s for one idea.

1. Acknowledge and confess.

2. Sins and wickedness.

3. Dissemble nor cloke.

4. Goodness and mercy.

5. Assemble and meet.

6. Requisite and necessary.

7. Pray and beseech.

There is, indeed, a shade of difference in some of these ideas for a
good scholar, none for a general congregation;[172] and what difference
they can guess at merely muddles their heads: to acknowledge sin is
indeed different from confessing it, but it cannot be done at a minute's
notice; and goodness is a different thing from mercy, but it is by no
means God's infinite goodness that forgives our badness, but that judges
it.

258. "The faultfulest," I said, "and the foolishest." After using
fourteen words where seven would have done, what is it that the whole
speech gets said with its much speaking? This Morning Service of all
England begins with the assertion that the Scripture moveth us in sundry
places to confess our sins before God. _Does_ it so? Have your
congregations ever been referred to those sundry places? Or do they take
the assertion on trust, or remain under the impression that, unless with
the advantage of their own candor, God must remain ill-informed on the
subject of their sins?

"That we should not dissemble nor cloke them." _Can_ we then? Are these
grown-up congregations of the enlightened English Church in the
nineteenth century still so young in their nurseries that the "Thou,
God, seest me" is still not believed by them if they get under the bed?

259. Let us look up the sundry moving passages referred to.

(I suppose myself a simple lamb of the flock, and only able to use my
English Bible.)

I find in my concordance (confess and confession together) forty-two
occurrences of the word. Sixteen of these, including John's confession
that he was not the Christ, and the confession of the faithful fathers
that they were pilgrims on the earth, do indeed move us strongly to
confess Christ before men. Have you ever taught your congregations what
that confession means? They are ready enough to confess Him in church,
that is to say, in their own private synagogue. Will they in
Parliament? Will they in a ballroom? Will they in a shop? Sixteen of the
texts are to enforce their doing _that_.

The most important one (1 Tim. vi. 13) refers to Christ's own good
confession, which I suppose was not of His sins, but of His obedience.
How many of your congregations can make any such kind of confe