CONFESSIONS by H. F. Phelps

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 23, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 12.

CONFESSIONS

By H. F. Phelps

Says David, “I acknowledge my transgression; and my sin is ever before me.” Who can read his psalms and not be touched with their simplicity and humility? Who can read them and not learn the true spirit of confession? David was very far from confessing the faults of others before God, and never did he speak of the errors of others to another person. He did not seem to be watching with the spirit of jealousy “to make a brother an offender for a word.” He did not confess in a wholesale manner, thinking that this would do; and that as God would know what he meant, he need not pain himself with the confession of the fault; but humbly before God he owned his sin. When, for the benefit of generations to come, he exclaimed, “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation,” he named the very sin that stood as a blot upon his character. Oh, that we might find out our sins before they find us out in the day of Judgment. H. F. Phelps.