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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 farther. 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 any thing, I forgive also for to whom I forgave any thing 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 can not 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 a 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 spe

cializes 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 can not bless whom God has not blessed-he can not 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 can not 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.

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."-Heb. 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, movable 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."

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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-fulfillment of the promise: he does not seem to have expected its fulfillment; 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.

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