IT SHALL NOT BE FORGIVEN.

_And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be

forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it

shall not be forgiven.--LUKE xi. 18.

Whatever belonging to the region of thought and feeling is uttered in

words, is of necessity uttered imperfectly. For thought and feeling are

infinite, and human speech, although far-reaching in scope, and

marvellous in delicacy, can embody them after all but approximately and

suggestively. Spirit and Truth are like the Lady Una and the Red Cross

Knight; Speech like the dwarf that lags behind with the lady's "bag of

needments."

Our Lord had no design of constructing a system of truth in

intellectual forms. The truth of the moment in its relation to him, The

Truth, was what he spoke. He spoke out of a region of realities which

he knew could only be suggested--not represented--in the forms of

intellect and speech. With vivid flashes of life and truth his words

invade our darkness, rousing us with sharp stings of light to will our

awaking, to arise from the dead and cry for the light which he can

give, not in the lightning of words only, but in indwelling presence

and power.

How, then, must the truth fare with those who, having neither glow nor

insight, will build intellectual systems upon the words of our Lord, or

of his disciples? A little child would better understand Plato than

they St Paul. The meaning in those great hearts who knew our Lord is

too great to enter theirs. The sense they find in the words must be a

sense small enough to pass through their narrow doors. And if mere

words, without the interpreting sympathy, may mean, as they may, almost

anything the receiver will or can attribute to them, how shall the man,

bent at best on the salvation of his own soul, understand, for

instance, the meaning of that apostle who was ready to encounter

banishment itself from the presence of Christ, that the beloved

brethren of his nation might enter in? To men who are not simple,

simple words are the most inexplicable of riddles.

If we are bound to search after what our Lord means--and he speaks that

we may understand--we are at least equally bound to refuse any

interpretation which seems to us unlike him, unworthy of him. He

himself says, "Why do ye not of your own selves judge what is right?"

In thus refusing, it may happen that, from ignorance or

misunderstanding, we refuse the verbal form of its true interpretation,

but we cannot thus refuse the spirit and the truth of it, for those we

could not have seen without being in the condition to recognize them as

the mind of Christ. Some misapprehension, I say, some obliquity, or

some slavish adherence to old prejudices, may thus cause us to refuse

the true interpretation, but we are none the less bound to refuse and

wait for more light. To accept that as the will of our Lord which to us

is inconsistent with what we have learned to worship in him already, is

to introduce discord into that harmony whose end is to unite our

hearts, and make them whole.

"Is it for us," says the objector who, by some sleight of will,

believes in the word apart from the meaning for which it stands, "to

judge of the character of our Lord?" I answer, "This very thing he

requires of us." He requires of us that we should do him no injustice.

He would come and dwell with us, if we would but open our chambers to

receive him. How shall we receive him if, avoiding judgment, we hold

this or that daub of authority or tradition hanging upon our walls to

be the real likeness of our Lord? Is it not possible at least that,

judging unrighteous judgment by such while we flatter ourselves that we

are refusing to judge, we may close our doors against the Master

himself as an impostor, not finding him like the picture that hangs in

our oratory. And if we do not judge--humbly and lovingly--who is to

judge for us? Better to refuse even the truth for a time, than, by

accepting into our intellectual creed that which our heart cannot

receive, not seeing its real form, to introduce hesitation into our

prayers, a jar into our praises, and a misery into our love. If it be

the truth, we shall one day see it another thing than it appears now,

and love it because we see it lovely; for all truth is lovely. "Not to

the unregenerate mind." But at least, I answer, to the mind which can

love that Man, Christ Jesus; and that part of us which loves him let us

follow, and in its judgements let us trust; hoping, beyond all things

else, for its growth and enlightenment by the Lord, who is that Spirit.

Better, I say again, to refuse the right _form_, than, by accepting it

in misapprehension of what it really is, to refuse the spirit, the

truth that dwells therein. Which of these, I pray, is liker to the sin

against the Holy Ghost? To mistake the meaning of the Son of man may

well fill a man with sadness. But to care so little for him as to

receive as his what the noblest part of our nature rejects as low and

poor, or selfish and wrong, that surely is more like the sin against

the Holy Ghost that can never be forgiven; for it is a sin against the

truth itself, not the embodiment of it in him.

