What is it that the psalmist declares of himself in these words but that God's judgments have always and habitually possessed his mind; that the fear of them has hung like a weight upon him; that even from his youth it has been present with him? If we look into any books of prayers or meditations of good men, the same feeling presents itself; we meet with expressions of sorrow and uneasiness under the consciousness of sin, as if sin were an evil no less real to them than we would conceive of some severe and continued bodily pain. It is this feeling which appears to me to be so commonly wanting amongst us.
I. The feeling of thinking lightly of sin is one of the evils which seem to accompany naturally what is called a state of high civilisation. As all things about us are softened, so are our judgments of our own souls.
II. We all fancy that if we were to commit any great crime, we should feel it very deeply, that we should be at once ashamed and afraid and should be dreading God's judgments. As it is our faults are mostly in what we call little things; that is, in things which human law would scarcely punish at all, and which do not produce serious worldly loss or suffering to any one. We seem to fancy that in God's sight the actions of our lives are blank; that they are things altogether too trifling for Him to notice; that He does not regard them at all.
III. St. Paul says, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." It is no exaggeration, then, but the simple truth, that our sins are more in number than the hairs of our head; and it might well be the case that, looking at all this vast number, and remembering God's judgments, our hearts, as the psalmist says of himself, should fail us for fear. Remember that so many waking hours as we have in each day, so many hours have we of sin or of holiness; every hour delivers in, and must deliver, its record: and everything so recorded is placed either on one side of the fatal line or on the other; it is charged to our great account of good or of evil.
T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. v., p. 106.