at least mend ourselves.  Now a man may forget this in health.  He may be put out and unhappy for a while:  but when his good spirits return, he does not know why.  Things have not improved; but, somehow, they do not affect him as they did before.  Now this is not wrong.  God forbid!  In such a world as this, one is glad to see a man rid of sadness by any means which is not wrong.  Better anything than that a poor soul should fret himself to death.

But it may be very good for a man now and then not to forget; to be kept low, whether by ill health or by any other cause, till he faces fairly his own state, and finds out honestly what does fret him and torment him.

And then, I believe, his experience will generally be like David’s.—­ ’As long as I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my groaning all the day long.’

Think over these words, I beg you.  I chose them for my text, just because they seem to me to contain all that I wish you to understand.  As long as the Psalmist held his peace—­as long as he did not confess his sin to God—­all seemed to go wrong with him.  He fretted his very heart away.  The moment that he made a clean breast to God, peace and cheerfulness came back to him.