The anonymous letter.

Reparation compared with confession.

never would have known it, unless I had informed you. But I have had no peace of mind since it was done, and send you back the money in this letter. Hoping that God will forgive this and all my other sins, I am, yours,

I remarked that this case was totally different from all the others in one respect. Reader, do you notice the difference? It consists in this, viz. that here not only was the sin confessed, but reparation was made. The man not only acknowledged the fraud, but he paid back the money. And if any of my readers are but little acquainted with human nature, they may perhaps imagine that it was the reparation, and not the confession, which restored peace of mind. But I think I can show very clearly, that making reparation is not effectual. Suppose that this man, instead of writing the above letter, had just come into the store of the merchant, and asked to buy some article or other, and in paying for it, had managed dexterously to put into the hands of the clerk a larger sum than was due, so as to repay, without the merchant's knowledge, the whole amount of which he had defrauded him. Do you think that this would have restored his peace of mind? No, not even if he had thus secretly paid back double what he had unjustly taken. It was the confession; the acknowledgment of having done wrong, which really quieted his troubled conscience, and gave him peace.

It is not probable that this confession was sufficient to make him perfectly happy again,-because it was incomplete. The reparation was perfect, but the acknowledgment was not. The reader will observe that the letter has no name signed to it, and the merchant could not by any means discover who was the writer of it. Now if the man had honestly told the whole-if he had written his name and place of residence, and described fully all the circumstances of the

Confession of great crimes.

Effects of confession.

Punishment.

original fraud, he would have been much more fully relieved. All confession which is intended to bring back peace of mind when it is gone, should be open and thorough. There are, indeed, many cases where, from peculiar circumstances, it is not the duty of an individual who has done wrong to make a full confession of it to any of his fellow-men. This, however, does not affect the general principle, that the more full and free the confession is when one is made, the more perfect will be the restoration of peace.

So strongly is this principle fixed by the Creator in the human heart, that men who have committed crimes to which the laws of the land annex the most severe public punishments, after enduring for some time in secrecy the remorse which crime almost always brings, have at last openly come forward, and surrendered themselves to the magistrate, and acknowledged their guilt,—and have felt their hearts relieved and lightened by receiving an ignominious public punishment, in exchange for the inward tortures of remorse. Even a murderer has been known to come forward to relieve the horrors of his soul by confession,—though he knew that this confession would chain him in a dark stone cell, and after a short, but gloomy interval, bring him to an ignominious and violent end.

My reader, you can test the power of confession, and enjoy the relief and happiness which it will bring, without paying so fearful a price as this;—but these cases lead me to remark upon one other subject connected with confession -I mean punishment. Sometimes, as I before remarked, when a person confesses a wrong, he brings himself under the necessity of repairing the injury done, and at other times of submitting to punishment. Parents often forgive their children when they have done wrong, if they will only confess it; and though this ought sometimes to be done, there is yet. great danger that children, in such cases, will soon acquire

Story of the boys on the ice continued.

a habit of doing wrong, and then coming to confess it with a careless air, as if it was not of much consequence, or rather as if confessing the sin destroyed it, and left them perfectly innocent.

I should think, on this account, that the father whose sons had disobeyed him on the ice, would be much at a loss to know what to do, after one of his boys had so frankly acknowledged it. I can suppose him saying to his son, “Well, my son, I am glad you have told me freely all about this. You did very wrong, and I am very much at a loss to know what I ought to do. I will consider it, and speak to you by and by about it. In the mean time you may be assured that I forgive you from my heart, and if I should conclude to do any thing farther, it will not be because I am now displeased, but because I wish to save you effectually from the sad consequence of doing wrong in future."

When the father is left to muse by himself upon the subject, we may imagine him to be thinking as follows.

"I should not have thought that my boys would have broken their promise and disobeyed me. I wonder if my eldest disobeyed also. The youngest only spoke 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, in order 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 an exact account where they have been?—I wish I could forgive and forget the offense entirely, but I am afraid I ought not to do so."

To parents and teachers.

Confession a privilege.

Thus he would be perplexed; and if he were 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. Always 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 that the prevention 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

Depression of spirits.

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,-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 recognize her voice-and yet it destroys your rest. You feel restless and unhappy, and wonder what can be the cause.

Let no one understand me to maintain that all the depression of spirits which exists in human hearts arises from 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 spirits that results from bodily disease, which moral remedies will not reach. These cases are, however, comparatively few. A far greater proportion of the restlessness and of the corroding cares which reign in human hearts is produced, or at least is very much aggravated, by being connected with guilt.

I suppose some of my readers are perusing these pages only for amusement. They will be interested, perhaps, in the illustrations, and if of mature and 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,