From the Psalms:
The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul; *
the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to the innocent.
The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart; *
the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean and endures for ever; *
the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold, *
sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb.
By them also is your servant enlightened, *
and in keeping them there is great reward.
Who can tell how often he offends? *
cleanse me from my secret faults.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Psalm 19:7-12 (BCP Version) – February 21, 2013.)
Every time I recite Psalm 19 with its words of praise for the Law, I am caught up short by verse 12. In verses 7-11 we read that the Law is perfect and just, that it provides wisdom and rejoicing, that it is more desirable than gold or honey, and that in keeping it there is enlightenment and reward. Then comes the kicker, “Who can tell how often he offends? Cleanse me from my secret faults.” In other words, despite all the grandeur and wonder of the Law, no one can actually keep it!
The Prayer Book translation of the second part of verse 12 is rather poor. The Hebrew word translated here as “secret” is cathar. A better translation would be “hidden” because the subject is not my faults that I keep secret from others, but rather my offenses of which I am unmindful. The petition of this Psalm is to be cleansed from the sins I commit unawares.
Interestingly, the general confessions in the services of the Episcopal Church make no reference to unknown sins. We confess “things done” and “things left undone”; we confess sins of thought, word, and deed; but we do not confess that there may be (certainly, there are) sins of which we are guilty but of which we have no knowledge, that there are “secret faults.” Perhaps this is a “secret fault” in The Book of Common Prayer. If it is, it is one that can be remedied by recourse to other prayer books and devotionals.
In 1852, a Presbyterian pastor named Elisha Yale (no relation to Yale University), with the assistance of his colleague the Rev. Samuel Cozzens, compiled a devotional entitled, A Select Verse System: For the Use of Individuals, Families and Schools. Fifty-two chapters or “lessons”, one for each week of the year, provided Bible verses to be read each day, and one or more hymns, nearly all by Isaac Watts, to be learnt and sung. Lesson XIX is entitled Examining Ourselves and includes this verse from a two-verse hymn by Dr. Watts:
Lord, search my soul, try every thought;
Though my own heart accuse me not
Of walking in a false disguise,
I beg the trial of thine eyes.
The second verse of the hymn, found in the 1845 Canadian Congregationalist hymnal Church Psalmody: Hymns for Public Worship, is equally instructive.
Doth secret mischief lurk within?
Do I indulge some unknown sin?
O turn my feet whene’er I stray,
And lead me in thy perfect way.
We are encouraged by the Prayer Book to observe “a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance,” but no amount of self-examination will disclose those “secret sins” which are hidden from ourselves. Our repentance must always include “begging the trial of God’s eyes” and asking, “Do I indulge some unknown sin?” Because the answer is undoubtedly, “Yes.”
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
The Bible tells us that the Tablets of the Law were kept in the Arc of the Covenant which traveled with the Hebrews throughout their forty years in the desert and that it was later housed in the Tabernacle and then in the Temple until lost at or about the time of the Babylonian Exile. According to Rabbinic lore, the Ark contained not only the second, whole Tablets, but the broken fragments of the first Tablets, to which Moses refers in this speech from the Book of Deuteronomy.
We human beings are so proud, so prone to taking credit we really have no right or basis to claim and, apparently, we’ve been doing it for a long time. Moses’ caution to the Hebrews not to do so, not to think that it is through their own merit that the Promised Land is being given them, is a caution to all of us, for we are all “a stubborn people.” Self-importance and obstinacy are the human condition.
So, I’ve returned to Paul’s letter to the young bishop Titus. This is a bit from near the end of the letter, Paul’s last piece of advice before turning his attention to personal greetings and a invitation to join him in Nicopolis for the winter. 
Could it get any simpler? “Look, here is Jesus.” The proclamation of the Good News, the invitation into personal relationship with our Incarnate God, the revelation of what it is to be truly human . . . whatever you want to call it (we’ll steer clear for the moment from the word “evangelism”), it can’t get any simpler than this: “Look, here he is.”
Well, Happy Valentine’s Day! Doesn’t Paul strike a pleasant note in his admonitions to the young bishop Titus? The ad hominem attack enshrined in Holy Scripture, mixed with a health dose of antisemitism to boot! An ad hominem is considered a logical fallacy because an otherwise potentially valid claim is rejected on the basis of an irrelevant fact about the person presenting the claim. Typically, it involves two steps, both of which Paul demonstrates in this bit of his letter to Titus. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim: “Cretans are always liars.” Second, this personal attack is used as evidence against the argument the person is making. In other words, the ad hominem argument has the following form: 
We are still reading through Paul’s correspondence with my Celtic friends of Anatolia. And, again, Paul is exasperated with them. They seem to be backsliding. I must admit, however, to some confusion here. Paul complains that they are “observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years.” What, I wonder, is wrong with that? Certainly the Jews, from whom Paul and Jesus came, observed special times, feasts, and seasons; and I’m pretty certain the earliest Christians observed Sunday as a “special day” – we still do.
“The tongue of a teacher” is a such a ripe and fruitful image — it calls to mind all those wonderful people who are so formative in our lives. I remember particular teachers from throughout my life who have been and still are forces that formed and form who I am.
