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 Boston and New York 
 
pumttn KeKgiou^ i^tolJlemiS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 AMBROSE WHITE VERNON 
 
SIN AND 
 ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE 
 
 II 
 
 PRESIDENT OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE 
 
 Forgive us our sins ; for we ourselves also forgive 
 every one that is indebted to us. — Luke xi, 4. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
ST" 7iS- 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October jgog 
 
OCA^ 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 In his inmost heart every man seeks good 
 and loves God. But God is great, and man 
 is small; good is complex, while passion is 
 simple and insistent. Hence all men for- 
 sake the good, and disobey God. This, in 
 the concept form of philosophy, is the truth 
 contained in the historical-pictorial repre- 
 sentation that Adam was created holy, and 
 subsequently fell. 
 
 External quest of goods less than the best 
 is easily forgivable : internal habits of hug- 
 ging self and pushing God and the good 
 away, though harder to eradicate, are still 
 forgivable. 
 
 Only the confirmed perversity that hates 
 and despises God's goodness when brought 
 near in winning personal terms is unforgiv- 
 able. 
 
 Punishment is the defense of social good 
 
 V 
 
 235438 
 
PREFACE 
 
 against the perversity of the individual, and 
 a beneficent revelation to him of the evil of 
 his selfishness. 
 
 Forgiveness, entirely consistent with pun- 
 ishment, is the welcoming of the perverse 
 person back to the God from whom he 
 strayed, and the true good he craves. 
 
 Since sin hurts sinner, society, and God, 
 he who forgives must share the suffering 
 sin brings; and therefore forgiveness must 
 ever take the form of sacrifice, whose crown- 
 ing symbol is the cross of Christ. 
 
 To be complete forgiveness must be in- 
 carnate; manifested by man to man. On 
 the other hand, whoever forgives his fel- 
 low men their trespasses can have for the 
 asking the divine forgiveness for his own 
 shortcomings. 
 
 The power to bind and loose, to grant 
 
 a forgiveness or pass a condemnation that 
 
 is ratified in heaven, inheres not in any 
 
 special order or office, but in every Chris- 
 
 vi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 tian man and in every group of Christian 
 men who have the spiritual insight for- 
 giving love imparts. 
 
 Such in briefest outline is the doctrine 
 of this little book. It is latent in Plato's 
 dialogues, and in the pleadings of the He- 
 brew Prophets with wayward Israel ; is 
 clearly taught in Jesus' parables, and is 
 embodied in his life. It is taken for granted 
 in the best modern literature, and shines 
 in the lives of Christian men and women. 
 Yet, while generally accepted in fragmen- 
 tary form, these truths have never been 
 gathered into a systematic statement. 
 
 The fact that, in this year of our Lord 
 1909, a graduate fresh from one of our most 
 famous seminaries could present as the 
 teaching of his professors, and get accepted 
 as satisfactory by a metropolitan presbytery, 
 the statement that " Sin is that which God 
 has permitted for the manifestation of his 
 own glory," is sufficient indication of the 
 vii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 need of a coherent doctrine of Sin and its 
 Forgiveness; true to the insight of Jesus 
 and the spiritual seers, and faithful to the 
 facts of Christian experience. 
 
 William DeWitt Hyde. 
 
 BowDOiN College, Brunswick, Maine, 
 July lo, 1909. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. Introduction i 
 II. External Sins : Intemperance, Li- 
 centiousness, Stealing, Murder 21 
 
 III. Internal Sins : Pride, Censorious- 
 
 NEss, Laziness, Malice 45 
 
 IV. The Cross of Christ 56 
 V. The Unforgivable Sin 6S 
 
 VI. Punishment as a Favor 75 
 
 VII. The Agent of Forgiveness 91 
 
 VIII. The Power to Bind and Loose 98 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 While this book is one of a series, of 
 which other writers will contribute the 
 other parts, it is impossible to present even 
 this small section without a brief outline 
 of the whole. For one can no more treat 
 one section of a system of thought with- 
 out involving others, than Shylock could 
 cut his pound of flesh and draw no drop of 
 blood. 
 
