Do you not also know, dear friends, that each person who mourns for sin has his own secret,—a secret which he must not tell to anyone but the Lord? It were a pity that he should tell it to human ears. There is a something in each individual case into which a stranger cannot enter. You may have read John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding, and you may have noticed that most of his biographers say that Bunyan’s account of himself was generally blackened by a morbid consciousness,—which also shows how little they know about the matter, for the man who has led the purest life, when he is brought before God by the humbling influence of the Holy Spirit, is the man who almost invariably considers himself to have been viler than anybody else. It is possible that John Bunyan was not worse than any other gipsy tinker, he may have been a great deal better, that is to say, in the judgment of the blind bats that try to see what he was like; but he knew himself better than they knew him, for he had seen himself in the strong light of the Holy Spirit. God had turned the bull’s-eye of the great lantern of the law full into the man’s face, and so he had a better idea of his own character than you and I have; and what he did tell us is not all he knew, he would not have dared to tell it all, it would have been wrong that he should. As there are words in heaven so high that it were not lawful for a man to utter them, so are there words down here in the deep corruption of our fallen spirits that it were not lawful for a man to utter save in the ear of the Most High. Therefore, each individual must mourn apart.
III. Our time is running so fast, that I must go on to notice, thirdly, HOW WE ACCOUNT FOR THIS INDIVIDUALITY. Why is it that each man thus mourns apart?
Well, in part, it is to be accounted for by that natural and justifiable shame which prevents our confessing all our sins before others. I take it to be an awful violation of the natural delicacy of the human mind when any person is invited to make oral confession to a priest. I can myself scarcely conceive of anything that could be more degrading to the heart, and more injurious to the conscience, than the infernal brazenness of heart that permits anybody to attempt such a thing. As the inspired prophet would have said, they must have “a whore’s forehead” before they can dare to unmask their hearts before their fellow-men. No, no, brethren, such a thing must not be so much as named among us; what shame remains in us, ought to prevent such a shameful or shameless thing as that. Hence, our mourning must be apart.
Secondly, in such a case, the heart desires to go to God himself, and the presence of anybody else seems like an intrusion between our soul and our God. The man looks around the room, he is afraid that somebody may come in and disturb his devotion, so he turns the key in the door. “Now,” he says, “my God, it is to thee that I would speak. I should not like a dog to hear what I have to say to thee, now that I come, and honestly and openly lay bare my heart for thine inspection, hating the very garment spotted by the flesh, and desiring to be washed thoroughly from mine iniquities.”
Further, the man is conscious that his guilt has been all his own. He dissociates himself, when he truly repents, from everybody else. He does not think of laying the blame on those who tempted him, or on ungodly parents who neglected his education. He looks for nobody to be his scapegoat except the appointed Scapegoat. He says, “I have sinned and done this evil in thy sight, O my God, and I stand before thee alone to confess it”; and therefore he gets the pardon of his guilt.
This, indeed, is a sure sign of sincerity. If thou canst only pray in public, thou dost not pray at all. If thou canst only join in the general confession, thou hast uttered a public lie. Thou art only right before God when it is thine own sin, felt in thine own heart, confessed by thyself before thine own God, unknown to anybody else, and altogether known to him.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
