Such is the history of almost all solid conversion. The great destroyer of the souls of men, which throughout the whole world is so widely wasting, is not so much wilful, deliberate sin as thoughtlessness. At first sinners do not think; then they will not think; at last they cannot think.
I. This is the history of most of mankind: a thoughtless childhood, careless youth, too thoughtful manhood; one half of life without thought, the other with misplaced thought thoughtful to things of time and sense, thoughtless of Him who made them and of their real selves.
II. "I thought on my ways." Before this, then, he had not thought on them. "I took account of, reckoned up, calculated, my ways," for our ways, although leading in one direction, are many; there are as many ways as there are acts, or passions, or temptations: and he reckoned them up and took account of them all, whither they were all leading, to turn them all and his whole self into the way of God. Such is the way of all solid conversion.
III. We cannot understand what we are now unless we look back, as far as we may, on all we have been. Not fully to know thyself, as far as thou canst, is to walk blindly on a precipice, where to fall is to perish for ever. Make haste and delay not to keep God's commandments. Nothing besides lingers. Time is sweeping by. Thy life is hasting away. "Make haste and delay not."
E. B. Pusey, Occasional Sermons,p. 142.
References: Psalms 119:59; Psalms 119:60. Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts,2nd series, vol. i., p. 48. Psalms 119:63. Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times"vol. vi., p. 172; W. Braden, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 52.