 The struggle for existence through which 
 animal and man have been evolved, hard 
 and cruel as it appears to the onlooker, is 
 without malice or intended evil. Each in- 
 dividual is simply intent on self-preserva- 
 tion, oblivious of the cost to others. 
 
 Late in human evolution comes law, 
 I 
 
SiN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 which sets limits to competition; and out 
 of law is born a sense of obligation to count 
 the cost of selfish good in social terms, and 
 to condemn as bad those forms of selfish 
 good which cost society too much. 
 
 Law is a negative and imperfect witness 
 to an order of human society in which the 
 good of all ought to be the object of the will 
 of each. Yet to the individual it presents 
 that order as something alien and hostile, 
 enforced by penalties. Obedience to such 
 an externally conceived law is slavish. The 
 doer of the law becomes puffed up with a 
 Pharisaic self-righteousness, devoid of love; 
 and the breaker of the law is driven into 
 hopeless rebellion, alienation, and hard- 
 heartedness. 
 
 Next comes the prophet, who tells us that 
 the law is not alien to us but friendly, that 
 it is the expression of the will of the Eter- 
 nal Love, seeking our common good, and 
 that we are capable of entering into that 
 
 2 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 love which law imperfectly expresses, and 
 finding our individual good in serving the 
 common good of all. The acceptance of 
 this message lifts man out of bondage into 
 freedom. But what becomes of those who 
 do not accept it? 
 
 Finally, Jesus comes with a gospel even 
 for them. He tells us that our Heavenly 
 Father seeks the good of all his children 
 impartially: the good of those who do evil, 
 as well as the good of those who do good. 
 To be sure, so long as they do evil, the best 
 thing for them is reproof and punishment. 
 Toward those who persist in unrepented 
 evil, reproof and punishment, therefore, are 
 the form love takes. But they are inflicted 
 in kindness; and the instant the sinner re- 
 pents of his sin, the necessity for further 
 punishment is removed, the barrier which 
 kept love from finding expression in entire 
 approval is broken down, and love then goes 
 forth unchecked and unqualified. This go- 
 3 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 ing out of the Father's love, through the 
 opening made by penitence, to welcome 
 the child to a love which was always there, 
 even during the period of sinfulness, wait- 
 ing only for the breaking down of the bar- 
 rier that kept it out, — this is forgiveness. 
 Such forgiveness is eternal in the heart of 
 the Father; it became historic in the per- 
 son of Jesus Christ; and it is the indispen- 
 sable and infallible mark of the presence of 
 the spirit of Christ in the hearts of his fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 The Christian man, then, is the agent 
 upon earth, and in human society, of the 
 Father's universal love- In him, as in the 
 Father, and in Christ, this love will take 
 whatever form the condition of the person 
 who is its object makes appropriate: re- 
 proof and punishment so long as he persists 
 in injuring society, and wronging his fel- 
 lows; full and free forgiveness the instant 
 he repents. Indeed, these two expressions 
 
 4 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 may exist side by side: punishment by civil 
 penalties and social condemnation, so long 
 as they are necessary for society's protec- 
 tion; and personal kindness and sympathy, 
 even while the penitent offender is suffer- 
 ing the penalties that society's adequate 
 protection, by way of warning to others, 
 may require. In home and school and col- 
 lege, in society and business and the state, 
 these two outwardly inconsistent, but in- 
 wardly harmonious, attitudes toward the 
 penitent offender must often be maintained 
 together. Otherwise the hard-hearted on- 
 looker would confound the forgiveness he 
 cannot understand with weak indulgence 
 and moral indifference; which, to his un- 
 developed mind, are the only alternatives to 
 severe and merciless punishment. It is his 
 inability to see that these two attitudes, the 
 external enforcement of efficacious penalty 
 and the internal sentiment of sympathetic 
 forgiveness, may dwell in the same heart, 
 
 5 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 and express themselves in the same life, 
 which makes Tolstoy's teaching of non-re- 
 sistance to evil such an unpractical distor- 
 tion of that half of Jesus' Gospel which he 
 so clearly grasped. Resistance to sin, and 
 to the sinner so long as he clings to his sin; 
 resistance to his sin and to himself, as the 
 representative of it in the public eye, even 
 after he has repented, so long as practical 
 public policy renders such resistance expe- 
 dient, may exist in perfect harmony with 
 that entire devotion to the offender's good, 
 both before and after penitence, which is the 
 eternal attitude of the Father, the historic at- 
 titude of Christ, and the true inner attitude 
 of every man who has the spirit of Christ 
 and of the Father in his heart. 
 