Words for their full meaning depend upon their source, the person who

speaks them. An utterance may even seem commonplace, till you are told

that thus spoke one whom you know to be always thinking, always

feeling, always acting. Recognizing the mind whence the words proceed,

you know the scale by which they are to be understood. So the words of

God cannot mean just the same as the words of man. "Can we not, then,

understand them?" Yes, we can understand them--we can understand them

_more_ than the words of men. Whatever a good word means, as used by a

good man, it means just infinitely more as used by God. And the feeling

or thought expressed by that word takes higher and higher forms in us

as we become capable of understanding him,--that is, as we become like

him.

I am far less anxious to show what the sin against the Holy Ghost

means, than to show what the nonforgiveness means; though I think we

may arrive at some understanding of both. I cannot admit for a moment

that there is anything in the Bible too mysterious to be looked into;

for the Bible is a _revelation_, an unveiling. True, into many things

uttered there I can see only a little way. But that little way is the

way of life; for the depth of their mystery is God. And even setting

aside the duty of the matter, and seeking for justification as if the

duty were doubtful, it is reason enough for inquiring into such

passages as this before me, that they are often torture to human minds,

chiefly those of holy women and children. I knew a child who believed

she had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, because she had, in

her toilette, made an improper use of a pin. Dare not to rebuke me for

adducing the diseased fancy of a child in a weighty matter of theology.

"Despise not one of these little ones." Would the theologians were as

near the truth in such matters as the children. _Diseased fancy!_ The

child knew, _and was conscious that she knew,_ that she was doing wrong

because she had been forbidden. _There was rational ground for her

fear_. How would Jesus have received the confession of the darling?

_He_ would not have told her she was silly, and "never to mind." Child

as she was, might he not have said to her, "I do not condemn thee: go

and sin no more"?

To reach the first position necessary for the final attainment of our

end, I will inquire what the divine forgiveness means. And in order to

arrive at this naturally, I will begin by asking what the human

forgiveness means; for, if there be any meaning in the Incarnation, it

is through the Human that we must climb up to the Divine.

I do not know that it is of much use to go back to the Greek or the

English word for any primary idea of the act--the one meaning _a

sending away_, the other, _a giving away_. It will be enough if we look

at the feelings associated with the exercise of what is called

_forgiveness_.

A man will say: "_I_ forgive, but I cannot forget. Let the fellow never

come in my sight again." To what does such a forgiveness reach? To the

remission or sending away of the penalties which the wronged believes

he can claim from the wrong-doer.

_But there is no sending away of the wrong itself from between them_.

Again, a man will say: "He has done a very mean action, but he has the

worst of it himself in that he is capable of doing so. I despise him

too much to desire revenge. I will take no notice of it. I forgive him.

I don't care."

Here, again, there is no sending away of the wrong from between them--

no _remission_ of the sin.

A third will say: "I suppose I must forgive him; for if I do not

forgive him, God will not forgive me."

This man is a _little_ nearer the truth, inasmuch as a ground of

sympathy, though only that of common sin, is recognized as between the

offender and himself.

One more will say: "He has wronged me grievously. It is a dreadful

thing to me, and more dreadful still to him, that he should have done

it. He has hurt me, but he has nearly killed himself. He shall have no

more injury from it that I can save him. I cannot feel the same towards

him yet; but I will try to make him acknowledge the wrong he has done

me, and so put it away from him. Then, perhaps, I shall be able to feel

towards him as I used to feel. For this end I will show him all the

kindness I can, not forcing it upon him, but seizing every fit

opportunity; not, I hope, from a wish to make myself great through

bounty to him, but because I love him so much that I want to love him

more in reconciling him to his true self. I would destroy this evil

deed that has come between us. I send it away. And I would have him

destroy it from between us too, by abjuring it utterly."

Which comes nearest to the divine idea of forgiveness? nearest, though

with the gulf between, wherewith the heavens are higher than the earth?

For the Divine creates the Human, has the creative power in excess of

the Human. It is the Divine forgiveness that, originating itself,

creates our forgiveness, and therefore can do so much more. It can take

up all our wrongs, small and great, with their righteous attendance of

griefs and sorrows, and carry them away from between our God and us.

Christ is God's Forgiveness.

Before we approach a little nearer to this great sight, let us consider

the human forgiveness in a more definite embodiment--as between a

father and a son. For although God is so much more to us, and comes so

much nearer to us than a father can be or come, yet the fatherhood is

the last height of the human stair whence our understandings can see

him afar off, and where our hearts can first know that he is nigh, even

in them.

