THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS.
"I believe in ... the forgiveness of sins." "I acknowledge one baptism
for the remission of sins." The words fall facilely from the lips of
worshippers in every Christian church throughout the world, as they
repeat the familiar creeds called those of the Apostles and the Nicene.
Among the sayings of Jesus the words frequently recur: "Thy sins are
forgiven thee," and it is noteworthy that this phrase constantly
accompanies the exercise of His healing powers, the release from
physical and moral disease being thus marked as simultaneous. In fact,
on one occasion He pointed to the healing of a palsy-stricken man as a
sign that he had a right to declare to a man that his sins were
forgiven.[309] So also of one woman it was said: "Her sins, which are
many, are forgiven, for she loved much."[310] In the famous Gnostic
treatise, the _Pistis Sophia_, the very purpose of the Mysteries is said
to be the remission of sins. "Should they have been sinners, should they
have been in all the sins and all the iniquities of the world, of which
I have spoken unto you, nevertheless if they turn themselves and repent,
and have made the renunciation which I have just described unto you,
give ye unto them the mysteries of the kingdom of light; hide them not
from them at all. It is because of sin that I have brought these
mysteries into the world, for the remission of all the sins which they
have committed from the beginning. Wherefore have I said unto you
aforetime, 'I came not to call the righteous.' Now, therefore, I have
brought the mysteries, that the sins of all men may be remitted, and
they be brought into the kingdom of light. For these mysteries are the
boon of the first mystery of the destruction of the sins and iniquities
of all sinners."[311]
In these Mysteries, the remission of sin is by baptism, as in the
acknowledgment in the Nicene Creed. Jesus says: "Hearken, again, that I
may tell you the word in truth, of what type is the mystery of baptism
which remitteth sins.... When a man receiveth the mysteries of the
baptisms, those mysteries become a mighty fire, exceedingly fierce,
wise, which burneth up all sins; they enter into the soul occultly, and
devour all the sins which the spiritual counterfeit hath implanted in
it." And after describing further the process of purification, Jesus
adds: "This is the way in which the mysteries of the baptisms remit sins
and every iniquity."[312]
In one form or another the "forgiveness of sins" appears in most, if not
in all, religions; and wherever this consensus of opinion is found, we
may safely conclude, according to the principle already laid down, that
some fact in nature underlies it. Moreover, there is a response in
human nature to this idea that sins are forgiven; we notice that people
suffer under a consciousness of wrong-doing, and that when they shake
themselves clear of their past, and free themselves from the shackling
fetters of remorse, they go forward with glad heart and sunlit eyes,
though erstwhile enclouded by darkness. They feel as though a burden
were lifted off them, a clog removed. The "sense of sin" has
disappeared, and with it the gnawing pain. They know the springtime of
the soul, the word of power which makes all things new. A song of
gratitude wells up as the natural outburst of the heart, the time for
the singing of birds is come, there is "joy among the Angels." This not
uncommon experience is one that becomes puzzling, when the person
experiencing it, or seeing it in another, begins to ask himself what has
really taken place, what has brought about the change in consciousness,
the effects of which are so manifest.
Modern thinkers, who have thoroughly assimilated the idea of changeless
laws underlying all phenomena, and who have studied the workings of
these laws, are at first apt to reject any and every theory of the
forgiveness of sins as being inconsistent with that fundamental truth,
just as the scientist, penetrated with the idea of the inviolability of
law, repels all thought which is inconsistent with it. And both are
right in founding themselves on the unfaltering working of law, for law
is but the expression of the divine Nature, in which there is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning. Any view of the forgiveness of
sins that we may adopt must not clash with this fundamental idea, as
necessary to ethical as to physical science. "The bottom would fall out
of everything" if we could not rest securely in the everlasting arms of
the Good Law.