 If this is the mark of the Christian man, 
 then the church is simply the community 
 of those who have this spirit. To serve so- 
 ciety; to rebuke the sins which hurt society 
 and our fellow men, and, through hurting 
 6 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 them, offend God; to love all men, even 
 those who do wrong; to live the better life 
 of love in the complex relations and close 
 contacts of practical affairs; to keep these 
 spiritual distinctions clear, and the impulse 
 of love warm, and the readiness to forgive, 
 even at high personal cost, alert, — these 
 are the great functions for which the church, 
 the community of those who have the lov- 
 ing and forgiving spirit, exists. 
 
 The Bible, the clergy, the sacraments, 
 the services of public worship, the privi- 
 lege of private prayer, the work of mis- 
 sion and settlement, the Sunday school, the 
 brotherhood, the allied societies and agen- 
 cies, are all sacred, holy, divinely ordained, 
 just in so far as they promote, purify, ex- 
 press, and propagate this spirit of love : love 
 that hates and punishes the sin that hurts 
 men and mars the happiness of God's fam- 
 ily on earth, and at the same time forgives, 
 restores, and saves every offender as soon 
 
 7 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 as he is sorry for his sin, and ready to re- 
 nounce it for the better life of service and 
 good-will. 
 
 Such, in briefest outline. Is the system of 
 theology of which this section on Sin and 
 its Forgiveness is a small but vital part. 
 Seen in this its setting, sin is simply lack 
 of love, inflicting cruel wrong on suffering 
 brothers and sisters in the great household 
 of God. Punishment is a coarse, crude de- 
 vice for society's protection and the offend- 
 er's good, which love is compelled to in- 
 flict as long as the offender needs it for 
 his education, or society needs it for its 
 protection, or onlookers need it for their 
 warning. Forgiveness is love overflowing 
 to heal the wounds inflicted on others, and 
 the worse injury done to his own soul by 
 the sinner's cruel selfishness; welcoming 
 the sinner into the favor of God, the fellow- 
 ship of Christ, and the society of the lov- 
 ing, in spite of the offenses which he has 
 8 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 committed. Therefore forgiveness is per- 
 sonal, sacrificial, and requires as its bearer 
 a human heart, living close enough to the 
 offender to make him feel the shame of his 
 sin in clear contrast to the righteousness 
 that is there by his side, and to win and 
 welcome him to the life of love and service. 
 It is a layman's task; yet one in which the 
 minister may both point and lead the way, 
 if he has the humble, serviceable, loving 
 spirit, which is the spirit of Christ. It is 
 hard, costly, sacrificial; but nothing easier, 
 cheaper, less personal, vital, social, can 
 carry through to its triumphant conclusion 
 Christ's chosen task, — the salvation of men 
 and the redemption of the world. 
 
 Without clear conviction of sin, and 
 habitual exercise of forgiveness, no the- 
 ology is worth the words in which it is ex- 
 pressed. The old theology had both, but in 
 an abstract, transcendental fashion, from 
 which all reality and vitality have faded 
 
 9 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 out and oozed away. The new theology has 
 not yet acquired them; and until it does, it 
 will remain vague, sentimental, inchoate, 
 inefficient: a halfway station on the road 
 to soulless secularity. No man who is not 
 daily aware of his own shortcomings, and 
 profoundly penitent for the unprofitableness 
 of his service, no man who does not find 
 occasion for constant forgiveness of others 
 every day of his life, has learned so much 
 as the first rudiments of Christ's Gospel, 
 and all theologies, old or new, will remain 
 to him sealed books. 
 
