“Thirdly, that His Sacrifice takes away all sin from those who have true faith in their hearts; that faith whose reality is shown by its making us repent of and try, by God’s help, to give up our sins.”
IX.
Concealment.
DORA felt very unhappy. She had broken the holy rest of the Lord’s day; she had repeated prayers without praying, heard God’s Word read without attending, had made a vain show of religion; and at last had worked and worked hard at her needle, as she might have done on any other day of the week. Dora had disobeyed what she knew to be the wishes of her mother, and then to hide such disobedience had uttered a lie to deceive her! The girl could not conceal from herself that she had done what was wrong—exceedingly wrong; that she had displeased a holy God, whose eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good.
“Oh, what can I—what ought I to do now!” thought Dora, as slowly and sadly she went up to her own little room. Conscience gave an instant reply, “Retrace your steps as quickly as you can, own your fault to your mother, and ask forgiveness from God.” But Dora was very unwilling to do this; she was inclined to take a kind of half-way course.
“I need not say anything to mamma about what I have done,” thought Dora. “I will not touch my pretty work any more on Sunday; and to-morrow, as soon as I get up, I will unpick every stitch of what I have been sewing to-day. That will be a good punishment for me; yes, that will be the right kind of punishment for breaking the Fourth Commandment.”
Dora half satisfied her conscience by making this resolution to undo what ought not to have been done; but the little girl made a grievous mistake in supposing that any self-inflicted punishment can take away sin. We must go straight to the Lord for forgiveness, and ask it only for the sake of the Lamb of God, who suffered to take away guilt; and when we have sinned against our fellow-creatures, as well as against our Heavenly Father, we must honestly and openly confess to them what we have done, and ask their forgiveness. Dora shrank from doing this; she was extremely unwilling to own to her mother that she had been sewing on Sunday.