There are various kinds and degrees of wrongdoing, which need varying

kinds and degrees of forgiveness. An outburst of anger in a child, for

instance, scarcely wants forgiveness. The wrong in it may be so small,

that the parent has only to influence the child for self-restraint, and

the rousing of the will against the wrong. The father will not feel

that such a fault has built up any wall between him and his child. But

suppose that he discovered in him a habit of sly cruelty towards his

younger brothers, or the animals of the house, how differently would he

feel! Could his forgiveness be the same as in the former case? Would

not the different evil require a different _form_ of forgiveness? I

mean, would not the forgiveness have to take the form of that kind of

punishment fittest for restraining, in the hope of finally rooting out,

the wickedness? Could there be true love in any other kind of

forgiveness than this? A passing-by of the offence might spring from a

poor human kindness, but never from divine love. It would not be

_remission_. Forgiveness can never be indifference. Forgiveness is love

towards the unlovely.

Let us look a little closer at the way a father might feel, and express

his feelings. One child, the moment the fault was committed, the father

would clasp to his bosom, knowing that very love in its own natural

manifestation would destroy the fault in him, and that, the next

moment, he would be weeping. The father's hatred of the sin would burst

forth in his pitiful tenderness towards the child who was so wretched

as to have done the sin, and so destroy it. The fault of such a child

would then cause no interruption of the interchange of sweet

affections. The child is forgiven at once. But the treatment of another

upon the same principle would be altogether different. If he had been

guilty of baseness, meanness, selfishness, deceit, self-gratulation in

the evil brought upon others, the father might _say_ to himself: "I

cannot forgive him. This is beyond forgiveness." He might _say_ so, and

keep saying so, while all the time he was striving to let forgiveness

find its way that it might lift him from the gulf into which he had

fallen. His love might grow yet greater because of the wandering and

loss of his son. For love is divine, and then most divine when it loves

according to _needs_ and not according to _merits_. But the forgiveness

would be but in the process of making, as it were, or of drawing nigh

to the sinner. Not till his opening heart received the divine flood of

destroying affection, and his own affection burst forth to meet it and

sweep the evil away, could it be said to be finished, to have arrived,

could the son be said to _be_ forgiven.

God is forgiving us every day--sending from between him and us our sins

and their fogs and darkness. Witness the shining of his sun and the

falling of his rain, the filling of their hearts with food and

gladness, that he loves them that love him not. When some sin that we

have committed has clouded all our horizon, and hidden him from our

eyes, he, forgiving us, ere we are, and that we may be, forgiven,

sweeps away a path for this his forgiveness to reach our hearts, that

it may by causing our repentance destroy the wrong, and make us able

even to forgive ourselves. For some are too proud to forgive

themselves, till the forgiveness of God has had its way with them, has

drowned their pride in the tears of repentance, and made their heart

come again like the heart of a little child.

But, looking upon forgiveness, then, as the perfecting of a work ever

going on, as the contact of God's heart and ours, in spite and in

destruction of the intervening wrong, we may say that God's love is

ever in front of his forgiveness. God's love is the prime mover, ever

seeking to perfect his forgiveness, which latter needs the human

condition for its consummation. The love is perfect, working out the

forgiveness. God loves where he cannot yet forgive--where forgiveness

in the full sense is as yet simply impossible, because no contact of

hearts is possible, because that which lies between has not even begun

to yield to the besom of his holy destruction.

Some things, then, between the Father and his children, as between a

father and his child, may comparatively, and in a sense, be made light

of--I do not mean made light of in themselves: away they must go--

inasmuch as, evils or sins though they be, they yet leave room for the

dwelling of God's Spirit in the heart, forgiving and cleansing away the

evil. When a man's evil is thus fading out of him, and he is growing

better and better, that is the forgiveness coming into him more and

more. Perfect in God's will, it is having its perfect work in the mind

of the man. When the man hath, with his whole nature, cast away his

sin, there is no room for forgiveness any more, for God dwells in him,

and he in God. With the voice of Nathan, "Thou art the man," the

forgiveness of God laid hold of David, the heart of the king was

humbled to the dust; and when he thus awoke from the moral lethargy

that had fallen upon him, he found that he was still with God. "When I

awake," he said, "I am still with thee."

