From the manuscript before him he read thus:
"'Confess your faults one to another.'--This command of the apostle,
my hearers, ought to justify me in doing what I fear some of you may
consider almost as a breach of morals--talking of myself in the
pulpit. But in the pulpit has a wrong been done, and in the pulpit
shall it be confessed. From Sunday to Sunday, standing on this spot,
I have read to you, without word of explanation, as if they formed
the message I had sought and found for you, the thoughts and words
of another. Doubtless they were better than any I could have given
you from my own mind or experience, and the act had been a righteous
one, had I told you the truth concerning them. But that truth I did
not tell you.--At last, through words of honest expostulation, the
voice of a friend whose wounds are faithful, I have been aroused to
a knowledge of the wrong I have been doing. Therefore I now confess
it. I am sorry. I will do so no more.
"But, brethren, I have only a little garden on a bare hill-side, and
it hath never yet borne me any fruit fit to offer for your
acceptance; also, my heart is troubled about many things, and God
hath humbled me.
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