To parents and teachers.

Confession a privilege. :

The youngest only spoke

if my eldest disobeyed also. of himself-shall I ask him ?—No. Each shall stand on independent ground. If the other sinned too, he too may come voluntarily and obtain peace by confession, or he must continue to bear the tortures of self-reproach. And now if I take no further notice of the transgression, which is already acknowledged, I am afraid that my son will the next time yield more easily to temptation, thinking that he has only to acknowledge it, to be forgiven. Shall I forbid their skating any more this winter ?—or for a month?-or shall I require them, every time they return, to give me an exact account where they have been? I wish I could forgive and forget it entirely, but I am afraid I ought not."

Thus he would be perplexed; and if he was a wise parent, and under the influence of moral principle, and not of mere parental feeling, he would probably do something more than merely pass it by. The boy would find that confession to such a father is not merely nominal,—that it brings with it inconvenience, or deprivation of enjoyment, or perhaps positive punishment. Still he would rejoice in the opportunity to acknowledge his sins; for the loss of a little pleasure, or the suffering of punishment, he would feel to be a very small price to pay for returning peace of mind, and he would fly to confession, as a refuge from self-reproach, whenever he had done wrong.

Let the parents or the teachers who may read this, take this view of the nature of confession, and practice upon it in their intercourse with their children and their pupils. Let them meet them kindly when they come forward to acknowledge their faults. Sympathize with them in the struggle, which you know they must make at such a time, and consider how strong the temptation was which led them to sin. And in every thing of the nature of punishment which you inflict, be sure the pre

Depression of spirits.

Its remedy.

vention of future guilt is your sole motive, and not the gratification of your own present feeling of displeasure. If this is done, those under your care will soon value confession as a privilege, and will often seek in it a refuge from inward suffering.

Yes, an opportunity to acknowledge wrong, of any kind, is a great privilege, and if any of my readers are satisfied that what I have been advancing on this subject is true, I hope they will prove by experiment the correctness of these principles. Almost every person has at all times some little sources of uneasiness upon his mind. They are not very well defined in their nature and cause, but still they exist, and they very much disturb the happiness. Now if you look within long enough to seize hold of and examine these feelings of secret uneasiness, you will find that, in almost every case, they are connected with something wrong which you have done. That anxious brow of yours then is clouded with remorse; we call it by soft names, as care, solicitude, perplexity, but it is generally a slight remorse, so weak as not to force its true character upon your notice, but yet strong enough to destroy peace of mind. A great deal of what is called depression of spirits arises from this source. There are duties which you do not faithfully discharge or inclinations which you habitually indulge when you know they ought to be denied. Conscience keeps up, therefore, a continual murmur, but she murmurs so gently that you do not recognise her voice-and yet it destroys your rest. You feel restless and unhappy, and wonder what can be the

cause.

Let no one now say or even suppose that I think that all the depression of spirits which exists in human hearts is nothing but a secret sense of guilt. I know that there is real solicitude about the future, unconnected with remorse for the past;—and there is often a sinking of the

Careless confession.

Anecdote.

spirits in disease, which moral remedies will not touch. These cases are, however, comparatively few. A far greater proportion of the restlessness and of the corroding cares of human hearts is produced, or at least very much aggravated by being connected with guilt.

I suppose some of my readers are going over these pages only for amusement. They will be interested, perhaps, in the illustrations, and if of mature or cultivated minds, in the point to which I am endeavoring to make them tend. I hope, however, that there are some who are reading really and honestly for the sake of moral improvement. To those I would say: Do you never feel unquiet in spirit, restless or sad? Do you

never experience a secret uneasiness of heart, of which you do not know the exact cause, but which destroys, or at least disturbs your peace? If you do, take this course. Instead of flying from those feelings when they come into your heart, advance boldly to meet them. Grasp and examine them. Find their cause. You will find in nine cases out of ten that their cause is something wrong in your own conduct or character. Young persons will generally find something wrong towards their parents. Now go and confess these faults. Do not endeavor to palliate or excuse them, but endeavor on the other hand to see their worst side, and if you confess them freely and fully, and resolve to sin no more, peace will return, at least, so far as these causes have banished it from your heart.

After I had written thus far, I read these pages to a gentleman who visited me, and he remarked that before I closed the chapter, I ought to caution my readers against acquiring the habit of doing wrong and then coming carelessly to confess it, without any real sorrow, as though the acknowledgment atoned for the sin and wiped all the guilt away.

6

'I was once,' said he, visiting in a family, and while

Heartless confession.

An experiment.

we were sitting at the fire, a little boy came in and did some wanton, wilful mischief.

66

"Why, my child," said the mother, see what you have done. That was very wrong;-but you are sorry for it, I suppose. Are you not?"

66

Yes, Ma," said the boy carelessly, running away at the same time to play.

"Yes," said the mother, "he is sorry. He does wrong sometimes, but then he is always sorry for it and acknowledges it. You are sorry now, are you not, my son?" "Yes, Ma" said the boy, as he ran capering about the room, striking the furniture and his little sister with his whip.

My friend thought there was some danger that this sort of confession might be made. And it is undoubtedly often made. But it does no good. Confession must

come from the heart, or it will not relieve or improve the heart.

This anecdote shows the necessity of some punishment in all governments. If a father forgives the disobedience of his children simply upon their confessing it—I mean if he makes this his settled and regular course-his children will often disobey, expecting to make peace by confession as a matter of course; and the confession will thus not only become an useless form, but will become the very lure which tempts them to sin.

A teacher once made a rule, that if any irregularity occurred in any of the classes, the assistant who heard the classes was to send the person in fault to him. At first the pupils felt this very much. One and another would come with tears in their eyes to acknowledge some fault, although it was perhaps only a very slight one. The teacher inflicted no punishment, but asked them to be careful in future, and sent them away kindly. Soon, however, they began to feel less penitent when they had done wrong. They came more and more as a matter of

Sincere confession.

Story of the dulled tool.

form, until at last they would come and state their fault as carelessly as if they were merely giving their teacher a piece of indifferent information. No;-confession must never be understood as making any atonement for sin. Whenever you acknowledge that you have done wrong, do it with sincere penitence, and with a spirit which would lead you to make all the reparation in your power, if it is a case which admits of reparation,—to submit to the just punishment, if any is inflicted, and always to resolve most firmly that you will sin no more.

Let all my readers, then, whether old or young, look at once around them, and seek diligently for every thing wrong which they have done toward their fellows, and try the experiment of acknowledging the wrong in every case, that they may see how much such a course will bring peace and happiness to their hearts. When, however, say that every thing wrong ought to be acknowledged, I do not mean that it is, in every case, necessary to make a formal confession in language. Acknowledgments may be made by actions, as distinctly and as cordially as by words. An example will best illustrate this.

A journeyman in a carpenter's shop borrowed a plane of his comrade, and in giving it back to him, it was accidentally dropped and dulled. The lender maintained that the borrower ought to sharpen it, while the borrower said that it was not his fault, and an angry controversy arose between them. It would have taken but a few minutes to have sharpened the instrument, but after having once contended about it, each was determined not to yield. The plane was laid down in its damaged state, each declaring that he would not sharpen it.

The borrower however did not feel easy, and as he lay down that night to rest, the thought of his foolish contention made him unhappy. He reflected too, that since his friend had been willing to lend him his instru