 This emotion again fits very well Schleiermacher’s characterization of religious emotion as a “self-consciousness,” but it is at the same time, as Otto suggests, a consciousness of a God who has definite, positive features. Salient in the consciousness of the contrite person are her misdoings and her sullied moral status before the divine judge. Contrary to Otto’s isolation of religious experience from ethics, in contrition God is thought of as an eminently moral figure. But if we take this prayer as canonical for the emotion, then both the notion of God as creator (opening sentence) and Otto’s privileged attribute of the divine majesty are also in the believer’s construal of God, though they seem to be less salient than the attribute of moral judge. Another attribute that is very much in the content of Christian contrition is God’s mercy. Thus a serenity and honesty about the grievousness and intolerable burden of sin are characteristic of contrition that are not characteristic of a plain feeling of guilt. The contrite believer feels herself, in her sin, to be welcomed and embraced by a loving and forgiving God, a merciful Father.