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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
Christian confession and distinguishes it completely from a
confession made in the course of a therapeutic interview.
The Privilege of Confession
Confession should be voluntary. It must not become an
institution formalised by statutes. It should be regarded as a
privilege, not an obligation. This is correct from every point of
view, including the psychological. The need which is expressed
in confession requires no support from ecclesiastical law.
John Wesley says: ‘We grant that confession before others
can in several respects be healthy; public confession in cases
where a person has caused public damage; private confession to
a spiritual leader and adviser when otherwise desiring to remove
thať which is a weight on the conscience. But to make oral
confession or a special confession to a priest necessary for the
forgiveness of sins or for salvation, when God has made no such
condition, that is clearly to make an invention of man a divine rule.’
The risk that confession will become an empty form is always
present if in any such manner it is made a duty instead of a
privilege.
A general and common admission of committed faults can
never be a substitute for the voluntary private confession. This
implies no criticism of general confession of sins as such; but it
can become for the individual something more in the nature
of an aesthetic experience than a pure expression of personal
guilt. It is important to be on guard against this danger. A
confession of sins which is read by or for a congregation must
necessarily be very general in formulation. It cannot replace a
private confession before God or one made before a spiritual
adviser, when the soul is scourged by the conscience. This is
neither an aesthetic experience nor a literary exercise. It is more
nearly a crucifixion, an agony. The individual confession is not
a masterpiece of oratory or style. It is the stumbling and often
broken speech of a contrite heart, eloquent only in its depth and
sincerity.
Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick of New York is perhaps the
best-known preacher of the Gospel in America. He is a Baptist.
His beautiful church is always thronged with worshippers.
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