LECTURE VII. CONFESSION, ADORATION, AND THANKSGIVING. "I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. "Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart." PSALM xxxii. 5. 11. ALTHOUGH prayer, in its strictest sense, be the supplication of mercies for ourselves or others, the devotional exercises of believers are not confined to mere petitions. In the Psalms, and other Bible-specimens of prayer, we find acknowledgments of sin, the praises of the divine perfections, and grateful ascriptions for good and perfect gifts bestowed; and, that our survey may be the more complete, we shall bestow the present discourse on the three-fold subject of Confession, Adoration, and Thanksgiving. CONFESSION. There are three things which often hinder confession callousness, sullenness, and remorse. In the anguish of newly-committed sin, or in the despair of a newly-awakened conscience, the guilt is so ghastly that the sou. is afraid to approach it, even with a view to confession. Such was the Psalmist's case. His convictions were so dreadful that he wished some time to elapse, trusting that the interval might make it somewhat better. He "kept silence;" but, like the damper, which only makes the furnace draw the fiercer, the fire kindled in his spirit flamed the more furiously from his efforts to suppress it. He kept silence, but, whilst he did so, his bones waxed old, and his moisture was turned into summer's drought. But, after thus battling with his agonies, he yielded. In a lull of this mental fever-in a lucid interval of his remorseful frenzy, he took another thought, and said, "I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord;" and no sooner said than there was a great calm in his spirit. His sin was confessed; his trespass was forgiven; his convictions vanished; the Lord's hand withdrew; and, in the gayety of his convalescent spirit, he began to sing, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered."-Then, there are others, who, without anything of the Psalmist's sharp remorse, have a sullen sense of wrong. They know that they have offended, and that there is an unsettled controversy betwixt themselves and God; but, instead of resorting at once to his mercy in Jesus Christ, they wish to wear off their guilt by degrees. They would like to work it off, or live it off. They expect that its crimson hue will fade in the course of time, and that its pricks will be blunted in the lapse of years; and, as they cannot brook to assume the publican's attitude, or to come as poor abjects to the fountain, they carry their sin about with them, unacknowledged and uncon fessed. Perhaps they go again and again to prayer; but there is no confidence in their worship, and no earnestness in their petitions, for this sin is constantly presenting itself, and they are as constantly evading it. They are walking contrary to God, and he walks contrary to them. Feeling that their position is false, their air is embarrassed and uneasy. Their footing is insecure, and their resistance to temptation feeble. And, going about their daily occupations under the Lord's frown they are constantly frustrated. Perhaps their worldly business goes back; most probably they are getting into endless perplexities and entanglements-vexing their friends when they did not mean to offend them-lowering themselves in the eyes of others when they did nothing particularly wrong: and standing ruefully, because remorsefully amid the wreck of many schemes, and the crash of many efforts; and proving by a costly experiment, the truth of the saying "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper.' Oh! that they were wise enough to turn round and prove the truth of that other alternative-" But whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy."—And then, again, there are some who are kept from confessing their sin, neither by the violence of their remorse, nor the sullenness of their spirits, but by the callousness of their conscience. They have got so much into the custom of sinning without compunction, that they can scarcely understand how confession could bring them any relief, or make them happier than they this moment are. A man who has laboured under a disease for many years, comes at last to lay his account with it. If he has no stound of exquisite anguish, or no unusual feeling of pain or debility-if he be in his "frail ordinary"—he is content. He expects no better. The truth is, his nervous system has become inured to a certain amount of habitual suffering, and disease itself ceases to be pain. But if some feat of medicine, or some sudden miracle should expel the ailment from his system, and give him at once absolute soundness, he would perceive a world-wide difference betwixt the dull apathy of disease and the joyous gush of health-betwixt mere exemption from torture and positive sensations of salubrity and vigour. "By habit in sin the stings of remorse may be blunted, yet peace never will return. By repeating transgression a great many times, we all come at last to feel a general and settled uneasiness of heart, which is a constant burden, but so constant that the sinner comes to consider it as a necessary part of his existence; and when, at last, he comes and confesses his sins, and finds peace and happiness, he is surprised and delighted with the new and strange sensation."* Were confession a mere act of self-mortification-did it end in mere regrets and self-reproaches-it would answer little end. The rash words which no compunction can recall-the wasted Sabbaths which no wishes can redeemthe broken hearts of distant days and departed friends, which no churchyard sighs can heal, and the demolished joys which no tears can cre ate anew: * Abbot's "Young Christian." For violets pluck'd, the sweetest showers were confession merely the mental penance of remembering and brooding over these, there were no need to add it to the sum of human sorrow. But evangelical confession-that discovery and acknowledgment of the outstanding sins of his history, and the conspicuous sins of his character, as well as of the guilt of his original-which the Word of God requires from each of us, is for purposes totally different. Evangelical confession is the inlet to peace with God, and the outset of new obedience. The great object of self-examination should be to search out the sin with the express view, and on very purpose, to cast it into the sin-cancelling Fountain opened in the House of David; and then the confession will bring comfort to the sinner, when he thinks that the cleansing currents of atoning blood have washed his guilt away. Like the camp of Israel on the day of atonement. They all met-the most solemn fast of their year -before the tabernacle, in the morning very early; and after many other ceremonies, two goats were brought up to the high-priest at the altar. He placed himself between them, and shook a box, in which were two little tablets, one inscribed, "For Jehovah," the other, " For Azazel." When he drew the one, he said with a loud voice, "For Jehovah," and placed the tablet on the head of the right-hand goat. Then he confessed over it his own and the people's sins, and slew it, and carried the blood into the Holy Place as an atonement for his own sins and the |