“Ye dinna luik that weel, minister,” said the soutar: “is there onything the maitter wi’ ye, sir?”
“Nothing worth mentioning,” answered the parson. “I have sometimes a touch of headache in the early morning, especially when I have sat later than usual over my books the night before; but it always goes off during the day.”
“Ow weel, sir, that’s no, as ye say, a vera sairious thing! I couldna help fancyin ye had something on yer min’ by ord’nar!”
“Naething, naething,” answered James with a feeble laugh. “—But,” he went on—and something seemed to send the words to his lips without giving him time to think—“it is curious you should say that, for I was just thinking what was the real intent of the apostle in his injunction to confess our faults one to another.”
The moment he uttered the words he felt as if he had proclaimed his secret on the housetop; and he would have begun the sentence afresh, with some notion of correcting it; but again he knew the hot blood shoot to his face.—“I must go on with something!” he felt rather than said to himself, “or those sharp eyes will see through and through me!”
“It came into my mind,” he went on, “that I should like to know what you thought about the passage: it cannot surely give the least ground for auricular confession! I understand perfectly how a man may want to consult a friend in any difficulty—and that friend naturally the minister; but—”
This was by no means a thing he had meant to say, but he seemed carried on to say he knew not what. It was as if, without his will, the will of God was driving the man to the brink of a pure confession—to the cleansing of his stuffed bosom “of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart.”
“Do you think, for instance,” he continued, thus driven, “that a man is bound to tell everything—even to the friend he loves best?”
“I think,” answered the soutar after a moment’s thought, “that we must answer the what, before we enter upon the how much. And I think, first of all we must ask—to whom are we bound to confess?—and there surely the answer is, to him to whom we have done the wrong. If we have been grumbling in our hearts, it is to God we must confess: who else has to do with the matter? To Him we maun flee the moment oor eyes are opent to what we’ve been aboot! But, gien we hae wranged ane o’ oor fallow-craturs, wha are we to gang til wi’ oor confession but that same fallow-cratur? It seems to me we maun gang to that man first—even afore we gang to God himsel. Not one moment must we indulge procrastination on the plea o’ prayin! From our vera knees we maun rise in haste, and say to brother or sister, ‘I’ve done ye this or that wrang: forgie me.’ God can wait for your prayer better nor you, or him ye’ve wranged, can wait for your confession! Efter that, ye maun at ance fa’ to your best endeevour to mak up for the wrang. ‘Confess your sins,’ I think it means, ‘each o’ ye to the ither again whom ye hae dene the offence.’—Divna ye think that’s the cowmonsense o’ the maitter?”
“Indeed, I think you must be right!” replied the minister, who sat revolving only how best, alas, to cover his retreat! “I will go home at once and think it all over. Indeed, I am even now all but convinced that what you say must be what the Apostle intended!”