consequences of sin. When God forgives a sin, it does not follow that
He stops its consequences: for example, when He forgives the
intemperate man whose health is ruined, forgiveness does not restore
his health. Divine pardon does not interfere with the laws of the
universe, for it is itself one of those laws. It is a law that penalty
follows transgression. Forgiveness will not save from penalty; but it
alters the feelings with which the penalty is accepted. Pain inflicted
with a surgeon's knife for a man's good, is as keen as that which
results from the knife of the torturer; but in the one case it is
calmly borne, because remedial--in the other it exasperates, because
it is felt to be intended by malevolence. So with the difference
between suffering which comes from a sin which we hope God has
forgiven, and suffering which seems to fall hot from the hand of an
angry God. It is a fearful truth, that so far as we know at least, the
consequences of an act are connected with it indissolubly. Forgiveness
does not arrest them; but by producing softness and grateful
penitence, it transforms them into blessings. This is God's
forgiveness; and absolution is the conveyance to the conscience of the
conviction of forgiveness: to absolve is to free--to comfort by
strengthening--to afford repose from fear.
Now it was the way of the Redeemer to emancipate from sin by the
freeness of absolution. The dying thief, an hour before a blasphemer,
was unconditionally assured; the moment the sinner's feelings changed
towards God, He proclaimed that God was reconciled to him: "This day
thou shalt be with me in Paradise." And hence, speaking humanly,
hence, from this absolving tone and spirit, came His wondrous and
unparalleled power with sinful, erring hearts; hence the life and
fresh impulse which He imparted to the being and experience to those
with whom He dealt. Hence the maniac, freed from the legion, sat at
His feet, clothed, and in his right mind. Hence the outcast woman,
whom human scorn would have hardened into brazen effrontery, hearing
an unwonted voice of human sympathy, "washed His feet with her tears,
and wiped them with the hairs of her head."
And this is what we have forgotten: we have not yet learned to trust
the power of redeeming love; we do not believe in the omnipotence of
grace, and the might of an appeal to the better parts, and not the
slavish parts of human nature. Settle it in your minds, the absolving
power is the central secret of the Gospel. Salvation is unconditional;
not an offer, but _a Gift_; not clogged with conditions, but free as
the air we breathe. God welcomes back the prodigal. God loves without
money and without price. To this men reply gravely, It is dangerous to
speak thus; it is perilous to dispense with the safeguards of
restriction. Law! law! there is nothing like law--a salutary fear--for
making men holy. O blind Pharisee! had you ever known the spring, the
life which comes from feeling _free_, the gush of gratitude with which
the heart springs to duty when all chains are shattered, and it stands
fearless and free in the Light, and in the Love of God--you would
understand that a large trusting charity, which can throw itself on
the better and more generous impulses of a laden spirit, is the safest
as well as the most beautiful means of securing obedience.
So far however, there will not be much objection to the doctrine: it
will be admitted that absolution is true in the lips of Christ,
because of His Divinity. It will be said He was God, and God speaking
on earth is the same thing as God speaking in heaven. No my brethren,
it is _not_ the same thing. Christ forgiving on earth is _a new truth_
added to that of God's forgiving in heaven. It is not the same truth.
The one is forgiveness by Deity; the other is the declaration of
forgiveness by Humanity. He bade the palsied man walk, that they might
know that "the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."
Therefore we proceed a step further. The same power He delegated to
His Church which He had exercised Himself. "Whosesoever sins ye
remit, they are remitted." Now perhaps, it will be replied to this,
that that promise belongs to the apostles; that they were
supernaturally gifted to distinguish genuine from feigned repentance;
to absolve therefore, was their natural prerogative, but that we have
no right to say it extends beyond the apostles.
We therefore, bring the question to a point by referring to an
instance in which an apostle did absolve. Let us examine whether St.
Paul confined the prerogative to himself. "To whom ye forgive
anything, I forgive also: for to whom I forgave anything for your
sakes, forgave I it in the person of Christ."
Observe now: it is quite true here that the apostle absolved a man
whose excommunication he had formerly required; but he absolved him
because the congregation absolved him; not as a plenipotentiary
supernaturally gifted to convey a mysterious benefit, but as himself
an organ and representative of the Church. The power of absolution
therefore, belonged to the Church, and to the apostle through the
Church. It was a power belonging to _all_ Christians: to the apostle,
because he was a Christian, not because he was an apostle. A priestly
power no doubt, because Christ has made all Christians kings and
priests.
Now let us turn again, with this added light, to examine the meaning
of that expression, "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive
sins." Mark that form of words--not Christ as God, but Christ as Son
of man. It was manifestly said by Him, not solely as divine, but
rather as human, as the Son of man; that is, as Man. For we may take
it as a rule: when Christ calls himself Son of man, He is asserting
His Humanity. It was said by the High Priest of Humanity in the name
of the race. It was said on the principle that human nature is the
reflection of God's nature: that human love is the image of God's
love; and that human forgiveness is the type and assurance of divine
forgiveness.
