ssion, or
wish to make it?

The eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth (1 Kings viii. 33, 2 Chron.
vi. 26, Heb. xiii. 15) speak of confessing thankfully that God is God
(and not a putrid plasma nor a theory of development), and the
twenty-first (Job xl. 14) speaks of God's own confession, that no doubt
we are the people, and that wisdom shall die with us, and on what
conditions He will make it.

260. There remains twenty-one texts which do speak of the confession of
our sins--very moving ones indeed--and Heaven grant that some day the
British public may be moved by them.

(1.) The first is Lev. v. 5, "He shall confess that he hath sinned _in
that thing_." And if you can get any soul of your congregation to say he
has sinned in _any_thing, he may do it in two words for one if he likes,
and it will yet be good liturgy.

(2.) The second is indeed general--Lev. xvi. 21: the command that the
whole nation should afflict its soul on the great day of atonement once
a year. The Church of England, I believe, enjoins no such unpleasant
ceremony. Her festivals are passed by her people often indeed in the
extinction of their souls, but by no means in their intentional
affliction.

(3, 4, 5.) The third, fourth, and fifth (Lev. xxvi. 40, Numb. v. 7,
Nehem. i. 6) refer all to national humiliation for definite idolatry,
accompanied with an entire abandonment of that idolatry, and of
idolatrous persons. How soon _that_ form of confession is likely to find
a place in the English congregations the defenses of their main idol,
mammon, in the vilest and cruelest shape of it--usury--with which this
book has been defiled, show very sufficiently.

261. (6.) The sixth is Psalm xxxii. 5--virtually the whole of that
psalm, which does, indeed, entirely refer to the greater confession,
once for all opening the heart to God, which can be by no means done
fifty-two times a year, and which, once done, puts men into a state in
which they will never again say there is no health in them; nor that
their hearts are desperately wicked; but will obey forever the instantly
following order, "Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and shout for joy,
all ye that are true of heart."

(7.) The seventh (Acts xxiv. 14) is the one confession in which I can
myself share:--"After the way which they call heresy, so worship I the
Lord God of my fathers."

(8.) The eighth (James v. 16) tells us to confess our faults--not to
God, but "one to another"--a practice not f