But in pursuing our investigations, we are struck with the fact that the
very Teachers who are most insistent on the changeless working of law
are also those who emphatically proclaim the forgiveness of sins. At one
time Jesus is saying: "That every idle word that men shall speak, they
shall give account thereof in the day of judgment,"[313] and at
another: "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee."[314] So in
the _Bhagavad Gita_ we read constantly of the bonds of action, that "the
world is bound by action,"[315] and that a man "recovereth the
characteristics of his former body;"[316] and yet it is said that "even
if the most sinful worship me, with undivided heart, he, too, must be
accounted righteous."[317] It would seem, then, that whatever may have
been intended in the world's Scriptures by the phrase, "the forgiveness
of sins," it was not thought, by Those who best know the law, to clash
with the inviolable sequence of cause and effect.
If we examine even the crudest idea of the forgiveness of sins prevalent
in our own day, we find that the believer in it does not mean that the
forgiven sinner is to escape from the consequences of his sin in this
world; the drunkard, whose sins are forgiven on his repentance, is still
seen to suffer from shaken nerves, impaired digestion, and the lack of
confidence shown towards him by his fellow-men. The statements made as
to forgiveness, when they are examined, are ultimately found to refer to
the relations between the repentant sinner and God, and to the
_post-mortem_ penalties attached to unforgiven sin in the creed of the
speaker, and not to any escape from the mundane consequences of sin. The
loss of belief in reincarnation, and of a sane view as to the continuity
of life, whether it were spent in this or in the next two worlds,[318]
brought with it various incongruities and indefensible assertions, among
them the blasphemous and terrible idea of the eternal torture of the
human soul for sins committed during the brief span of one life spent on
earth. In order to escape from this nightmare, theologians posited a
forgiveness which should release the sinner from this dread imprisonment
in an eternal hell. It did not, and was never supposed to, set him free
in this world from the natural consequences of his ill-doings,
nor--except in modern Protestant communities--was it held to deliver
him from prolonged purgatorial sufferings, the direct results of sin,
after the death of the physical body. The law had its course, both in
this world and in purgatory, and in each world sorrow followed on the
heels of sin, even as the wheels follow the ox. It was but eternal
torture--which existed only in the clouded imagination of the
believer--that was escaped by the forgiveness of sins; and we may
perhaps go so far as to suggest that the dogmatist, having postulated an
eternal hell as the monstrous result of transient errors, felt compelled
to provide a way of escape from an incredible and unjust fate, and
therefore further postulated an incredible and unjust forgiveness.
Schemes that are elaborated by human speculation, without regard to the
facts of life, are apt to land the speculator in thought-morasses,
whence he can only extricate himself by blundering through the mire in
an opposite direction. A superfluous eternal hell was balanced by a
superfluous forgiveness, and thus the uneven scales of justice were
again rendered level. Leaving these aberrations of the unenlightened,
let us return into the realm of fact and right reason.
When a man has committed an evil action he has attached himself to a
sorrow, for sorrow is ever the plant that springs from the seed of sin.
It may be said, even more accurately, that sin and sorrow are but the
two sides of one act, not two separate events. As every object has two
sides, one of which is behind, out of sight, when the other is in front,
in sight, so every act has two sides, which cannot both be seen at once
in the physical world. In other worlds, good and happiness, evil and
sorrow, are seen as the two sides of the same thing. This is what is
called karma--a convenient and now widely-used term, originally
Samskrit, expressing this connection or identity, literally meaning
"action"--and the suffering is therefore called the karmic result of the
wrong. The result, the "other side," may not follow immediately, may not
even accrue during the present incarnation, but sooner or later it will
appear and clasp the sinner with its arms of pain. Now a result in the
physical world, an effect experienced through our physical
consciousness, is the final outcome of a cause set going in the past; it
is the ripened fruit; in it a particular force becomes manifest and
exhausts itself. That force has been working outwards, and its effects
are already over in the mind ere it appears in the body. Its bodily
manifestation, its appearance, in the physical world, is the sign of the
completion of its course.[319] If at such a moment the sinner, having
exhausted the karma of his sin, comes into contact with a Sage who can
see the past and the present, the invisible and the visible, such a Sage
may discern the ending of the particular karma, and, the sentence being
completed, may declare the captive free. Such an instance seems to be
given in the story of the man sick of the palsy, already alluded to, a
case typical of many. A physical ailment is the last expression of a
past ill-doing; the mental and moral outworking is completed, and the
sufferer is brought--by the agency of some Angel, as an administrator of
the law--into the presence of One able to relieve physical disease by
the exertion of a higher energy. First, the Initiate declares that the
man's sins are forgiven, and then justifies his insight by the
authoritative word, "Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house."
