But this is not all. It is a law of life governing all fellowship that transparent frankness is the only atmosphere in which friendship can exist. A wrong committed ought to be followed by full admission of the deed. And it is further noticeable that this admission is not dependent upon whether or not the person wronged is conscious of the wrong. Prudence demands, though not nearly so widely as is commonly supposed, that under certain conditions a sin against society should not be publicly confessed or even made known to the person chiefly concerned. But where this happens the penitent should feel silence as a weighty penance, and long for a day when he can throw open his life so that he will be seen to be just what he is. We are only what we are in the sight of God. It is a grief to many a holy man that because of his secret sins he is better thought of than he deserves; and he will hail the day when all that is hidden will be uncovered and made known, so that with the last veil torn from his character he will be able to join unreservedly in free and humble fellowship with all men. No Christian man has any more warrant for trying to "dissemble or cloak" his sins before his fellow-men than he has for trying to do the same thing before God. To rejoice when we see others attributing to us qualities which we do not possess, or to congratulate ourselves when we escape detection--or at least when we think we do, for as often as not men see our faults when we think they do not--upon the committal of some sin, is to deepen that line of deceit that furrows most characters. There is no social quality quite so splendid as transparency. It is said by one[13] well qualified to speak of Mr. Gladstone that "the man in him leapt forward to express itself with transparent simplicity. If he were subtle he showed at once why he wanted to be subtle. And in spite of everything that could be said about his intellectual subtlety, it remains that to the very last the dominant note of his character was simplicity--the simplicity of a child; with the child's naïve self-disclosure, the child's immediate response to a situation, without cloak or disguise." Now it is just this simple, childlike transparency that the Christian must cultivate in every respect. When it so happens to a man that he may not tell his wrong-doing to the person immediately wronged, then let him go to some spiritual friend, or to his pastor, who stands as the representative of Christian society, as well as the ambassador of Christ, and share with him his grief.