January 17

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thine hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.—Psalms 32:3, 4.

WHILE the psalmist suppressed the ingenuous voice of confession, the continually increasing weight of his calamity extorted from him a voice of roaring: "While I would not speak as it became a guilty man, I was compelled to bellow even like a beast." Nevertheless this wild roaring did not move the Divine compassion, nor atone his displeasure.

Hitherto that voice was wanting, to which the bowels of the Father always echo back, the voice of a son full of reverence, and ready to confess his errors; without which, cries and lamentations in misery are no more regarded in the sight of God, than the howling of dogs, according to that expression of Hosea, vii. 14, They have not cried to me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds. A dog howls when he is hungry, or when he is lashed; but from a son, when he is chastened, acknowledgments of his fault, and deprecations of his father's displeasure, are expected; and when the son thus acknowledges his offence, and entreats for pardon, it is the part of a compassionate father to forgive, and to spare. Nor do we indeed confess our offences to our Father, as if he were not perfectly acquainted with them, but we fly to him who requires we should repent, that he may not show us by punishment, those things which we shun showing to him by confession. "I confessed unto the Lord," says Augustine, "to whom all the abyss of my sin and misery lay open: so that if I did not confess whatever was hidden in my heart, I should not hide myself from him, but him from me."

Thy hand was heavy upon me. That hand, which, when pressing, is so heavy, when raising, is so sweet and powerful, Psalms 37:24, and when scattering its blessings, so full and so ample. He would not at first be humbled by the confession of his iniquity, and therefore he is humbled by the weight of the hand of God. Oh, powerful hand! beyond all comparison more grievous than any other hand to press down, and more powerful to raise up! He who supresses his sins without confessing them,

Vulnus alit venis, et cæco carpitur igne:

"Conceals an inward wound, and burns with secret fire."

Under the appearance of sparing, he is indeed cruel to himself; when he has drunk down iniquity, and keeps it within, and it is not covered by the Divine forgiveness, it is like a poison which consumes the marrow in the midst of his bones, and dries up the vital moisture. It may perhaps occasion more present pain, to draw out the point of the weapon which sticks in the flesh; but to neglect it, will occasion greater danger and more future torment. Nor will the dart fall out by his running hither and thither, but on the contrary, as the poet expresses it with respect to the wounded deer, it fixes deeper and deeper.

But the only healing herb that the sinner can find, is true repentance and humble confession; not that which acknowledges sin in a few slight words, when it has hardly looked upon it and known it, but that which proceeds from a previous true and vivid compunction of soul, and is inseparably attended by renovation and purity of heart and life; and so, as comprehending this, it is sometimes put for the whole of repentance. 1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

"At last I own it cannot be That I should fit myself for thee: Here, then, to thee I all resign; Thine is the work, and only thine.

"What shall I say thy grace to move? Lord, I am sin,—but thou art love: I give up every plea beside,— Lord, I am lost—but thou hast died."