Our churches, to be sure, have in a measure widely strayed from this simple way of atonement and affirm a very much more positive manner of salvation from sin, either through outward works, or at least through definite dogmatic conceptions of reconciliation with God.
In the first case, we hold that all outward works of penitence, as well as all “good works,” are valueless unless they spring spontaneously from the inner turning to God. Even then they are never meritorious although helpful and pacifying. The essential thing in “repentance” (a great matter, whose import, however, we have almost lost) is not the sorrow of regret, which rather, often enough, merely “worketh death,” but on the one hand, the complete turning of the will toward a change of life, and on the other hand, the conviction that, for this purpose, we stand in need of another power than our own, a power without which the will itself often enough remains only a “good intention.”
Quite intelligible, therefore, at least for the Christian churches and their sincere adherents, is the appeal to the help of Christ as the Saviour sent into the world by God himself, and who for that very reason may not be ignored. But the oppressed soul does not, therefore, need an extensive “Christology”; indeed, there is really no Christology that is trustworthy, but God alone knows the nature of this Saviour and the mystery of salvation through him. All that men have spoken and written about it for two centuries now has been condemned to unfruitfulness and has given real comfort to no one, although human error in these matters, if held in good faith, has probably of itself never caused any one to be lost. Only by the practical but unfailing road of experience, then, will you learn that a simple “Lord, help me,” coming from the very depths of the heart, shall open a way that, to all your philosophy, to all your submission to church, to all your severest works of penitence, had remained closed as with tenfold iron doors. This barricade is opened for you by the one great, unconditioned word of the gospel: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”
Whether you are to confess to men besides, and what reparation you have to make to them, is to be determined only after you have experienced this salvation, after you have taken the Hand that lifts you out of the unstable floods of uncertainty and anxiety, and sets you upon the firm ground of faith. Before, it is quite to no purpose; rather, this is just the obstacle which keeps far the most men from any confession of repentance—which has perhaps to take place before a third person, on whom one then fears to stand, his life long, in spiritual dependence. But very possibly you will feel yourself called to go to a man for confession; for in addition to its transcendental side Christianity is, after all, a human brotherhood also. And this will be especially the case when pride is in your soul. In that event there enters, perhaps, the psychological necessity of a humbling before men also, not alone before God; and the actual expression of forgiveness, by a man called thereto by God, contains for many men a quieting influence that they can not find in a mere thought-process, real as it may be.
If, then, you know such a man, if you feel this inner summons, if you can resolve to speak to him with entire sincerity as before God himself, and if you are willing to accept his directions without reservations, then simply go quietly to him; in so doing, it is possible you are attaining to a greater advance in the inner life, and in shorter time than otherwise. But if even a single one of these presuppositions is wanting, then such a confession will profit you nothing at all. And if you should make of it a merely human transaction, out of regard to an existing ecclesiastical form, or in order thereby to show honor to another, then you dishonor what is most hallowed, and bring upon yourself, and upon him you honor, the greatest harm.
And make up your mind to escape now, while it is still time and while the summons still comes to you, no matter through whom or in what way; whether through a voice within or a voice from without, whether by chance or of set purpose, whether through sermon, or book, or newspaper, or any other instrumentality. The Book of Job asserts as a fact of experience that the summons comes to every one “twice or thrice”:
“Lo, all these things doth God work,
Twice, yea, thrice with a man,
To bring back his soul from the pit,
That he may be enlightened with the light of the living.”