t sacrifices, nor about self-reliant efforts at moral
improvement. 'Take with you _words_,' not 'the blood of bulls and
goats.' Confession is better than sacrifice. What words are they which
will avail? Hosea teaches the penitent's prayer. It must begin with the
petition for forgiveness, which implies recognition of the petitioner's
sin. The cry, 'Take away all iniquity,' does not specify sins, but
masses the whole black catalogue into one word. However varied the forms
of our transgressions, they are in principle one, and it is best to bind
them all into one ugly heap, and lay it at God's feet. We have to
confess not only sins, but sin, and the taking away of it includes
divine cleansing from its power, as well as divine forgiveness of its
guilt. Hosea bids Israel ask that God would take away all iniquity; John
pointed to 'the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.'
But beyond forgiveness and cleansing, the penitent heart will seek that
God would 'accept the good' in it, which springs up by His grace, when
the evil has been washed from it, like flowers that burst from soil off
which the matted under-growth of poisonous jungle has been cleared. Mere
negative absence of 'evil' is not all that we should desire or exhibit;
there must be positive good; and however sinful may have been the past,
we are not too bold when we ask and expect that we may be made able to
produce 'good,' which shall be fragrant as sweet incense to God.

Petitions are followed by vows. On the one hand, the experience of
forgiveness and cleansing will put a new song in our mouths, and instead
of animal sacrifices, we shall render the praise which is better than
'calves' laid on the altar. Perhaps the Septuagint rendering of that
difficult phrase 'the calves of our lips,' which is given in Hebrews
xiii. 15, 'the fruit of our lips,' is preferable. In either case, the
same thought appears--that the penitent's experience of forgiving and
restoring love makes 'the tongue of the dumb sing,' and it will bind
men's hearts more closely to God than anything besides can do, so that
their old inclinations to false reliances and idolatries drop away from
them. The old fable tells us that the storm made the traveller wrap his
cloak closer round him, but the sunshine made him throw it off.
Judgments often make men cling more closely to their sins, but forgiving
mercy makes them 'cast off the works of darkness.' The men who had
experienced that in God,