At the end of it all the doctor told the man that the good God would forgive him if he should ask in true faith and repentance, but that the people, being human, could not. For a whole year, he charged the people, they must not speak to that man ; but if,
1 J. Keble,
I JOHN I. 8, 9 239
at the end of that time, he had shown an honest disposition to mend his ways, they might take him to their hearts.
^ In the inland territories of Arabia there are orchards and fruit trees, green tablelands and springing fountains of water ; it is indeed one of the richest and most beautiful countries in the world. But it is difficult to believe that, as we watch its sterile, forbidding coasts. The port of Aden, touched at by most travellers to the East, gives an idea of what Tartarus itself must be like. The normal temperature is torment, even to those inured to the great heat of the tropics. Not a blade of grass is to be seen upon the hillsides, rain falls perhaps once in three or four years, verdureless rocks tower towards the molten heavens like pitiless rivals. And yet these sterile, forbidding, fire-scathed rocks are the gateway into a country fair as Eden and flowing with milk and honey. So is it with this hard, inexorable, repugnant duty of confession. It is the grim gateway leading on to green pastures and still waters, to sabbatic rest and abounding blessedness. The more specific and outspoken our confession the better for our health of soul and for the rapidity and completeness of our spiritual restoration.^
3. Why should we confess, if God already knows our sin? The answer is that confession is not meant to inform God, but to train us into a 'personal relation with Sim. Think of any human relationship, the relation of a father or a mother to their children. Supposing the child, the son we will say, has done something wrong, has outraged and done violence to his home. He has set out upon a bad career. The father or mother would wish for, pray for, seek for, his amendment ; but yet we know that, they could not, ought not to be satisfied by any mere amendment in the outward routine of life. It would be felt by all right-minded people to be superficial. We shall say if his heart is changed then there must be sorrow too, there must be regret, and the expression of regret and sorrow and penitence for the hearts he has wounded, for the lives that he has outraged, for the love so fpeely lavished upon him that he has scouted.
^ It is recorded of Leonardo da Vinci that while painting his famous picture representing the " Last Supper," he quarrelled violently with a former friend. In order to injure this man in a lasting manner he painted for the face of Judas the face of his old friend with whom he had quarrelled. But when endeavouring to portray the face of the Saviour, Da Vinci utterly failed to do
» T. G. Selby, The God of the Frail, 102.
240 RIGHTEOUS FORGIVENESS
justice to the ideal face, and arose from every attempt with feelings of despair. When some time had passed by, Da Vinci relented in his harsh treatment of his friend and wiped out the face of Judas. And it is recorded that on the night following the day on which he did this outward act of forgiveness, he saw in vision Christ standing before him. Da Vinci saw the face of Christ more vividly than he ever saw it in his supreme moments of exalted inspiration, and so lasting was the impression that he was able on the next day to transfer to the picture that face of Christ which we see in the picture to-day.
4. Confession of sins, as distinct from the vague acknowledg- ; ment of sin, is a partial security against the further spreading of / sin within the soul. There are some poisonous fungi which grow j only in the dark, and sin is such a growth. The contagion, to use \ another illustration, is lessened the moment you open the windows \ of the soul and let in the fresh air of heaven. If you shut the soul up within itself, you will only harbour fresh seeds of trans- gression within the heart. No one can have gone to God in penitent confession and prayer without being conscious that the act of confession has made it harder, and not easier, to sin again.
^ In all literature there can hardly be a nobler instance of confession, and the glorious results which follow, than that which Dante made of his own sinfulness, by the terrific condemnation which he puts into the mouth of Beatrice when she comes to him on the top of the mountain of Purgatory. It seems as though in the " Convivio " he tried to explain away the moral confusion and delinquency into which he fell after the death of Beatrice. But he found it could not be done. No skill in allegorizing, no subtlety of philosophy, would make it any other than moral failure. So Dante decided on a nobler course. He left the " Convivio " unfinished, and took the way of open confession, by making Beatrice condemn him in the most scathing language when he meets her on the mount, and by admitting that to her stinging reproofs he had no reply. Overwhelmed with shame he swooned away; but in that moment of uttermost exposure and disgrace he was set free. When he awoke he had been washed in Lethe, with the remembrance of the sin gone for ever. Then, and only then, was he ready for the blessed companionship of Beatrice and the ascent to heaven. There in the heart of his immortal Comedy he has set his own confession, telling all who read it that there is but one way to get free from sin — the humiliating way of confession : telling us also that without confession there can be