 Christianity without a keen sense of sin 
 is like the benevolent old lady who urged 
 on all her friends a favorite remedy, but 
 could never recall what ailment it was 
 warranted to cure. Yet a keen sense of sin 
 comes only from a clear vision of God. 
 Folly we may know without knowing God : 
 for that is a gouge in the smooth surface 
 of our self-complacency. Vice we may 
 
 lO 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 know without knowing God; for that is 
 stamped with popular disapproval. Crime 
 we may know without knowing God; for 
 that is punished by law. But sin we cannot 
 know without knowing God; for sin is 
 missing the mark of God's perfect love. 
 
 Folly is always sin; for God's love in- 
 cludes our good. Vice is almost always sin; 
 for God's love excludes most of the things 
 public opinion disapproves. Crime is usu- 
 ally sin; for God's love forbids most acts 
 which society condemns. Yet sin, while it 
 includes all these, is more than they. By so 
 much as " the love of God is broader than 
 the measure of man's mind," by so much 
 as it is deeper than popular notions of good 
 and bad form, by so much as it is higher 
 than any Jewish or Gentile statute-book, 
 by so much does sin exceed in breadth 
 and depth and height, our vices and our 
 crimes. 
 
 Sin, therefore, is not a rare exception, 
 II 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 confined to desperate moments of depraved 
 men and fallen women. Sin is the almost 
 constant experience of us all; out of which 
 occasionally we rise^ when some clear duty, 
 some noble impulse, some generous affec- 
 tion lifts us for the moment into oneness 
 with the love of God. To measure our acts, 
 our thoughts, our desires, by the perfect love 
 of God; counting good only what coincides 
 with the best that God has shown us of 
 himself in Christ, in Christian men and 
 women, and in our own consciences; count- 
 ing all that falls short of that, sin, — this is 
 the only way to know God above us, sin 
 within us, and ourselves the battle-ground 
 between the two. 
 
 " No, when the fight begins within himself, 
 A man 's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, 
 Satan looks up between his feet, — both tug — 
 He 's left, himself, i' the middle ; the soul awakes 
 And grows. Prolong that battle through this life ! 
 Never leave growing till the life to come." 
 12 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 When man or church or generation loses 
 the sense of sin, it is a sure sign of the loss 
 of the vision of God. One might as well 
 talk of shadow without light, divorce with- 
 out marriage, treason without the state, as 
 of sin without God. It is by throwing our 
 lives upon the background of God's perfect 
 love, that we get that contrast between di- 
 vine ideal and human shortcoming which is 
 the sense of sin. 
 
 Is, then, the life of the Christian man, the 
 man who throws his actual life on to this 
 ideal background, weighed down by this 
 perpetual burden of guilt and condemna- 
 tion? No. That is only one of two elements 
 of Christian experience. The other is for- 
 giveness. 
 
 The same love of God which condemns 
 us for falling short of its high standard, the 
 same love in the light of which we feel our 
 own shortcoming, and condemn ourselves, 
 also forgives, and restores us to favor and 
 13 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 fellowship. How do we know this? What 
 is the ground of our assurance ? 
 
 Our only knowledge of the love of God 
 is the expression of it we see in Christy in 
 other men, and in our inner experience. 
 Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them, for 
 they know not what they do." All Chris- 
 tian men, so far as they share Christ's spirit, 
 forgive those who do them wrong. We do 
 it ourselves. In so far as we have the spirit 
 of Christ, we never wish harm or evil to 
 another, who has wronged us, or has 
 wronged our friends, or wronged the world. 
 We may oppose his error, and rebuke his 
 sin. We may punish him for society's pro- 
 tection, and his own good. But we har- 
 bor no grudge against him. We welcome 
 the first sign of repentance to assure him of 
 our continued good-will. We try to bring 
 others to forgive him and befriend him, as 
 soon as he is sorry for the wrong he has 
 done. Even before he has repented, even 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 while we are opposing his evil deeds, and 
 suffering the wrong he does to us, or to 
 those dear to us, we pity the blindness which 
 makes such meanness possible for him; we 
 are watching for the opportunity to welcome 
 him back to the better way. This, I say, 
 is our own experience, the experience of 
 every one of us in so far as we share the spirit 
 of Christ; in so far, that is, as we are in a 
 position to understand the heart and will of 
 God. For it is only through his revelation 
 in Christ and other good men, reproduced 
 as a genuine experience in ourselves, that 
 we can know how God thinks and wills 
 and feels in any situation. 
 