Had no such enlightened One been there, the disease would have passed
away under the restoring touch of nature, under a force applied by the
invisible angelic Intelligences, who carry out in this world the
workings of karmic law; when a greater One is acting, this force is of
more swiftly compelling power, and the physical vibrations are at once
attuned to the harmony that is health. All such forgiveness of sins may
be termed declaratory; the karma is exhausted, and a "knower of karma"
declares the fact. The assurance brings a relief to the mind that is
akin to the relief experienced by a prisoner when the order for his
release is given, that order being as much a part of the law as the
original sentence; but the relief of the man who thus learns of the
exhaustion of an evil karma is keener, because he cannot himself tell
the term of its action.
It is noticeable that these declarations of forgiveness are constantly
coupled with the statement that the sufferer showed "faith," and that
without this nothing could be done; _i.e._, the real agent in the ending
of this karma is the sinner himself. In the case of the "woman that was
a sinner," the two declarations are coupled: "Thy sins are forgiven....
Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace."[320] This "faith" is the
up-welling in man of his own divine essence, seeking the divine ocean of
like essence, and when this breaks through the lower nature that holds
it in--as the water-spring breaks through the encumbering
earth-clods--the power thus liberated works on the whole nature,
bringing it into harmony with itself. The man only becomes conscious of
this as the karmic crust of evil is broken up by its force, and that
glad consciousness of a power within himself hitherto unknown,
asserting itself as soon as the evil karma is exhausted, is a large
factor in the joy, relief, and new strength that follow on the feeling
that sin is "forgiven," that its results are past.
And this brings us to the heart of the subject--the changes that go on
in a man's inner nature, unrecognised by that part of his consciousness
which works within the limits of his brain, until they suddenly assert
themselves within those limits, coming apparently from nowhere, bursting
forth "from the blue," pouring from an unknown source. What wonder that
a man, bewildered by their downrush--knowing nothing of the mysteries of
his own nature, nothing of "the inner God" that is verily
himself--imagines that to be from without which is really from within,
and, unconscious of his own Divinity, thinks only of Divinities in the
world external to himself. And this misconception is the more easy,
because the final touch, the vibration that breaks the imprisoning
shell, is often the answer from the Divinity within another man, or
within some superhuman being, responding to the insistent cry from the
imprisoned Divinity within himself; he oft-times recognises the
brotherly aid, while not recognising that he himself, the cry from his
inner nature, called it forth. As an explanation from a wiser than
ourselves may make an intellectual difficulty clear to our mind, though
it is our own mind that, thus aided, grasps the solution; as an
encouraging word from one purer than ourselves may nerve us to a moral
effort that we should have thought beyond our power, though it is our
own strength that makes it; so may a loftier Spirit than our own, one
more conscious of its Divinity, aid us to put forth our own divine
energy, though it is that very putting forth that lifts us to a higher
plane. We are all bound by ties of brotherly help to those above us as
to those below us, and why should we, who so constantly find ourselves
able to help in their development souls less advanced than ourselves,
hesitate to admit that we can receive similar help from Those far above
us, and that our progress may be rendered much swifter by Their aid?