In Christ Humanity was the perfect type of Deity, and therefore
Christ's absolution was always the exact measure and counterpart of
God's forgiveness. Herein lies the deep truth of the doctrine of His
eternal priesthood--the Eternal Son--the Humanity of the Being of
God--the ever Human mind of God. The Absolver ever lives. The Father
judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son--hath given
Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.
But further than this. In a subordinate, because less perfect degree,
the forgiveness of a man as man carries with it an absolving power.
Who has not felt the load taken from his mind when the hidden guilt
over which he had brooded long has been acknowledged, and met by
forgiving human sympathy, especially at a time when he expected to be
treated with coldness and reproof? Who has not felt how such a moment
was to him the dawn of a better hope, and how the merciful judgment of
some wise and good human being seemed to be the type and the assurance
of God's pardon, making it credible? Unconsciously it may be, but
still in substance really, I believe some such reasoning as _this_
goes on in the whispers of the heart--"He loves me, and has compassion
on me--will not God forgive? He, this man, made in God's image, does
not think my case hopeless. Well, then, in the larger love of God it
is not hopeless." Thus, and only thus, can we understand the
_ecclesiastical_ act. Absolution, the prerogative of our humanity, is
represented by a formal act of the Church.
Much controversy and angry bitterness has been spent on the absolution
put by the Church of England into the lips of her ministers--I cannot
think with justice--if we try to get at the root of these words of
Christ. The priest proclaims forgiveness authoritatively as the organ
of the congregation--as the voice of the Church, in the name of Man
and God. For human nature represents God. The Church represents what
human nature is and ought to be. The minister represents the Church.
He speaks therefore, in the name of our godlike, human nature. He
declares a divine fact, he does not create it. There is no magic in
his absolution: he can no more forgive whom God has not forgiven, by
the formula of absolution, or reverse the pardon of him whom God has
absolved by the formula of excommunication, than he can transfer a
demon into an angel by the formula of baptism. He declares what every
one has a right to declare, and ought to declare by his lips and by
his conduct: but being a minister, he declares it authoritatively in
the name of every Christian who by his Christianity is a priest to
God; he specializes what is universal; as in baptism, he seals the
universal Sonship on the individual by name, saying, "The Sonship with
which Christ has redeemed all men, I hereby proclaim for this child;"
so by absolution he specializes the universal fact of the love of God
to those who are listening then and there, saying, "The Love of God
the Absolver, I authoritatively proclaim to be _yours_."
In the Service for the Visitation of the Sick, the Church of England
puts into the lips of her ministers words quite unconditional: "I
absolve thee from all thy sins." You know that passage is constantly
objected to as Romish and superstitious. I would not give up that
precious passage. I love the Church of England, because she has dared
to claim her inheritance--because she has courage to assert herself as
what she ought to be--God's representative on earth. She says to her
minister, Stand there before a darkened spirit, on whom the shadows of
death have begun to fall: in human flesh and blood representing the
Invisible,--with words of human love making credible the Love Eternal.
Say boldly, I am here to declare not a perhaps, _but a fact_. I
forgive thee in the name of Humanity. And so far as Humanity
represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not
put into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He cannot bless
whom God has not blessed--he cannot curse whom God has not cursed. If
the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have
ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a
heart diseased, and binding up the wound that _will_ bleed afresh, to
which no assurances can give comfort, because they are not
authoritative, it must have crossed your mind that such a power as
that which the Church of England claims, if it were believed, is
exactly the remedy you want. You must have felt that even the formula
of the Church of Rome would be a blessed power to exercise, could it
but once be accepted as a pledge that all the past was obliterated,
and that from that moment a free untainted future lay before the
soul--you must have _felt_ that; you must have wished you had dared to
_say_ it. My whole spirit has absolved my erring brother. Is God less
merciful than I? Can I--dare I--say or think it conditionally? Dare I
say, I hope? May I not, must I not, say, _I know_ God has forgiven
you?
Every man whose heart has truly bled over another's sin, and watched
another's remorse with pangs as sharp as if the crime had been his
own, _has_ said it. Every parent has said it who ever received back a
repentant daughter, and opened out for her a new hope for life. Every
mother has said it who ever by her hope against hope for some
profligate, protested for a love deeper and wider than that of
society. Every man has said it who forgave a deep wrong. See then,
_why_ and _how_ the church absolves. She only exercises that power
which belongs to every son of man. If society were Christian--if
society, by its forgiveness and its exclusion, truly represented the
mind of God--there would be no necessity for a Church to speak; but
the absolution of society and the world does not represent by any
means God's forgiveness. Society absolves those whom God has _not_
absolved--the proud, the selfish, the strong, the seducer; society
refuses return and acceptance to the seduced, the frail, and the sad
penitent whom God has accepted; therefore it is necessary that a
selected body, through its appointed organs, should do in the name of
Man what man, as such, does not. The Church is the ideal of Humanity.
