III

EMANCIPATION FROM THE PAST

Having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins.-2 PET. i. 9.

'E who proposes to lead a new and better life immediately becomes conscious that the

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past is his enemy, his most formidable enemy; in many ways it discourages, entangles, paralyzes. Could he get rid of the past, its relics and memories, the new and better life would seem as easy as it is attractive. Is it, then, possible to break with the hateful tyranny, and to enter upon the heavenly pathway? If so, how may it be done? This is the question to which the serious man addresses himself. Our text incidentally answers the question and answers it in the affirmative. Cleansing from old sins is possible; the apostle speaks of those who were actually made clean. Our purpose now is not to consider further the conduct and punishment of these degenerate souls, but simply to fix attention upon the fact that they once knew the delightful experience of forgiveness and purification. Let us at once recognize the inevitable struggle by which emancipation from the

past is achieved, and yet insist on the glorious possi bility of complete redemption.

I. THE CONDEMNATION OF THE PAST must be dealt with.

The solemn truth that "God requireth that which is past" is registered in our conscience, and urged by it. The sins of our youth, the sins of past years, hold us with grim grip. They may have been committed in scenes far removed: some who were partners in our guilt may long since have disappeared; those of a past generation who survive may have forgotten our falls, or perhaps never knew of them; but the painful incidents cannot be glossed over by us who are personally concerned. It may be objected, What is easier to God than forgiveness? The thoughtless regard forgiveness as the simplest, easiest, and least costly of acts; and old sins are dropped into oblivion indifferently with old almanacs. Yet, awakening to the truth of things, we are at once acutely conscious of the extreme seriousness of the pride, self-will, and wickedness which poisoned the years that have gone. For the first time sin becomes a reality. Quite recently an event in one of our law courts was described in a morning journal as "an impious solemnity." Mr. Justice Jelf was compelled by the technicalities of our legal system to assume the black cap and to pronounce the extreme sentence of the law, in the full knowledge of all present that the court was engaged in an elaborate mockery. Judge, jury, and spectators knew

that the black cap meant nothing, that it was a mere formality, and that the prisoner at the bar would be none the worse for it. How many believe that the black cap is a similar mockery in the court of the moral universe! They treat sin lightly; the wrath of God against all unrighteousness of men is dismissed as being little more than a theological conceit; the dread sentence will never be executed, the sinner somehow will escape.

To a true penitent all this is changed. Sin is henceforth a dark reality, the liability to punishment a reality, the sentence of death which he receives within himself is a reality, and the possibility, much less the probability, of condonation and discharge becomes increasingly doubtful as the law does its work. Conscience knows nothing of the facility of absolution. It is easy to give play to imagination and sentiment; but the divinest faculty of our nature testifies solemnly of law, guilt, retribution, and of these only. Science finds no place for clemency. He who breaks the law is damned; he must pay the penalty to the utmost farthing. It is absolutely absurd to expect science to listen to our plaint, and bring our soul out of prison. It is the most remorseless of hangmen. Government does not find it easy to forgive. Society is so constituted and maintained that it must sternly punish outrage; no dilemma is more complete than that of the Crown disposed to exercise mercy, and yet sworn to sustain law. In the personal and domestic circle it is

repeatedly well-nigh impossible so to pardon that forgiveness may prove a blessing.

Mercy is not itself that oft looks so;

Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.

To the unawakened sin is a matter of illusion, metaphysics, imprudence at worst; but when we come to think deeply and truly, to give conscience a chance, to reason out our action as in the sight of God, we know that nothing short of a miracle can purge our guilt and set us free from the dead, unrighteous past clamouring for our blood.

That miracle has been wrought in Christ. The whole of revelation testifies that God did not find it easy to forgive. The elaborate system of temple worship and sacrifice depicted in the Old Testament symbolized the majesty of moral law and the immense difficulty of showing mercy to the sinner. And this is the tremendous problem which the New Testament sets itself to solve. The wisdom, the power, and the love of Deity are summed up in that Incarnation and Atonement which secure mercy to the offender, and yet maintain the righteous law. The more perfect science becomes, the more confident is it that there is no natural availing refuge for the lawbreaker; if he escape, it can only be by a miracle, by a path the eagle's eye hath not seen, by an act of grace transcending all the known provisions of the natural sphere. Revelation is a record of the miracle. "God was in Christ

reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." "In whom we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace." There are no less than thirty distinct theories of the Atonement; but at this crisis we need not concern ourselves with any of these speculations: we need only thankfully and believingly to recognize the fact that God has found in the Crucified the ground on which He, the righteous Ruler of the world, can consistently and fully acquit the penitent. "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. Put Me in remembrance; let us plead together; declare thou, that thou mayest be justified."

"I believe in the forgiveness of sins." Do you? Do you, indeed? Do you believe it in your very heart? Have you so grasped the divine love and faithfulness that pardon has become as real as sin? Ah, how imperfectly have we done this! "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins." Why, then, do we not look up with holy confidence if the threatening storm-cloud, tinted with the rainbow, has melted into the infinite azure of the divine pity and love? "For Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy back." Where that region lies who may say? But if God comes between us and all our sins, it is enough; why affright ourselves seeking to discover that ghostly realm of silence and forgetfulness?