Now among the changes that go on in a man's inner nature, unknown to his
lower consciousness, are those that have to do with the putting forth of
his will. The Ego, glancing backward over his past, balancing up its
results, suffering under its mistakes, determines on a change of
attitude, on a change of activity. While his lower vehicle is still,
under his former impulses, plunging along lines of action that bring it
into sharp collisions with the law, the Ego determines on an opposite
course of conduct. Hitherto he has turned his face longingly to the
animal, the pleasures of the lower world have held him fast enchained.
Now he turns his face to the true goal of evolution, and determines to
work for loftier joys. He sees that the whole world is evolving, and
that if he sets himself against that mighty current it clashes him
aside, bruising him sorely in the process; he sees that if he sets
himself with it, it will bear him onwards on its bosom and land him in
the desired haven.
He then resolves to change his life, he turns determinedly on his steps,
he faces the other way. The first result of the effort to turn his
lower nature into the changed course, is much distress and disturbance.
The habits formed under the impacts of the old views resist stubbornly
the impulses flowing from the new, and a bitter conflict arises.
Gradually the consciousness working in the brain accepts the decision
made on higher planes, and then "becomes conscious of sin" by this very
recognition of the law. The sense of error deepens, remorse preys on the
mind; spasmodic efforts are made towards improvement, and, frustrated by
old habits, repeatedly fail, till the man, overwhelmed by grief for the
past, despair of the present, is plunged into hopeless gloom. At last,
the ever-increasing suffering wrings from the Ego a cry for help,
answered from the inner depths of his own nature, from the God within as
well as around him, the Life of his life. He turns from the lower nature
that is thwarting him to the higher which is his innermost being, from
the separated self that tortures him to the One Self that is the Heart
of all.
But this change of front means that he turns his face from the
darkness, that he turns his face to the light. The light was always
there, but his back was towards it; now he sees the sun, and its
radiance cheers his eyes, and overfloods his being with delight. His
heart was closed; it is now flung open, and the ocean of life flows in,
in full tide, suffusing him with joy. Wave after wave of new life
uplifts him, and the gladness of the dawn surrounds him. He sees his
past as past, because his will is set to follow a higher path, and he
recks little of the suffering that the past may bequeath to him, since
he knows he will not hand on such bitter legacy from his present. This
sense of peace, of joy, of freedom, is the feeling spoken of as the
result of the forgiveness of sins. The obstacles set up by the lower
nature between the God within and the God without are swept away, and
that nature scarce recognises that the change is in itself and not in
the Oversoul. As a child, having thrust away the mother's guiding hand
and hidden its face against the wall, may fancy itself alone and
forgotten, until, turning with a cry, it finds around it the protecting
mother-arms that were never but a handsbreadth away; so does man in his
wilfulness push away the shielding arms of the divine Mother of the
worlds, only to find, when he turns back his face, that he has never
been outside their protecting shelter, and that wherever he may wander
that guarding love is round him still.
The key to this change in the man, that brings about "forgiveness," is
given in the verse of the _Bhagavad-Gita_ already partly quoted: "Even
if the most sinful worship me, with undivided heart, he too must be
accounted righteous, _for he hath rightly resolved_." On that right
resolution follows the inevitable result: "Speedily he becometh dutiful
and goeth to peace."[321] The essence of sin lies in setting the will of
the part against the will of the whole, the human against the Divine.