But there are two sins, not of individual deed, but of spiritual

condition, which _cannot be forgiven_; that is, as it seems to me,

which cannot be excused, passed by, made little of by the tenderness

even of God, inasmuch as they will allow no forgiveness to come into

the soul, they will permit no good influence to go on working alongside

of them; they shut God out altogether. Therefore the man guilty of

these can never receive into himself the holy renewing saving

influences of God's forgiveness. God is outside of him in every sense,

save that which springs from his creating relation to him, by which,

thanks be to God, he yet keeps a hold of him, although against the will

of the man who will not be forgiven. The one of these sins is against

man; the other against God.

The former is unforgivingness to our neighbour; the shutting of him out

from our mercies, from our love--so from the universe, as far as we are

a portion of it--the murdering therefore of our neighbour. It may be an

infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The

former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's

choice. It is _spiritual_ murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the

feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the

idea of the hated. We listen to the voice of our own hurt pride or hurt

affection (only the latter without the suggestion of the former,

thinketh no evil) to the injury of the evil-doer. In as far as we can,

we quench the relations of life between us; we close up the passages of

possible return. This is to shut out God, the Life, the One. For how

are we to receive the forgiving presence while we shut out our brother

from our portion of the universal forgiveness, the final restoration,

thus refusing to let God be All in all? If God appeared to us, how

could he say, "I forgive you," while we remained unforgiving to our

neighbour? Suppose it possible that he should say so, his forgiveness

would be no good to us while we were uncured of our unforgivingness. It

would not touch us. It would not come near us. Nay, it would hurt us,

for we should think ourselves safe and well, while the horror of

disease was eating the heart out of us. Tenfold the forgiveness lies in

the words, "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your

heavenly Father forgive your trespasses." Those words are kindness

indeed. God holds the unforgiving man with his hand, but turns his face

away from him. If, in his desire to see the face of his Father, he

turns his own towards his brother, then the face of God turns round and

seeks his, for then the man may look upon God and not die. With our

forgiveness to our neighbour, in flows the Consciousness of God's

forgiveness to us; or even with the effort, we become capable of

believing that God can forgive us. No man who will not forgive his

neighbour, can believe that God is willing, yea, wanting to forgive

him, can believe that the dove of God's peace is hovering over a

chaotic heart, fain to alight, but finding no rest for the sole of its

foot. For God to say to such a man, "I cannot forgive you," is love as

well as necessity. If God said, "I forgive you," to a man who hated his

brother, and if (as is impossible) that voice of forgiveness should

reach the man, what would it mean to him? How would the man interpret

it? Would it not mean to him, "You may go on hating. I do not mind it.

You have had great provocation, and are justified in your hate"? No

doubt God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is,

into the account; but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be

urged for the hate, the more reason, if possible, that the hater should

be delivered from the hell of his hate, that God's child should be made

the loving child that he meant him to be. The man would think, not that

God loved the sinner, but that he forgave the sin, which God never

does. Every sin meets with its due fate--inexorable expulsion from the

paradise of God's Humanity. He loves the sinner so much that he cannot

forgive him in any other way than by banishing from his bosom the demon

that possesses him, by lifting him out of that mire of his iniquity.

No one, however, supposes for a moment that a man who has once refused

to forgive his brother, shall therefore be condemned to endless

unforgiveness and unforgivingness. What is meant is, that while a man

continues in such a mood, God cannot be with him as his friend; not

that he will not be his friend, but the friendship being all on one

side--that of God--must take forms such as the man will not be able to

recognize as friendship. Forgiveness, as I have said, is not love

merely, but love _conveyed as love_ to the erring, so establishing

peace towards God, and forgiveness towards our neighbour.

To return then to our immediate text: Is the refusal of forgiveness

contained in it a condemnation to irrecoverable impenitence? Strange

righteousness would be the decree, that because a man has done wrong--

let us say has done wrong so often and so much that he _is_ wrong--he

shall for ever remain wrong! Do not tell me the condemnation is only

negative--a leaving of the man to the consequences of his own will, or

at most a withdrawing from him of the Spirit which he has despised. God

will not take shelter behind such a jugglery of logic or metaphysics.

He is neither schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in heaven. He

knows that that in him would be the same unforgivingness for which he

refuses to forgive man. The only tenable ground for supporting such a

doctrine is, that God _cannot_ do more; that Satan has overcome; and

that Jesus, amongst his own brothers and sisters in the image of God,

has been less strong than the adversary, the destroyer. What then shall

I say of such a doctrine of devils as that, even if a man did repent,

God would not or could not forgive him?

Let us look at "_the_ unpardonable sin," as this mystery is commonly

called, and see what we can find to understand about it.

