noonday,' but shall 'tread upon the lion and adder.' These promises
divide the dangers that beset us into the same two classes as our
Psalmist does--the one secret; the other palpable and open. The former,
which, as I explained in my last sermon, are sins hidden, not from
others, but from the doer, may fairly be likened to the pestilence that
stalks slaying in the dark, or to the stealthy, gliding serpent, which
strikes and poisons before the naked foot is aware. The other resembles
the 'destruction that wasteth at noonday,' or the lion with its roar and
its spring, as, disclosed from its covert, it leaps upon the prey.

Our present text deals with the latter of these two classes.
'Presumptuous sins' does not, perhaps, convey to an ordinary reader the
whole significance of the phrase, for it may be taken to define a single
class of sins--namely, those of pride or insolence. What is really meant
is just the opposite of 'secret sins'--all sorts of evil which, whatever
may be their motives and other qualities, have this in common, that the
doer, when he does them, knows them to be wrong.

The Psalmist gets this further glimpse into the terrible possibilities
which attach even to a servant of God, and we have in our text these
three things--a danger discerned, a help sought, and a daring hope
cherished.

I. Note, then, the first of these, the dreaded and discerned
danger--'presumptuous sins,' which may 'have dominion over' us, and lead
us at last to a 'great transgression.'

Now the word which is translated 'presumptuous' literally means _that
which boils or bubbles_; and it sets very picturesquely before us the
movement of hot desires--the agitation of excited impulses or