It represents what God intended man to be--what man is in God's sight
as beheld in Christ by Him; and the minister of the Church speaks as
the representative of that ideal Humanity. Church absolution is an
eternal protest, in the name of God the Absolver, against the false
judgments of society.
One thing more. Beware of making this a dead formula. If absolution be
not a living truth, it becomes a monstrous falsehood; if you take
absolution as a mystical gift conveyed to an individual man called a
priest, and mysteriously efficacious in _his_ lips, and his _alone_,
you petrify a truth into death and unreality. I have been striving to
show that absolution is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft,
but a living, blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and
to me, and just so far as we exercise it lovingly and wisely, in our
lives, and with our lips, we help men away from sin: just so far as we
do not exercise it, or exercise it falsely, we drive men to Rome. For
if the heart cannot have a truth it will take a counterfeit of truth.
By every magnanimous act, by every free forgiveness with which a pure
man forgives, or pleads for mercy, or assures the penitent, he
proclaims this truth, that "the Son of man hath power on earth to
forgive sins"--he exhibits the priestly power of humanity--_he does_
absolve; let theology say what it will of absolution, he gives peace
to the conscience--he is a type and assurance of what God is--he
breaks the chains and lets the captive go free.
VI.
_Preached June 9, 1850._
THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.
"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which
he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went
out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the
land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles
with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for
he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and
maker is God."--Hebrews xi. 8-10.
Last Sunday we touched upon a thought which deserves further
development. God promised Canaan to Abraham, and yet Abraham never
inherited Canaan: to the last he was a wanderer there; he had no
possession of his own in its territory: if he wanted even a tomb to
bury his dead, he could only obtain it by purchase. This difficulty is
expressly admitted in the text, "In the land of promise he sojourned
as in a strange country;" he dwelt there in tents--in changeful,
moveable tabernacles--not permanent habitations; he had no home
there.
It is stated in all its startling force, in terms still more explicit,
in the 7th chapter of the Acts, 5th verse, "And He gave him none
inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet He
promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his
seed after him, when as yet he had no child."
Now the surprising point is that Abraham, deceived, as you might
almost say, did not complain of it as a deception; he was even
grateful for the non-fulfilment of the promise: he does not seem to
have expected its fulfilment; he did not look for Canaan, but for "a
city which had foundations;" his faith appears to have consisted in
disbelieving the letter, almost as much as in believing the spirit of
the promise.
And herein lies a principle, which, rightly expounded, can help us to
interpret this life of ours. God's promises never are fulfilled in the
sense in which they seem to have been given. Life is a deception; its
anticipations, which are God's promises to the imagination, are never
realized; they who know life best, and have trusted God most to fill
it with blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of
disappointments. And in the spirit of this text we have to say that it
is a wise and merciful arrangement which ordains it thus.
The wise and holy do not expect to find it otherwise--would not wish
it otherwise; their wisdom consists in disbelieving its promises. To
develope this idea would be a glorious task; for to justify God's ways
to man, to expound the mysteriousness of our present being, to
interpret God,--is not this the very essence of the ministerial
office? All that I can hope however to-day, is not to exhaust the
subject, but to furnish hints for thought. Over-statements may be
made, illustrations may be inadequate, the new ground of an almost
untrodden subject may be torn up too rudely; but remember, we are here
to live and die; in a few years it will be all over; meanwhile, what
we have to do is to try to understand, and to help one another to
understand, what it all means--what this strange and contradictory
thing, which we call Life, contains within it. Do not stop to ask
therefore, whether the subject was satisfactorily worked out; let each
man be satisfied to have received a germ of thought which he may
develope better for himself.
I. The deception of life's promise.
II. The meaning of that deception.
Let it be clearly understood in the first place, the promise never was
fulfilled. I do not say the fulfilment was delayed. I say it _never_
was fulfilled. Abraham had a few feet of earth, obtained by
purchase--beyond that nothing; he died a stranger and a pilgrim in the
land. Isaac had a little. So small was Jacob's hold upon his country
that the last years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a
foreigner in a strange land. His descendants came into the land of
Canaan, expecting to find it a land flowing with milk and honey; they
found hard work to do--war and unrest, instead of rest and peace.
