Confession is of two kinds: general and particular. That which we use in public is of necessity general. And this not only because it is used by all, which is probably the meaning of the expression in the Rubric, “A general Confession, to be said of the whole Congregation after the Minister, all kneeling”; but also because, being used by all, it cannot enter into the particulars of individual sin; it can only express, in strong terms, and in broad lines of description, that which is the true character of all hearts and lives, when the light of God’s presence and of God’s holiness is thrown upon them. “We have erred and strayed. . . . We have followed our own devices. . . . We have offended. . . . We have left undone the right. . . . We have done the wrong. . . . There is no health in us.” This is an instance of general confession. Now confession of this kind is not to be despised. Though general, it is not necessarily vague. No doubt it may be made vague by any of us. But where there is a serious desire to take a true view of our condition as fallen creatures, and as actually sinful and sinning creatures, in the sight of a pure and holy God, there is great force, and great benefit in this outpouring of a general self-lamentation in the all-hearing ear; there is something deeply real in this plunging of the universal being into the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, this gathering of the whole experience, as the course of life has brought it to us, into one sweeping act of self-condemnation and self-renunciation, constraining us to throw ourselves absolutely and without exception upon the mere mercy and compassion of a pitying, a long-suffering, and a redeeming God. Let no man despise it.
But then this general confession must be made real, and kept real, by that which is minute, individual, particular. Even in the congregation, under the veil of this general language, there is time and place for something with which no stranger can inter-meddle. These hearts which are unfolding themselves at the mercy-seat of God do not lose their individuality by the presence of other hearts around them. Even the general confession is the sum of a thousand particular confessions, and then rises with full meaning into the ear of God only when it is prompted by the personal experiences of a multitude of persons, each of whom is grieved and wearied by the heavy burden of his own separate sins
Multitudes of devout souls have found the noble language of the “General Confession” to be a means of grace. There is something peculiarly solemn in a united confession of sin by a large assembly. Differences of social position and of personal attainment seem to be lost sight of when peer and peasant, saint and sinner, kneel side by side and repeat together, “We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep”. The spirits of good people are touched to some of their finer issues when “the Lord, gracious and full of compassion,” bends over the congregation of penitents. But a “General Confession” cannot possibly satisfy the requirements of a spiritual religion. A sad experience declares that such a united act may cover up much unreality. The acknowledgment that we are “miserable offenders” is made with mental reservations. Nobody else is expected to believe it about the man who says it. The tempter whispers into the ear of the worshipper that it is the other members of the congregation who are meant chiefly by the offenders against God’s holy laws. We are well-nigh guilty of a presumptuous idea that the confession is a vicarious act on our part, in which we encourage our neighbours to acknowledge their faults by assuming for the moment that we may be faulty too; we intend to put aside the assumption directly we rise from our knees, and we nourish the pious hope that our neighbours will hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life. The presence of other people diffuses responsibility. The cloud of transgression thins out in order to cover everybody, and easy souls get the impression that their heads reach above the cloud altogether, into the sunshine. Therefore a general confession must be complemented by a particular confession, in which each individual soul shall come face to face with God. [Note: J. E. Roberts, Private Prayers and Devotions, 54.]
The easiest place for, a criminal to lose himself in is a crowd. The fugitive from justice rarely flees to the solitude of the countryside, but buries himself in the heart of some great city. It is easier to escape detection in the midst of his fellow-men than in the lonely recesses of the forest or the hills. Many a criminal has been lost to justice in the teeming populace of the metropolis. Do we not carry something of this thought, something of the hope that our individual guilt will remain undetected in the crowd, into our dealings with God? Do we not sometimes lose the sense of our personal responsibility when we join in our general confession, “We have erred and strayed like lost sheep. . . . There is no health in us”? It is easy, for a time at least, to bury ourselves in such a crowd as that. But oh! if we are ever to taste the sweetness of Divine pardon, if we are ever to thrill with joy at the gracious assurance, “Thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven,” we must come out of that crowd and cast ourselves individually in the dust before Him. “I will confess mine iniquity unto the Lord,” cried David, in all the terrible isolation of his conscious guilt; and then he found the blessing--“Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin”. “God be merciful to me the sinner,” sobbed the poor publican, as he beat upon his breast in the agony of his personal grief; and when he came to that point of self-condemnation, he too found the blessing—“He went down to his house justified”. The prodigal, burying his face in his father’s bosom, cried, “Father, I have sinned,” and then too the blessing was his—“This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”. [Note: G. A. Sowter, Trial and Triumph, 40.]
There were differences among the doctors of the Talmud as to the propriety of manifold and detailed confessions. Thus Rabbi Judah ben Baba held that it was not enough to make a general confession, and he cited the example of Moses who prayed, “Alas, this people have sinned a great sin—they have made themselves a golden calf”. Another thought that the essence of all was contained in the words, “Verily we have sinned”. Another, again, found fault with the enumeration of our sins at all. “To my thinking it is a sign of effrontery in a person to detail all his offences” (Sotah, 7b). But in the long run the objection was not held to be valid, and rightly so, for, after all, the effrontery lies in the committing of sins not in admitting them. Still the older forms of the Alphabetical Confession were much simpler and more succinct than ours. But they included a confession of “Sins done under compulsion, or of our own free will; in error or with deliberation; in secret or in public; consciously or unconsciously”—categories comprehensive enough. [Note: Singer, Sermons and Memoir, 72.]
