Notes on Rev. M'Cheyne's Memoirs: a personal view of sin

This year I'm treating myself to Memoirs and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M'Cheyne. It's a long book, and I suspect that it will take me an entire year to finish. I downloaded the scanned copies of the book freely made available by Google. I'm reading the PDF in my Kindle, in landscape mode. I like how it looks (I'm sharing the actual screenshots), a lot like reading an old copy in a dusty library.

The book starts with how Rev. M'Cheyne came to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. The succeeding chapters give snapshots of his journal entries. Here, we read of his despair over his sin.

"What a mass of corruption I have been! How great a portion of my life have I spent wholly without God in the world; given up to sense and the perishing things around me."

"Restrained from open vice by educational views and fear of man, how much ungodliness has reigned within me! How often has it broken through all restraints and come out in the shape of lusts and anger, mad ambitions, and unhallowed words! Through my vice was always refined, yet how subtile and how awfully prevalent it was!"

"O great God, that didst suffer me to live whilst I so dishonoured thee, thou knows the whole; and it was thy hand alone that could awaken me from the death in which I was, and was contented to be."

"And though sentiment and constitutional enthusiasm may have a great effect on me, still I believe that my soul is in sincerity desirous and earnest about having all its concerns at rest with God and Christ—that his kingdom occupies the most part of all my thoughts, and even of my long-polluted affections."

I will be sharing some more book highlights as I read along.