CONFESSION, UNREPENTANT
A sergeant was accused, once upon a time, by his brethren of the court, of having degraded their order by taking from a client a fee in copper, and on being solemnly arraigned for this offense in their common hall, it appears from the unwritten reports of the Court of Common Pleas, that he defended himself by the following plea of confession and avoidance: “I fully admit that I took a fee from the man in copper, and not one, but several, and not only in copper, but fees in silver; but I pledge my honor as a sergeant, that I never took a single fee from him in silver until I had got all his gold, and that I never took a fee from him in copper until I had got all his silver, and you don’t call that a degradation of our order!” (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”
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CONFESSIONS
The Rev. Jonathan Goforth gives some striking instances of the confessions of Korean converts during a revival:
A prominent Christian who had bought some property for the mission confest that he had only paid eighty yen for the property, but had charged the mission five hundred yen. He sold his land so as to make restitution.
Another confest that he was proud and censorious, but this did not relieve him. A few days later he confest that he had stolen three dollars and a lamp. Still he failed to get peace. After a few more days of agony, he confest that during the war while he acted as manager of transport he had cheated the Japanese and Koreans out of two hundred yen. He made restitution and received blessing.
The leader of a robber band with some of his followers was converted in the great spiritual movement. He confest his sin, then went to the magistrate and delivered himself up. The official was so astounded that he said: “We have no such law that we can condemn a man without an accuser. You may have your liberty.” Here the Spirit of God was more effective than police and detective force. They needed not either to spend a term in the reformatory, for they were made new men in Christ Jesus.
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CONFIDENCE