All sin is unpardonable. There is no compromise to be made with it. We

shall not come out except clean, except having paid the uttermost

farthing. But the special unpardonableness of those sins, the one of

which I have spoken and that which we are now considering, lies in

their shutting out God from his _genial_, his especially spiritual,

influences upon the man. Possibly in the case of the former sin, I may

have said this too strongly; possibly the love of God may have some

part even in the man who will not forgive his brother, although, if he

continues unforgiving, that part must decrease and die away; possibly

resentment against our brother, might yet for a time leave room for

some divine influences by its side, although either the one or the

other must speedily yield; but the man who denies truth, who

consciously resists duty, who says there is no truth, or that the truth

he sees is not true, who says that which is good is of Satan, or that

which is bad is of God, supposing him to know that it is good or is

bad, denies the Spirit, shuts out the Spirit, and therefore cannot be

forgiven. For without the Spirit no forgiveness can enter the man to

cast out the satan. Without the Spirit to witness with his spirit, no

man could know himself forgiven, even if God appeared to him and said

so. The full forgiveness is, as I have said, when a man feels that God

is forgiving him; and this cannot be while he opposes himself to the

very essence of God's will.

As far as we can see, the men of whom this was spoken were men who

resisted the truth with some amount of perception that it was the

truth; men neither led astray by passion, nor altogether blinded by

their abounding prejudice; men who were not excited to condemn one form

of truth by the love which they bore to another form of it; but men so

set, from selfishness and love of influence, against one whom they saw

to be a good man, that they denied the goodness of what they knew to be

good, in order to put down the man whom they knew to be good, because

He had spoken against them, and was ruining their influence and

authority with the people by declaring them to be no better than they

knew themselves to be. Is not this to be Satan? to be in hell? to be

corruption? to be that which is damned? Was not this their _condition_

unpardonable? How, through all this mass of falsehood, could the pardon

of God reach the essential humanity within it? Crying as it was for

God's forgiveness, these men had almost separated their humanity from

themselves, had taken their part with the powers of darkness.

Forgiveness while they were such was an impossibility. No. Out of that

they must come, else there was no word of God for them. But the very

word that told them of the unpardonable state in which they were, was

just the one form the voice of mercy could take in calling on them to

repent. They must hear and be afraid. I dare not, cannot think that

they refused the truth, knowing all that it was; but I think they

refused the truth, knowing that it was true--not carried away, as I

have said, by wild passion, but by cold self-love, and envy, and

avarice, and ambition; not merely doing wrong knowingly, but setting

their whole natures knowingly against the light. Of this nature must

the sin against the Holy Ghost surely be. "This is the condemnation,"

(not the sins that men have committed, but the condition of mind in

which they choose to remain,) "that light is come into the world, and

men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

In this sin against the Holy Ghost, I see no single act alone, although

it must find expression in many acts, but a wilful condition of mind,

As far removed from God and light of heaven,

As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.

For this there could be no such excuse made as that even a little light

might work beside it; for there light could find no entrance and no

room; light was just what such a mind was set against, almost because

it was what it was. The condition was utterly bad.

But can a man really fall into such a condition of spiritual depravity?

That is my chief difficulty. But I think it may be. And wiser people

than I, have thought so. I have difficulty in believing it, I say; yet

I think it must be so. But I do not believe that it is a fixed, a final

condition. I do not see why it should be such any more than that of the

man who does not forgive his neighbour. If you say it is a worse

offence, I say, Is it too bad for the forgiveness of God?

But is God able to do anything more with the man? Or how is the man

ever to get out of this condition? If the Spirit of God is shut out

from his heart, how is he to become better?

The Spirit of God is the Spirit whose influence is known by its

witnessing with our spirit. But may there not be other powers and means

of the Spirit preparatory to this its highest office with man? God who

has made us can never be far from any man who draws the breath of

life--nay, must be in him; not necessarily in his heart, as we say, but

still in him. May not then one day some terrible convulsion from the

centre of his being, some fearful earthquake from the hidden gulfs of

his nature, shake such a man so that through all the deafness of his

death, the voice of the Spirit may be faintly heard, the still small

voice that comes after the tempest and the earthquake? May there not be

a fire that even such can feel? Who shall set bounds to the consuming

of the fire of our God, and the purifying that dwells therein?

