It is an instinct of the heart that comes who can tell whence, that means who can tell what? And from this have grown many things. It has become part of all the greater religions, and the forms it has taken are significant not so much of the faiths, but of the people.
Among the Jews and the Mahommedans we hear little of it. They were a hard people when their faiths were formed, a strong people, and little advanced in the gentler feelings. They were warriors who lived greatly by the sword, and it was necessary for them to stifle all that might weaken or even polish them. For one man to humble himself to another is very hard, for a proud man to confess to another is almost impossible. And so into these Theistic faiths the confession was to God. If a man sinned it was to God alone he could confess. But with Christianity it has been different. There is in Christianity what exists in no other faith in the same way, an intermediary between God and man.
There are the priests.
This desire of the soul for confession, the absolute necessity with strong emotional people to tell someone their sins and their truths, has been one of the greatest cults of the Church of Rome. Man must confess, let him confess to the priests. Their tongues are tied, they will never reveal what they are told; they are the ministers of God. Therefore let the innate desire for confession be directed towards the priests. It is universal in Catholic countries. Whatever may be its abuses it is the great safety valve, the great help of the people, that as they must confess they should have someone to confess to.
With the Northern Teutonic nations it has been different. They got their Christianity from Rome, a Christianity that was built on the needs of impulsive Celtic natures. It suited not with the harder natures of the north. They could not confess to men, it galled them to be told to confess. Their natures were different. Had they no need of confession? Yes, but they were as the Jews and Mahommedans. They would not humble themselves to men. And so, for this and other similar reasons, they revolted from Rome and made their own church, where confession is only to God. But the necessity of confession still remains; our services are full of it. It is strange how very often we find the Christianity of Teutonic people nearer in observed facts to the faiths of Semitic peoples than to the Christianity of the Celts. All these peoples, all these Churches, recognise the need of confession. But, it may be said, all this is a difference of very slight detail. All confession is to God. The Roman priests are only representatives of God. If you believe in God you must believe in confession, because God has always directed it. Confession is in all the Churches because God ordered it. The need comes from God, who gives absolution.
Then how about the Buddhists? They have no God, but yet they confess. The Buddha himself many times pointed out how needful confession was, and how healing to the heart. There is no God to confess to, there is no representative of God. But there is the head of the Monastery. Let the younger monk who sins confess his sins to his superior. There is no absolution. Man works out his future himself, always by himself. There is no absolution, no help to be gained by confession. But the Buddha knew the hearts of man. He knew that confession was good for the soul. He knew that it needed no absolution from any priest to help the confesser, no belief in any God to pardon because of the confession. Confession, if it be made honestly and truly, brings with it always its own reward. It may be objected, that this is not general, but only applies to those trying to live the holy life. The Buddha taught that all men should do so. He meant it to be general. It is true that it is not, it cannot be general, or the world would cease. Only a few are monks. Is, then, the help of confession denied to the multitude? Perhaps by the stringent Buddhist faith it may not be urgently inculcated, and men and women in outside life cannot confess to monks. Do they then go without? Not so. Go to any pagoda at any time and you will see there kneeling many people, some men, but mostly women. They are there confessing, audibly sometimes, their troubles, their sins, their joys also. To whom? Ah! then I cannot tell you. "Someone will hear," they say, "Someone will hear." Religions are for the necessity of man, and if the narrow creed will not suffice it must be enlarged.
It is a strange subject this of confession, and its ally, prayer. It is strange to follow it to its roots in the human heart, and to see that it is stronger, is older, is more persistent than creeds. Creeds come and go, they change, and man changes with them; he may have any religion or have none, but it makes no difference to this. Hindu and Christian, Mahommedan and Buddhist, Atheist and Jew, the heart of man is ever the same. Read that wonderful story of Balzac's, "La Messe d'Athèe," and you will see.
If you postulate God or gods, and try from that to deduce prayer and confession, you find yourself very soon as the boy found himself long ago. You are at an impasse. If God be indeed as stated, then can prayer and confession never be necessary. You cannot get round it, you can only hide yourself in mists of words like the scientific theologian. If God be as postulated, then can prayer and confession not be necessary, or even beautiful.
But you can see from daily life that they are so. Who can doubt it? There is in life nothing so beautiful, nothing so true, nothing that acts as balm to the heart like prayer and confession, and they exist naturally. They are there from the beginning; they need no religious theory to bring them into life. What, then, is the inference? Not perhaps exactly what it at first sight would seem to be, that God does not exist or has those qualities of prejudice, of favour, of partiality which religious books and religious people give to Him. It is, I think, this: That the truth, the original truth, is the necessity of confession and prayer, and that to explain this the theory of the nature of God or gods have arisen. Prayer did not proceed from God, but God from prayer—i.e., the theories of God.