^ In one of his delightfully satirical (apparently superficial but really searching) essays, M. Anatole France speaks of what is popularly called " confession." " I do not speak," he says, " of St. Augustine's Confessions; the great doctor does not confess enough in them. His is a spiritual book, which satisfies Divine love better than human curiosity. Augustine confesses to God and not to man ; he hates his sins, and it is only those who still love their faults who make delightful confessions. He repents, and nothing spoils a confession like repentance. He says, for instance, in two charming phrases, that when quite tiny he was seen to smile in his cradle; and immediately he endeavours to demonstrate ' that there is corruption and malignity even in children who are still at the breast.' The saint spoils the man to my mind. He relates that in his childhood there was a pear tree loaded with pears close beside his father's vineyard, and that one day he went with a crowd of young vagabonds to shake the tree and to steal the fruit which fell from it. Does he make of this one of those delightful pictures such as delight us in the first pages of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions ? or if that is asking too much, some elegant and sober narrative in the style of the minor Greek story-tellers ? No ! ' That,' he exclaims, ' is the state in which, 0 my Lord ! was the miserable heart which it has pleased Thy mercy to drag out of the depths of the abyss ! ' As if an urchin who stole some wretched pears had fallen into
2 SAMUEL XII. 13, 14 333
the deptha of the abyss ! He confesses his love-affairs, but he does not do it with grace, because he does it with shame. He speaks only of * pestilences,' and of ' infernal vapours which arose out of the corrupt depth of his concupiscence.' Nothing could be more moral, but, at the same time, nothing less graceful. He does not write for the curious ; he writes against the Manicheans. That annoys me doubly, for I am curious, and a little of a Manichean. But such as they are, free of the horror of the flesh, and of disgust at our terrestrial existence, Augustine's Confessions have con- tributed more than all the other books of the saint to make him known and loved throughout the ages." ^
(1) Tlie admission of the fact that sin has been committed. — That is the first step to be taken. That is the first struggle. To get at the plain facts ; to set out in their array the long line of acts that have not been done from any higher motive than the mere desire for one's own personal comfort or advantage. Even this is not easy. The acts know their own guiltiness and flee behind all kinds of shelter to escape scrutiny ; and the man who is really bent upon discovering and confessing them has to seize hold of their reluctance with a strong hand and force them out.
This is the first and perhaps the most difficult step. It is a humiliating thing to make such a confession. Many who fancy that they have repented have never really humbled themselves. It is marvellous to observe the different ways in which our pride will try to spare us the pain of real self-abasement. Sometimes it will endeavour to save us from lowering ourselves before men. It is true (this great enemy seems to whisper) that you have sinned against man as well as against God, but why acknowledge your shortcoming to your neighbour ? Why give him an oppor- tunity of lording it over you ? Tell it, if you will, to your Maker, but do not humble yourself before man ! At other times this subtle pride will tempt us to be content with only a half -humilia- tion in the presence of God Himself. "You are no worse," it says, "than others, not so bad as many. True, you have sinned, but your trial was so great, the circumstances in which you were placed were so difficult, your nature is so feeble that you may surely be excused," and so forth.
^ The confession must be personal. There must be the personal act of faith ; there must be my solitary coming to Him.
^ Anatole France, On Infe and Letters, 72.
334 REPENTANCE AND RETRIBUTION
As the old mystics used to define prayer, so I might define the whole process by which men are saved from their sins, " the liight of the lonely soul to the lonely God." It is not enough to say, "We have sinned"; we must say, "I have sinned." It is not enough that from a gathered congregation there should go up the united litany, " Lord, have mercy upon us ! Christ, have mercy upon us ! Lord, have mercy upon us ! " We must make the prayer our own : " Lord, have mercy upon me ! " It is not enough that we should believe that Christ has died for the sins of the whole world. That belief will give us no share in His forgiveness. We must come to closer grips with Him than that ; and we must be able to say, " Who loved me, and gave Himself for me." ^