There is nothing in our world that shows high victory better than penitence. Mankind does wrong. Sometimes it knows the wrong. Then perhaps it confesses its wrong in the hurried words, "I have sinned." So said Pharaoh, and immediately did again what he had done before. So said Saul, and never gave up the wrong that forced the confession from him. So said Judas, and went out to hang himself. But when David said it, he said it with a broken and a contrite heart. The man who having sinned conquers all the passion and pride of his soul and becomes a sweet, true, pure penitent is a victor over whom angels rejoice. Thousands of men who have made a success in their own field of labor fail to win life's best victories because they never bow before God and say, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner." They are as stout-hearted as the Pharisee, and as self-deceived. They forget the bitternesses they have cherished toward their fellow-men, they overlook all the omissions of goodness that have marked their lives, they do not consider how terrible is their present and their past ingratitude to God for all His goodness to them, and so they lack that gentlest, most beautiful, and most exalting virtue of penitence. What a victory of _humility_ that was, when David, forbidden to carry out the supreme desire of his heart in the building of a temple, exerted all his power to help another to build it! The erection of a temple that should be the richest structure of its time was David's dream. It was to be the consummation of his effort. Enemies should be subdued, laws should be passed, government should be sustained, and foreign alliances made--all to this end. He looked forward to the day when the temple would crown Moriah, as the happiest day of his life. But God told him that another, not he, should build the temple, and that it would be known, not as David's Temple, but as Solomon's Temple. Should he then withdraw all interest from the undertaking? Should he say, "This is not my matter, it is another's; let another then carry its burden, as he will carry its glory." He was sorely disappointed. The one thing he had aimed to do was denied him. But he rose above his disappointment; he conquered it. He who was to take secondary place, threw himself into the help of him who was to have first place. He devised plans, he organized forces, he started instrumentalities, he gave his money by the millions, he animated others to follow his example, and he did all that chastened devotion could do to help another to complete the building which should forever sound the praises of Solomon.