In some of the older devotional books of the synagogue there is found, at points where a general confession has been made, a blank space introduced by “and in particular,” “We have sinned in this and that respect, and especially”—in what, each has then to supply. [Note: Ibid. 73.]
Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark,
I would question thee,
Alone in the shadow drear and stark,
With God and me!
What! silent all! art sad of cheer?
Art fearful now?
When God seemed far and men were near,
How brave wert thou!
Aha! thou tremblest!—Well I see
Thou’rt craven grown.
Is it so hard with God and me
To stand alone?
Ah! soul of mine, so brave and wise
In the life-storm loud,
Fronting so calmly all human eyes
In the sunlit crowd!
Now standing apart with God and me,
Thou art weakness all,
Gazing vainly after the things to be
Through Death’s dread wall.
1. One reason why a general confession cannot suffice is that it is too “general”. It does not particularize our sins enough. So many needle-points are packed together that there is a smooth surface rather than a series of pricks. The sword does not get in through the joints of our harness. Something much more searching is needed than a general confession if we are to be cleansed from all our sins and to serve God with a quiet mind. We are tied and bound with the chain of our sins; and if the pitifulness of God’s great mercy is to loose us, the links in the chain must be isolated and snapped one by one. In our private prayers we may offer that marvellous petition, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”. The candle of the Lord can search a soul best when it is in its inner chamber and the door is shut. Then sins are discovered whose existence was not suspected in the general assembly.
I was crossing a golf course one day, and was amazed to see one of the greens covered with large worms. Some worm casts had been noticed on that green before, and there was a vague idea that a roller needed to be used. But now a particular liquid had been poured over the green, which compelled all the worms to wriggle out into the light. Then it was obvious to all that the green was swarming with them just below the surface. In our private prayers we allow the Divine Gardener to pour over our lives the liquid that discovers secret sins. Very often the result is amazing. Instead of being content with a General Absolution following a General Confession, like a garden roller over the casts, we are on our knees before God crying “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults.” “Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me: O Lord, make haste to help me.” [Note: J. E. Roberts, Private Prayers and Devotions, 54.]
A wise old writer says, “A child of God will confess sin in particular; an unsound Christian will confess sin by wholesale; he will acknowledge he is a sinner in general; whereas David doth, as it were, point with his finger to the sore: ‘I have done this evil’ (Psa_51:4); he doth not say, ‘I have done evil,’ but this ‘evil’. He points to his blood-guiltiness.” [Note: D. M. McIntyre, The Hidden Life of Prayer, 102.]
2. But not only must there be self-examination, so that we may discover our sins, there must also be confession of them. Some honest self-examination there must be if our confession is to nurture our Christian life. But how can God forgive our sins unless we confess them? The confession of sin is an essential part of all true repentance. The prodigal must not only experience in the “far country” the sense of grief and shame at his folly, and find his way back in sorrow to the father’s house, but the pent-up emotions of his heart must find an outlet in full and frank confession before he could taste the sweetness of forgiving love. “Father,” he cried, “I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” And then it was that his rags were removed and the best robe in the father’s house was put on him instead; then it was that the ring was slipped upon his finger as an emblem of love that both forgave and forgot, and he was taken back to the father’s heart and home again.
This confession must be frank and full and unreserved. No extenuating plea must mar its utterance. No excuse for sin must mingle with the breath of sin’s confession. Nothing must be palliated or softened down. We are prone to make excuses for our sins even on our knees. All those pleas which we are so familiar with and which we utter with such facility, either to shift the guilt to another or to excuse it in ourselves—all those pleas of ignorance, or compulsion, or strong and sudden temptation, or natural infirmity, or good intention—all those “buts” which fall so easily from our lips in our dealings with God only choke the channel of Divine forgiveness and rob us of the blessing we stand in need of. It is only “if we confess our sins,” not if we excuse and mitigate our sins, that He is faithful and just to pardon them every one.
Our confession must also be humble and contrite. No shred of self-complacency lingered in the prodigal’s heart as he turned his steps homeward. The clothing of his spirit was as rent and torn as the tatters which hung about his body. He was utterly humbled, sincerely contrite, ready to take the lowest place in the old home now. “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” Lower even than a slave stood the hireling, the mere day labourer; no legal rights in the family safeguarded and ameliorated his position, such as mitigated the position of the slave. Yet such a status as that was all the prodigal could dare to hope for in the depths of his self-reproach and self-abasement. He must have been utterly heart-broken to have come down to that.
We shall do well to take heed to the urgent pleas of Thomas a Kempis: “Examine diligently thy conscience, and to the utmost of thy power purify and make it clear, with true contrition and humble confession; so as there may be nothing in thee that may weigh heavy upon thee, or that may breed in thee remorse of conscience, or hinder thy free access to the throne of grace. Think with displeasure of all thy sins in general, and more particularly bewail and lament thy daily transgressions. And if thou hast time, confess unto God, in the secret of thine heart, all the wretchedness of thy disordered passions.”