During one brief period, in the history of Israel, the promise may
seem to have been fulfilled. It was during the later years of David
and the earlier years of Solomon; but we have the warrant of Scripture
itself for affirming, that even then the promise was not fulfilled. In
the Book of Psalms, David speaks of a hope of entering into a _future_
rest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting this passage,
infers from it that God's promise had not been exhausted nor
fulfilled, by the entrance into Canaan; for he says, "If Joshua had
given them rest then would he not have spoken of another day." Again
in this very chapter, after a long list of Hebrew saints--"These _all_
died in faith, not having received the promises." To none therefore,
had the promise been fulfilled. Accordingly writers on prophecy, in
order to get over this difficulty, take for granted that there must be
a future fulfilment, because the first was inadequate.
They who believe that the Jews will be restored to their native land,
expect it on the express ground that Canaan has never been actually
and permanently theirs. A certain tract of country--300 miles in
length, by 200 in breadth--must be given, or else they think the
promise has been broken. To quote the expression of one of the most
eloquent of their writers, "If there be nothing yet future for Israel,
then the magnificence of the promise has been lost in the poverty of
its accomplishment."
I do not quote this to prove the correctness of the interpretation of
the prophecy, but as an acknowledgment which may be taken so far as a
proof, that the promise made to Abraham has never been accomplished.
And such is life's disappointment. Its promise is, you shall have a
Canaan; it turns out to be a baseless airy dream--toil and
warfare--nothing that we can call our own; not the land of rest, by
any means. But we will examine this in particulars.
1. Our senses deceive us; we begin life with delusion. Our senses
deceive us with respect to distance, shape, and colour. That which
afar off seems oval, turns out to be circular, modified by the
perspective of distance; that which appears a speck, upon nearer
approach becomes a vast body. To the earlier ages the stars presented
the delusion of small lamps hung in space. The beautiful berry proves
to be bitter and poisonous: that which apparently moves is really at
rest: that which seems to be stationary is in perpetual motion: the
earth moves: the sun is still. All experience is a correction of
life's delusions--a modification, a reversal of the judgment of the
senses: and all life is a lesson on the falsehood of appearances.
2. Our natural anticipations deceive us--I say _natural_ in
contra-distinction to extravagant expectations. Every human life is a
fresh one, bright with hopes that will never be realized. There may be
differences of character in these hopes; finer spirits may look on
life as the arena of successful deeds, the more selfish as a place of
personal enjoyment.
With man the turning point of life may be a profession--with woman,
marriage; the one gilding the future with the triumphs of intellect,
the other with the dreams of affection; but in every case, life is not
what any of them expects, but something else. It would almost seem a
satire on existence to compare the youth in the outset of his career,
flushed and sanguine, with the aspect of the same being when it is
nearly done--worn, sobered, covered with the dust of life, and
confessing that its days have been few and evil. Where is the land
flowing with milk and honey?
With our affections it is still worse, because they promise more.
Man's affections are but the tabernacles of Canaan--the tents of a
night; not permanent habitations even for this life. Where are the
charms of character, the perfection, and the purity, and the
truthfulness, which seemed so resplendent in our friend? They were
only the shape of our own conceptions--our creative shaping intellect
projected its own fantasies on him: and hence we outgrow our early
friendships; outgrow the intensity of all: we dwell in tents; we never
find a home, even in the land of promise. Life is an unenjoyable
Canaan, with nothing real or substantial in it.
3. Our expectations, resting on revelation, deceive us. The world's
history has turned round two points of hope; one, the _first_--the
other, the _second_ coming of the Messiah. The magnificent imagery of
Hebrew prophecy had described the advent of the Conqueror; He came--"a
root out of a dry ground, with no form or comeliness; and when they
saw Him there was no beauty in Him that they should desire Him." The
victory, predicted in such glowing terms, turned out to be the victory
of Submission--the Law of our Humanity, which wins by gentleness and
love. The promise in the letter was unfulfilled. For ages the world's
hope has been the second advent. The early church expected it in their
own day. "We, which are alive, and remain until the coming of our
Lord."
The Saviour Himself had said, "This generation shall not pass till all
things be fulfilled." Yet the Son of Man has never come; or rather, He
has been _ever_ coming. Unnumbered times the judgment eagles have
gathered together over corruption ripe for condemnation. Times
innumerable the separation has been made between good and bad. The
promise has not been fulfilled, or it has been fulfilled, but in
either case anticipation has been foiled and disappointed.
There are two ways of considering this aspect of life. One is the way
of sentiment; the other is the way of faith. The sentimental way is
trite enough. Saint, sage, sophist, moralist, and preacher, have
repeated in every possible image, till there is nothing new to say,
that life is a bubble, a dream, a delusion, a phantasm. The other is
the way of faith: the ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist
could feel the brokenness of its promises; they confessed that they
were strangers and pilgrims here; they said that they had here no
continuing city; but they did not mournfully moralize on this; they
said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that it was so. They felt that all
was right; they knew that the promise itself had a deeper meaning:
they looked undauntedly for "a city which hath foundations."
II. The second inquiry, therefore, is the meaning of this
delusiveness.