Confession and Renewal
By D. B. Staples
I WISH to confess my sin in wandering and backsliding from the Lord, for the last two years or more. Like the wicked and slothful servant who hid his Lord's talent in the earth, I buried mine, and it became dim, and increased not. I laid down my testimony, omitted duty in meeting and out, in my family and among my neighbors. But through the goodness and mercy of my kind Heavenly Father, I have been permitted to see my true condition, and have been led to cry, as did the publican, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” My prayer still is that the Lord will have mercy and forgive, and I want all my dear brethren to forgive me, and aid me by their prayers to pay unto the Lord my vows. I will try in the future, the Lord helping me, to bear my testimony for the truth, which I have never doubted. The Lord has borne with me long; and while I have merited nothing but wrath, I have obtained nothing but mercy. And while the Lord has been abundant in mercy to me, he has remembered my dear companion; and she is now a helpmeet indeed with her prayers and kind offices. And still another, our oldest daughter, thirteen years of age, has been awakened to a sense of her true condition without a Saviour, and has been led to confess her sins and fly to the arms of her Redeemer, and we trust has found pardon. Truly, the goodness of the Lord is wonderful. Love and harmony are now the inmates of my little family. Bless the Lord, O my soul. D. B. STAPLES.