 Now we have simply to turn this expe- 
 rience in upon ourselves, to get the assur- 
 ance of the forgiveness of God, of Christ, 
 and of all Christian men who know us, for 
 our own sins. Neither we, nor the Chris- 
 tian men we know, nor Christ, nor the God 
 whom this Christian experience reveals, 
 
 15 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 would hesitate for a moment to forgive and 
 restore to favor any man who had done the 
 mean and evil things we have done, and who 
 was sorry for them as we are sorry; penitent 
 as we are penitent. If we, so far as we share 
 the spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of 
 God, — if we would forgive another in pre- 
 cisely our state of confessed and repented 
 sin, then we have proof positive, assurance 
 absolute, that God, and Christ, and all Chris- 
 tian men so far as they know the facts, for- 
 give us our sins. Christ and the Father are 
 surely not harder upon us than we, sharing 
 their spirit, are upon those who do us 
 wrong, or work evil in the world. We are 
 just as sure of God's forgiveness of us as 
 we are of the presence of the forgiving 
 spirit in our own hearts and lives: no more, 
 no less. 
 
 If this seems a strange and roundabout 
 way of getting at the assurance of divine 
 forgiveness, it is at any rate Jesus' way. 
 i6 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 That is the ground he put it on. " If ye for- 
 give men their trespasses, your Heavenly 
 Father will also forgive you : But if ye for- 
 give not men their trespasses, neither will 
 your Heavenly Father forgive your tres- 
 passes.'^ In the last analysis it rests entirely 
 with us whether or not we shall have the 
 assurance of forgiveness. Whoever has the 
 forgiving spirit, knows that God forgives 
 him his trespasses. Whoever has not the 
 forgiving spirit, lacks the only real experi- 
 ence on which he could base belief that his 
 own sins are forgiven. God, like Christ and 
 every true Christian man, stands ever ready 
 to forgive. He would be below Christ, be- 
 low the best men we know, below our own 
 best experience; He would be less than 
 perfect love, if He did not. God is as good 
 as the best we see in Christ and in other 
 men, and experience in ourselves. Christ 
 forgave until seventy times seven. There- 
 fore we know that God forgives us. 
 
 17 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 Having made this appeal to Christian 
 experience as the ultimate source and final 
 authority on Sin and its Forgiveness, the 
 reader will probably ask himself, and want 
 to ask the writer, whether this sense of 
 omnipresent sin and perpetual forgiveness 
 is actually present as a clear and distinct 
 element in the consciousness of the normal 
 Christian man to-day. Do you carry Sin 
 and its Forgiveness as conscious experiences 
 every day and hour of your life ? Or have 
 you borrowed some traditional phraseology 
 from the Bible, the Fathers, and the Prayer 
 Book, which you are trying to palm off 
 on the modern world under the name of 
 facts of Christian experience? These are 
 fair questions. In fact, the first man I talked 
 with about the matter, a minister of the 
 most progressive type of ^^New Theology," 
 put them to me with the implication that 
 the answer was bound to be "No" to the 
 first question, and " Yes " to the second. 
 i8 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The answer is neither an unqualified 
 " Yes," nor an unqualified " No," but some- 
 thinor between the two. If asked whether 
 these elements rise to explicit consciousness 
 in their naked elemental form, we should 
 have to answer, " No." We are not expli- 
 citly conscious of sinning and of being for- 
 given every day and hour of our lives. But 
 then we are not explicitly conscious of the 
 presence of oxygen and hydrogen every 
 day of our lives, though I hope we can say 
 truly that we never rise in the morning 
 without their free and abundant recognition 
 and application. We recognize and apply 
 them, however, not as elements, but in the 
 familiar combination called water. 
 