The only argument that I can think of, which would with me have weight

against this conclusion, is, that the revulsion of feeling in any one

who had thus sinned against the truth, when once brought to acknowledge

his sin, would be so terrible that life would never more be endurable,

and the kindest thing God could do would be to put such a man out of

being, because it had been a better thing for him never to have been

born. But he who could make such a man repent, could make him so

sorrowful and lowly, and so glad that he had repented, that he would

wish to live ever that he might ever repent and ever worship the glory

he now beheld. When a man gives up self, his past sins will no longer

oppress him. It is enough for the good of life that God lives, that the

All-perfect exists, and that we can behold him.

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," said the

Divine, making excuse for his murderers, not after it was all over, but

at the very moment when he was dying by their hands. Then Jesus had

forgiven them already. His prayer the Father must have heard, for he

and the Son are one. When the Father succeeded in answering his prayer,

then his forgiveness in the hearts of the murderers broke out in

sorrow, repentance, and faith. Here was a sin dreadful enough surely--

but easy for our Lord to forgive. All that excuse for the misled

populace! Lord Christ be thanked for that! That was like thee! But must

we believe that Judas, who repented even to agony, who repented so that

his high-prized life, self, soul, became worthless in his eyes and met

with no mercy at his own hand,--must we believe that he could find no

mercy in such a God? I think, when Judas fled from his hanged and

fallen body, he fled to the tender help of Jesus, and found it--I say

not how. He was in a more hopeful condition now than during any moment

of his past life, for he had never repented before. But I believe that

Jesus loved Judas even when he was kissing him with the traitor's kiss;

and I believe that he was his Saviour still. And if any man remind me

of his words, "It had been good for that man if he had not been born,"

I had not forgotten them, though I know that I now offer nothing beyond

a conjectural explanation of them when I say: Judas had got none of the

good of the world into which he had been born. He had not inherited the

earth. He had lived an evil life, out of harmony with the world and its

God. Its love had been lost upon him. He had been brought to the very

Son of God, and had lived with him as his own familiar friend; and he

had not loved him more, but less than himself. Therefore it had been

all useless. "It had been good for that man if he had not been born;"

for it was all to try over again, in some other way--inferior perhaps,

in some other world, in a lower school. He had to be sent down the

scale of creation which is ever ascending towards its Maker. But I will

not, cannot believe, O my Lord, that thou wouldst not forgive thy

enemy, even when he repented, and did thee right. Nor will I believe

that thy holy death was powerless to save thy foe--that it could not

reach to Judas. Have we not heard of those, thine own, taught of thee,

who could easily forgive their betrayers in thy name? And if thou

forgivest, will not thy forgiveness find its way at last in redemption

and purification?

Look for a moment at the clause preceding my text: "He that denieth me

before men shall be denied before the angels of God." What does it

mean? Does it mean--"Ah! you are mine, but not of my sort. You denied

me. Away to the outer darkness"? Not so. "It shall be forgiven to him

that speaketh against the Son of man;" for He may be but the truth

revealed _without_ him. Only he must have shame before the universe of

the loving God, and may need the fire that burneth and consumeth not.

But for him that speaketh against the Spirit of Truth, against the Son

of God revealed _within_ him, he is beyond the teaching of that Spirit

now. For how shall he be forgiven? The forgiveness would touch him no

more than a wall of stone. Let him know what it is to be without the

God he hath denied. Away with him to the Outer Darkness! Perhaps _that_

will make him repent.

My friends, I offer this as only a contribution towards the

understanding of our Lord's words. But if we ask him, he will lead us

into all truth. And let us not be afraid to think, for he will not take

it ill.

But what I have said must be at least a part of the truth.

No amount of discovery in his words can tell us more than _we_ have

discovered, more than we have seen and known to be true. For all the

help the best of his disciples can give us is only to discover, to see

for ourselves. And beyond all our discoveries in his words and being,

there lie depths within depths of truth that we cannot understand, and

yet shall be ever going on to understand. Yea, even now sometimes we

seem to have dim glimpses into regions from which we receive no word to

bring away.

The fact that some things have become to us so much more simple than

they were, and that great truths have come out of what once looked

common, is ground enough for hope that such will go on to be our

experience through the ages to come. Our advance from our former

ignorance can measure but a small portion of the distance that lies,

and must ever lie, between our childishness and his manhood, between

our love and his love, between our dimness and his mighty vision. To

him ere long may we all come, all children, still children, more

children than ever, to receive from his hand the _white stone, and in

the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that

receiveth it_.