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Precisely what they are to your fatherly heart, when you are seeking to soften and reclaim a wayward, sinful child. Search into the reason why you demand confession, before you condemn the demand of God. You may feel perfectly well assured that a child has found out the misery of sin, that in his own heart he condemns the transgression, and would give anything to recall it-that he is quite despondent and wretched through the discord which his sin has generated between himself and those whom he loves, but until he has said it, you feel that peace can only be half restored; you may be very deeply thankful to see the traces of penitence in his spirit, to be sure that he has condemned the sin, and gibbeted it in his heart; and yet, if he still refuses to confess it, to say, "Father, I have sinned," you feel that the penitence is essentially imperfect, that there is still a cloud between your spirit and his spirit, and the breach in the home is still unhealed. What is the ground of this? The right answer may help us to understand why confession is exacted by God. Is the ground of your demand the fact that your honour has been insulted, and needs to be vindicated by a formal reparation; that your dignity has been lowered, and needs, like a national flag, to be publicly saluted before it consents to be appeased? I venture to hope that there would be something greater in your heart than the

sentiment of honour, which is honourable only when it is the outwork of deeper things; and that the breach in such a case would not seem to you one which brought into question formal apologies and reparations. Does not the father's demand for confession spring rather out of the conviction that the penitence is imperfect which does not feel itself moved to confession spontaneously? If a child is miserable because of some transgression against the parent, and yet hides that misery from the parent's eye, and holds back that confession which would be a balm to the parent's heart, it means distinctly that there is still an alienation-that the child's heart is not perfect towards the parent—and that there is a selfish isolation of himself from the heart of the parent and the communion of the home, which in itself is a sin against the father's love. The child in that case does not yet see the true sin, the failure of filial duty; he has not yet sorrowed over the deepest cause of sorrow, the wounding a parent's heart. It is a sign that he does not yet long, or will not let the longing have way, for the true reconciliation, the true peace-the laying his aching head and burying his tear-stained cheek on the parent's bosom, and drinking in at every pore the assurance of restored confidence and love. I venture to think that this, and not the mere sentiment of dignity and honour, is the reason why a

parent waits for confession, and must hear the "Father, I have sinned," and clasp the penitent child to his heart, before he can feel that peace has been perfectly restored.

Let your own hearts interpret for you the ways of God.

He demands confession:-"The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Why? Some answer, that sin is a dishonour, a public dishonour to His government; confession is the only public reparation which can be offered for the fault; that He is a Ruler having public interests in charge, and, for the sake of those public interests, is bound to demand that the sinner shall make public confession, and thus do formal homage to the government whose laws he has formally spurned. If God is to be conceived of, in His relation to men, fundamentally as a Ruler, if that is the truest account which is to be given of the matter, there is no objection to be made to the statement. The Ruler, for the sake of the whole realm, righteously compels the rebellious subject to recant and swear

allegiance,before he can be forgiven. But I do not read in the records of the life of Christ, especially in that Gospel which gives the fullest record of His interior life, and His own sense of His mission, that He came to reveal the Ruler. I read in almost every page that He came to reveal the Father unto men. In other works, and especially in a recent book, entitled "The Divine Mystery of Peace," I have gone into this subject at length. It is answered by not unfriendly critics, that it is quite true that God is the Father, and there has, perhaps, been an undue suppression of the Fatherly element in His nature and relations, in our accepted theology; but then He is also a Ruler, and sustains relations which attach purely to the Ruler, to man, and to mankind. I confess that I cannot understand this variety in God. God is one. If He is a Father and also a Ruler, one must be the root of the other, He cannot be in part both. His rule must run through His fatherhood, and His fatherhood through His rule; and which is the root element of the twain no intelligent student of the Gospels can be left to doubt. A Ruler He is, unquestionably, with all a ruler's rights and claims. What father is he who does not rule in his home? But a Fatherly Ruler, because essentially a Father ; all whose acts have their full explanation only in the relation between a father's spirit and a child.

A father's rule can miss none of the ends which pure rule can righteously contemplate, but it wins them in winning what is yet more precious, the ends which a father may contemplate in the education of a child.

It appears to me that God's reason for demanding confession may be stated on this two-fold ground 1. Confession alone makes the penitence complete. 2. Confession alone re-establishes that filial relation, without which the penitence can have no lasting fruits.

1. Confession completes the penitence. It is in truth the first instinct of a truly filial heart. No sense of sin has reached its utmost depth, until wronging a father, wounding his heart, grieving his love, is felt to be the blackest feature of it. Laws are but abstractions until we realize that they are uttered by a lawgiver; and until we feel that we have sinned against a Being, we talk about violated laws in vain. A true penitence for sin against a Being, inevitably leads us to that Being; his forgiveness, the restoration of his confidence and love, are the essential conditions of our peace. The real root-sin of our nature is the loss of the filial love and trust in God. While the soul stands far off from Him, bitterly conscious of sin, but resolved, "I will repent, but I will not confess," the very core of the sin is there. All that is repented

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