When this is changed, when the Ego puts his separate will into union
with the will that works for evolution, then, in the world where to will
is to do, in the world where effects are seen as present in causes, the
man is "accounted righteous;" the effects on the lower planes must
inevitably follow; "speedily he becometh dutiful" in action, having
already become dutiful in will. Here we judge by actions, the dead
leaves of the past; there they judge by wills, the germinating seeds of
the future. Hence the Christ ever says to men in the lower world: "Judge
not."[322]
Even after the new direction has been definitely followed, and has
become the normal habit of the life, there come times of failure,
alluded to in the _Pistis Sophia_, when Jesus is asked whether a man may
be again admitted to the Mysteries, after he has fallen away, if he
again repents. The answer of Jesus is in the affirmative, but he states
that a time comes when re-admission is beyond the power of any save of
the highest Mystery, who pardons ever. "Amen, amen, I say unto you,
whosoever shall receive the mysteries of the first mystery, and then
shall turn back and transgress twelve times [even], and then should
again repent twelve times, offering prayer in the mystery of the first
mystery, he shall be forgiven. But if he should transgress after twelve
times, should he turn back and transgress, it shall not be remitted unto
him for ever, so that he may turn again unto his mystery, whatever it
be. For him there is no means of repentance unless he have received the
mysteries of that ineffable, which hath compassion at all times and
remitteth sins for ever and ever."[323] These restorations after
failure, in which "sin is remitted," meet us in human life, especially
in the higher phases of evolution. A man is offered an opportunity,
which, taken, would open up to him new possibilities of growth. He fails
to grasp it, and falls away from the position he had gained that made
the further opportunity possible. For him, for the time, further
progress is blocked; he must turn all his efforts wearily to retread the
ground he had already trodden, and to regain and make sure his footing
on the place from which he had slipped. Only when this is accomplished
will he hear the gentle Voice that tells him that the past is out-worn,
the weakness turned to strength, and that the gateway is again open for
his passage. Here again the "forgiveness" is but the declaration by a
proper authority of the true state of affairs, the opening of the gate
to the competent, its closure to the incompetent. Where there had been
failure, with its accompanying suffering, this declaration would be felt
as a "baptism for the remission of sins," re-admitting the aspirant to a
privilege lost by his own act; this would certainly give rise to
feelings of joy and peace, to a relief from the burden of sorrow, to a
feeling that the clog of the past had at last fallen from the feet.
Remains one truth that should never be forgotten: that we are living in
an ocean of light, of love, of bliss, that surrounds us at all times,
the Life of God. As the sun floods the earth with his radiance so does
that Life enlighten all, only that Sun of the world never sets to any
part of it. We shut this light out of our consciousness by our
selfishness, our heartlessness, our impurity, our intolerance, but it
shines on us ever the same, bathing us on every side, pressing against
our self-built walls with gentle, strong persistence. When the soul
throws down these excluding walls, the light flows in, and the soul
finds itself flooded with sunshine, breathing the blissful air of
heaven. "For the Son of man is in heaven," though he know it not, and
its breezes fan his brow if he bares it to their breaths. God ever
respects man's individuality, and will not enter his consciousness until
that consciousness opens to give welcome; "Behold I stand at the door
and knock"[324] is the attitude of every spiritual Intelligence towards
the evolving human soul; not in lack of sympathy is rooted that waiting
for the open door, but in deepest wisdom.
Man is not to be compelled; he is to be free. He is not a slave, but a
God in the making, and the growth cannot be forced, but must be willed
from within. Only when the will consents, as Giordano Bruno teaches,
will God influence man, though He be "everywhere present, and ready to
come to the aid of whosoever turns to Him through the act of the
intelligence, and who unreservedly presents himself with the affection
of the will."[325] "The divine potency which is all in all does not
proffer or withhold, except through assimilation or rejection by
oneself."[326] "It is taken in quickly, as the solar light, without
hesitation, and makes itself present to whoever turns himself to it and
opens himself to it ... the windows are opened, but the sun enters in a
moment, so does it happen similarly in this case."[327]
The sense of "forgiveness," then, is the feeling which fills the heart
with joy when the will is tuned to harmony with the Divine, when, the
soul having opened its windows, the sunshine of love and light and bliss
pours in, when the part feels its oneness with the whole, and the One
Life thrills each vein. This is the noble truth that gives vitality to
even the crudest presentation of the "forgiveness of sins," and that
makes it often, despite its intellectual incompleteness, an inspirer to
pure and spiritual living. And this is the truth, as seen in the Lesser
Mysteries.