 In a similar way the two experiences. Sin 
 and its Forgiveness, become combined in 
 the experience of the normal Christian man. 
 He is always aware that he falls far short 
 of that constant kindliness, that sensitive 
 sympathy, that strenuous rectitude, that 
 19 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 disinterested benevolence^ which the love 
 of God would have his life express. On the 
 other hand, he is equally confident that this 
 same love does not cast him off or con- 
 demn him, but welcomes him to continued 
 fellowship and service. Thus Sin and its 
 Forgiveness unite in a single and constant 
 experience, of serene humility or modest 
 cheerfulness. 
 
II 
 
 EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 Insight into sin, as missing the mark of 
 God's love, reveals at once how mean and 
 how pardonable it is. This twofold quality 
 of sin we may indicate by the single word 
 pitifulness. In so far as we take God's view 
 of sin, we loathe the act and love the man 
 who does it. To be sure we find that dis- 
 tinction hard to maintain in practice. God 
 and our mothers are the only persons who 
 altogether succeed. But the difficulty of a 
 spiritual attitude is no sign that it is not 
 divine and right and true. On the contrary, 
 vengeance, or the promiscuous condemna- 
 tion of deed and man, comes so easy to us 
 that we suspect God's attitude, man's ideal, 
 — the truth of the matter, in other words, — 
 must be something far higher and harder. 
 
 21 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 That is precisely what a careful analysis 
 of sin shows. Sin is always the sacrifice of 
 a greater good for the sake of a lesser good. 
 It is the wanton sacrifice of the greater 
 good that makes it mean. It is the little 
 good sought and gained that makes it for- 
 givable. It is the union of these two fac- 
 tors in every act of sin which constitutes 
 its pitifulness. 
 
 Intemperance reveals most clearly this 
 pitiful contrast of great good lost and petty 
 good pursued. The titillation of the palate, 
 the jolly comradeship, the momentary ner- 
 vous excitation, the temporary inhibition 
 of unwelcome considerations, — all these 
 are good; and when we realize how good 
 they are, and how the abnormal appetite, 
 the depleted system, the weary body, the 
 worried mind, the lonely heart, craved them, 
 we pity, we sympathize, we almost half ap- 
 prove. 
 
 But when we call to mind the disease of 
 
 22 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 body, the hardening of heart, the weaken- 
 ing of will, the waste of money, the loss of 
 work, the wretchedness of wife and chil- 
 dren, the burden to the public, the great 
 avenues of love and service perverted and 
 destroyed, as the price of habitual excess 
 in drink, then we abhor an act that, how- 
 ever many petty pleasures it may show to 
 its temporary credit, has these vast and last- 
 ing evils charged upon the debit side. Then, 
 if we are Christian, we pity the man: we 
 long to put our lives close to his; to share 
 with him the evils he has brought upon 
 himself; to give him what we may out of 
 our unsquandered stores of physical goods; 
 to remove from him the sources of tempta- 
 tion; to fight for him against those who 
 profit by his degradation : in a word, to make 
 his sad condition ours, with all its disabili- 
 ties; and to make our condition his, with 
 all its resources of helpfulness and happi- 
 ness. This willing acceptance of and identi- 
 23 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 fication with his pitiful condition; this strug- 
 gle with him, and against his enemies, to 
 lift him and keep him up, — this active and 
 suffering love is forgiveness. 
 
 It is the opposite and yet the counterpart 
 of sin. The sinner seeks a little good, at cost 
 of widespread, lasting loss to self, others, 
 or both. He who forgives, if his forgive- 
 ness is genuine, deliberately assumes all the 
 sinner's losses as his own; suffers with him 
 and for him; brings the enmity of his ene- 
 mies down on his own head; and thus, by 
 loss freely assumed, secures the sinner's re- 
 covery and restoration. 
 
