Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 119:176

I have gone astray, etc. Who is called "the man after God's own heart"? David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough blackest crimes there was no want of sin. And, therefore, unbelievers sneer, and ask, "Is this your man after God's own heart?" The sneer, it seems to me, is but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, the often baffled, never ended struggle of it, be forgotten?...David's life and history, as written for us in those psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given us of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discover in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled sore baffled driven as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended, ever with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose begun anew. Thomas Carlyle, (1795-1881), in "Heroes and Hero Worship."