be easily raked out then. It is an endless task to be refuting error. Plant truth, and the error will pine

away.

The instance to which all this is preliminary is the pertinacious hold which the belief in a human absolv. ing power retains upon mankind. There has, perhaps, never yet been known a religion without such a belief. There is not a savage in the islands of the South Pa cific who does not believe that his priest can shield him from the consequences of sin. There was not a people in antiquity who had not dispensers of Divine favor. That same belief passed from Paganism into Romanism. It was exposed at the period of the Reformation. A mighty reäction was felt against it throughout Europe. Apparently, the whole idea of human priesthood was proved, once and forever, to be baseless; human mediation, in every possible form, was vehemently controverted; men were referred back to God as the sole absolver.

Yet still, now again, three centuries after, the belief is as strong as ever. That which we thought dead is alive again, and not likely, it seems, to die. Recent revelations have shown that confession is daily made in the country whose natural manners are most against it-private absolution asked by English men and given by English priests. A fact so significant might lead us well to pause, and ask ourselves whether we have found the true answer to the question. The negation we have got the vehement denial; we are weary of its reiteration; but the positive truth which lies at the bottom of this craving-where is that? Parliaments and pulpits, senators and clergymen, have vied with each other in the vehemence with which

they declare absolution un-Christian, un-English. Ali that is most abominable in the confessional has been, with unsparing and irreverent indelicacy, forced before the public mind. Still, men and women, whose holi ness and purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is this that speak eth blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but Goa alone?" Shall we say it is all blasphemy,-an impi ous intrusion upon the prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may,-it is popular to say we ought; but, you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the Pharisees in this text; we establish a negation, but a negation is only one side of truth. Moreover, we have been asserting that for three hundred years, with small fruits. We keep asserting, Man cannot give assurance that sin is pardoned; in other words, man cannot absolve; but still the heart craves human assurance of forgiveness. What truth have we got to supply that craving? We shall, therefore, rather try to fathom the deeps of the positive truth. which is the true reply to the error; we shall try to see whether there is not a real answer to the craving contained in the Redeemer's words, "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins." What power is there in human forgiveness? What does absolution mean in the lips of a son of man? These are our questions for to-day. We shall consider two points.

I. The impotency of the negation.

II. The power of the positive truth.

I. The Pharisees denied the efficacy of human abso

a man.

lution; they said, "None can forgive sins, but God only;" that was a negation. What did they effect by their system of negations? They conferred no peace; they produced no holiness. It would be a great error to suppose that the Pharisees were hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the term-that is, pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they felt. no anxiety. They were anxious, in their way. They heard a startling free announcement of forgiveness by To them it appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart,-in their own language, "this fellow, of whom every man knew whence he was,"--were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest, and commanding them not to fear the God whom they had offended, but to trust in Him—what would become of morality and religion? This presumptuous Absolver would make men careless about both. If the indispensable safeguards of penalty were removed, what remained to restrain men from sin? For the Pharisees had no notion of any other goodness than that which is restrained; they could conceive no goodness free, but only that which is produced by rewards and punishments - law-goodness,. law-righteousness; to dread God, not to love and trust Him, was their conception of religion. And this, indeed, is the ordinary conception of religion- the ordinary meaning implied to most minds by the word religion. The word religion means, by derivation, restriction or obligation — obligation to do, obligation to avoid. And this is the negative system of the Pharisees scrupulous avoidance of evil, rather than

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positive and free pursuit of excellence. Such a sys

tem never produced anything but barren denial. "This is wrong;" "that is heresy;" "that is dan gerous."

There was another class of men who denied human power of absolution. They were called Scribes or writers pedants, men of ponderous learning and accurate definitions; from being mere transcribers of the law, they had risen to be its expounders. They could define the exact number of yards that might be travelled on the Sabbath-day without infringement of the law; they could decide, according to the most approved theology, the respective importance of each duty; they would tell you, authoritatively, which was the great commandment of the law. The Scribe is a man who turns religion into etiquette; his idea of God is that of a monarch, transgression against whom is an offence against statute law, and he, the Scribe, is there to explain the prescribed conditions upon which the offence may be expiated; he has no idea of admission to the sovereign's presence, except by compliance with certain formalities which the Scribe is commissioned to declare.

There are, therefore, Scribes in all ages. - Romish Scribes, who distinguish between venial and mortal sin, and apportion to each its appointed penance and absolution. There are Protestant Scribes, who have no idea of God but as an incensed judge, and prescribe certain methods of appeasing Him certain pricesin consideration of which He is willing to sell forgive ness; men who accurately draw the distinction between the different kinds of faith-faith historical and faith saving; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling;

who treat the natural love of relations as if it were an idolatry as great as bowing down to mammon; who make intelligible distinction between the work that may and the work that may not be done on the Sabbath-day; who send you into a perilous consideration of the workings of your own feelings, and the examination of your spiritual experiences, to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you a right to call God a Father. They hate the Romish Scribe as much as the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called him heretic. But in their way they are true to the spirit of the Scribe.

Now, the result of this is four-fold. Among the tender-minded, despondency; among the vainer, spiritual pride; in the case of the slavish, superstition; with the hard-minded, infidelity. Ponder it well, and you will find these four things rife amongst us: Despondency, Spiritual Pride, Superstition, and Infidelity. In this way we have been going on for many years. In the midst of all this, at last we are informed that the confessional is at work again; whereupon astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed. It is not to be borne that the priests of the Church of England should confess and absolve in private. Yet it is only what might have been expected. With our Evangel icalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Pharisaism we have ceased to front the living fact. We are as zealous as Scribes and Pharisees ever were for negatives; but in the mean time human nature, oppressed and overborne, gasping for breath, demands something real and living. It cannot live on controversies. It cannot be fed on protests against heresy, however vehement. We are trying who can protest loudest. Every book, every