sins, as well as strength to sin no more, and if the Remission of sins is no mere " formality," but a wonderful manifestation of the Divine mercy, to be received with devout joy and immeasurable gratitude; then, while guilt is implicitly denied, though moral and spiritual weakness is acknowledged, there is an unsettled controversy between man and God, and until this controversy is terminated, there can be no real reconciliation. Perhaps we have not sufficiently considered that it is possible for men to "hunger and thirst after righteousness," and yet to ignore the authority of God; possible for them to confess that He is supreme, and yet never to identify Him with that ideal Law which they know they have violated, and which they now want to fulfil. They desire moral and spiritual xcellence very much as they might desire physical vigour and beauty, or large and varied intellectual accomplishments. They do not recognize the Divine authority, they care only for the perfection of their own nature. If they appeal to God, they do not think of Him as One who has a right to require them to do His will; they only rely upon His mighty and merciful aid to enable them to be loyal to their own conscience, and to achieve the ideal sanctity which haunts their imagination and has won their hearts. They think of Him as having a fulness of moral and spiritual life from which they may receive inspiration and strength, but they do no homage to His awful sovereignty. It is not His law they have transgressed; it is not His law they want to obey. It is His only as it is theirs-His, only because He acknow ledges, as they acknowledge, that it is holy, just, and good. His most august prerogative- the characteristic prerogative of Deity-has never been revealed to them. The awe with which they would regard Him, if they had discovered that to violate the eternal Law of Righteousness is to sin against Him, and that therefore it belongs to God, as it can belong to none besides, to grant Remission of sins, they have never felt. They yield Him reverence, but they withhold worship. There is a homage due to God, different in kind as well as in degree from that which can be given to any of His creatures. It is the homage, transferred to a living Person, which the conscience offers to the authority of the eternal Law of Righteousness. The refusal to offer it is often the last expression of man's revolt against God; it is encouraged and confirmed by a theology which maintains that salvation consists exclusively in deliverance from sinfulness, and which fails to assert with equal earnestness and energy the necessity of the Remission of sins. Will it be urged that to excite the fears of men by dwelling on the wrath of God and on the terrors of perdition, is to condescend to appeal to their coarser passions, and to do dishonour to the spiritual dignity of the Christian faith? I am conscious of no "condescension" when I appeal to the same elements of human nature to which Christ appealed when He warned men of "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched;" and when He said that "the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them in a furnace of fire there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." I am conscious of doing no dishonour to the spiritual dignity of the Christian faith when, with St. Paul, I give God thanks for the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who delivers us from the wrath to come. To proclaim the Remission of sins, as well as to make known the power and grace by which sinful men may recover the image of God, was one of the chief duties of the Apostles, and it is one of the chief duties of the Church in every age. To deny the possibility of Remission, to depreciate its value, is to "pervert the gospel of Christ." In the remaining Lectures I have to attempt to illustrate the relation between the Death of Christ and this great act of the Divine mercy. Whether the attempt fails or succeeds, I trust that the argument of the preceding Lectures may enable some to repeat with a more earnest faith the article of the ancient creed, "I believe in . . the forgiveness of sins," and to look back with more devout wonder and more fervent gratitude upon that mysterious Sacrifice by which the forgiveness of sins was secured for us. |