 This, of course, implies close contact. It 
 is hardly to be accomplished by sitting in 
 a pew of the same church once a week, 
 even if by any chance the drunkard should 
 happen to be there. It is not accomplished 
 by voting once a year for prohibition, local, 
 state, or federal. It is the sharing of life and 
 the conditions of life; it is the giving of love 
 24 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 and the labor of love. Something may be 
 done through contributions, institutions, 
 and the employment of other workers; and 
 those who can get no nearer, may well give 
 themselves in this indirect, substitutionary 
 way. But ultimately forgiveness must be 
 brought by a person to a person, through 
 mutual sympathy; in which he who forgives 
 takes on all the sinner's disabilities, and he 
 who has sinned is offered all the resources, 
 the influence, and the aid, of him who comes 
 to save. 
 
 Licentiousness likewise is pitiful from 
 this same double aspect. On the one hand, 
 it is the expression of an instinct implanted 
 in the race as the condition of its perpetua- 
 tion, and which nature never permits, for 
 more than a single generation, to be below 
 its normal strength. Any lack or defect of 
 it, nature punishes with its remorseless pen- 
 alty of extinction. Those in whom it is 
 
 25 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 intense are nature's favorites ; and with in- 
 tensity are apt to go a host of attractive 
 qualities: physical beauty, genial nature, 
 generous impulse, the dash of recklessness, 
 the charm of freedom from self-conscious- 
 ness. All of us who have been brought in 
 contact with men and women who have 
 sinned in this direction, if we are honest, 
 must admit that we have seen a depth of 
 devotion, a warmth of affection, a heroism 
 of loyalty, an abandon of unselfishness, in 
 sinners of this type, which we too often 
 miss among the prim proprieties of pious 
 respectability. Sin of this kind is in a sense 
 natural ; a great many fall into it through 
 ignorance, or temporary blindness; many 
 more are led into it through evil example, 
 or economic constraint. It is pathetically 
 pitiful; and if the individual and racial his- 
 tory could be known, we should all be more 
 ready to pity than to blame. 
 
 Yet it is selfish, cruel, murderous. For 
 26 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 a passing gratification of passion it will ruin 
 a whole life's happiness, and a household's 
 peace. It dooms to lifelong degradation, 
 disease, wretchedness, and early death, a 
 whole class of wretched women in every 
 city of the world. It spreads loathsome 
 disease, bitter jealousy, blasting hatred, 
 through innocent hearts and otherwise 
 happy homes. Nowhere does the pursuit 
 of passing pleasure bring such a wide- 
 spread harvest of enduring pain and shame. 
 
 What, then, is the true attitude of the 
 Christian man toward persons guilty of this 
 form of sin? How does God in his love 
 regard them? 
 
 We should see clearly what a mean and 
 cruel thing it is : how it breaks down, for 
 momentary selfish gratification, the sacred 
 institution of the family, built up through 
 centuries of struggle and self-control. We 
 should abhor it, and show the men and wo- 
 men who are guilty of it that we abhor it. 
 27 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 We should contrive to get close enough to 
 them, personally if we can, institutionally 
 through our support and gifts, if that second 
 best is all our circumstance or temperament 
 permits, to make them feel our abhorrence 
 of the mean and selfish cruelty of it. At the 
 same time, we should make them feel that 
 we understand the weakness that led them 
 to fall into it; the strength of passion that 
 dragged them down; and above all that we 
 stand with them, and will toil and suffer for 
 them, in their effort to rise above it, and live 
 hereafter the clean, kind life. We should be 
 the friend of the corrupt man and the fallen 
 woman ; we should try to make other people 
 their friends. We should go down and share 
 with them the condemnation society passes 
 upon them; and we should lift them up 
 to share whatever respectability and social 
 favor we enjoy. Nothing less personal, 
 nothing less vital; nothing less costly, no- 
 thing less apparently impossible, will fill the 
 28 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 measure of the love God would pour out 
 through our lives to them. On no other 
 terms can we claim to be followers and 
 friends of Him who said, and revealed God's 
 love in saying, " Neither do I condemn 
 thee; go and sin no more." 
 
 Lying, too, has the double aspect common 
 to all sin. In its meaner forms it is a device 
 for shirking responsibility, escaping criti- 
 cism, defrauding customer or creditor, and 
 springs from the innocent instinct of social 
 self-preservation. In its higher forms, as 
 used by cultivated people, it is a generous 
 desire to be more entertaining than a plain 
 statement of the case will warrant: to deck 
 out a situation in colors contributed by the 
 narrator's "happy artistry." Many of the 
 most charming women in the world, some 
 of the world's most famous men, especially 
 those of the military and sportsman types, 
 are half-unconsciously addicted to lying as 
 29 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 the most natural way of making themselves 
 and their experiences interesting. 
 
