REPENTANCE.
145
But confession, in itself, does not repair the injury or heal the breach which our faults have made. Suppose Hannah had gone and bought another thimble, more beautiful and costly than the one she had lost, besides the confession which she made; this would have been trying to make reparation. That is, to make up for the loss, which in some cases can be done when we have wronged another. In other cases it cannot; as if a boy, in a fit of passion, had put his brother's eye out, he might confess his sin and feel deeply sorry for what he had done, but he could not restore the lost eye. Now, in doing
10
