"Mine iniquities are gone over mine head; as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me." --- Psalm 38:4.
It is a sure sign that a man is awakened out of his sleep, when he discovers the error of his dream. In the drawing up of water out of a deep well, so long as the bucket is under water, we feel not the weight of it; but as soon as it comes above water, it begins to hang heavily on the hand. When a man dives under water, he feels no weight of the water, though there be many tons of it over his head; whereas a tub half full of the same water, taken out of the river, and set upon the same man's head, would be very burdensome to him, and make him soon grow weary of it.
In like manner, so long as a man is over head in sin, he is not sensible of the weight of sin; it is not troublesome in him; but when he begins once to come out of that state of sin wherein he lay and lived before, then beginneth sin to hang heavy upon him, and he groans under the weight thereof. So long as sin is in the will, the proper seat of sin, a man feels not the weight of it, but, like a fool, it is sport and pastime to him to do evil. It is therefore a good sign that sin is removed out of its seat, out of its chair of state, when it becomes burdensome to us; and such a sense of may well be considered as an entrance into a state of grace.
Give me, O Lord, the broken heart,
Which mourns for sin with inward smart;
And will to thy dear cross repair,
And seek and find it healing there.