 On the other hand, lying of all kinds tends 
 to break down confidence between man and 
 man 5 and by crying "wolf" when there is 
 no wolf, to invite disaster when the real 
 wolf appears. The liar refuses to dwell in 
 the same world of mutual understanding 
 with his fellows; he shuts them out of his 
 little life, and in so doing shuts himself out 
 of theirs. People learn to distrust him, and 
 in distrusting him to distrust human nature. 
 Lying is intellectual highway robbery; 
 and its penalty is mental solitary confine- 
 ment. 
 
 How shall we treat the liar ? What would 
 God's love have us do to him? We should 
 live close enough to him to suffer the dis- 
 appointments and losses that result from 
 the misinformation he gives us; we should 
 let him see and feel that we detest it; and 
 at the same time, we should show him that 
 
 30 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 we love him; that we love truth; and that 
 we want to bring him and the truth to- 
 gether. Only by this contagion from one 
 who loves the truth and loves the liar, will 
 truth pass effectively and victoriously into 
 the liar's heart, and make him over into a 
 true man. Preachers may denounce lying, 
 and professors may praise truth; but it is 
 the truthful man or woman, living in ab- 
 horrence of lies side by side with the liar, 
 who does the actual work of forgiving 
 and saving the liar, and winning him to 
 truth. 
 
 Stealing has the same two aspects that 
 are the common marks of sin. A man wants 
 something which belongs to another. He 
 wants it very badly. He is poor, and the 
 man who has it is so rich that he would 
 never miss it. Or the chance to steal is so 
 general and indirect that the man from 
 whom he steals will not even know that 
 
 31 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 anything has been taken from him. This is 
 the case in the more prevalent forms of 
 stealing to-day; the stealing that is carried 
 on by respectable citizens and honored 
 church members in every branch of indus- 
 try, commerce, and politics. I want to sup- 
 port my family a little better, or give my 
 son a more expensive education, or main- 
 tain my daughter in a wealthy social circle. 
 I cannot do these things if I confine myself 
 to producing goods or rendering services 
 which I offer to the world at their current 
 market value. But I can do these things 
 very easily if I organize a corporation and 
 take, as unfortunately the laws of certain 
 states allow me to take, a large block of the 
 stock for comparatively worthless property 
 or insignificant services. I can do these 
 things if, as director of a railroad, I use 
 my power as the representative of the stock- 
 holders and the trustee of the public to 
 get portions of the road built by a con- 
 32 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 struction company in which I have an in- 
 terest; and then, as a member of the con- 
 struction company, sell to the railroad in 
 which I am a director the constructed road 
 at several thousand dollars a mile more 
 than its construction cost. I can do these 
 things for my wife and children if, holding 
 a majority of stock in a corporation, I sell 
 it to parties who will use the controlling in- 
 terest thus acquired, to make the stock of 
 the minority stockholders comparatively 
 worthless. I can do these things if, as 
 owner of a controlling interest, I use the 
 power it gives me to vote exorbitant salaries 
 to myself and my friends, or to withhold 
 dividends and pile up a surplus until the 
 poorer stockholders are compelled to sell 
 for less than it would be worth if the busi- 
 ness were fairly managed. 
 
 I can do these things if I buy things which 
 I am unable to pay for; if I use my politi- 
 cal influence and position to secure fran- 
 
 2>2> 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 chises, favors, exemptions, which will allow 
 me to make profit out of the public loss. 
 These and countless similar forms of steal- 
 ing all have at their core the innocent and 
 laudable desire to make money, gain power, 
 secure position for myself, my family, and 
 my friends. All that is praiseworthy. The 
 presence of this ambition is an indica- 
 tion of many personal, domestic, and social 
 virtues. We cannot withhold a certain ad- 
 miration and aflfection from thieves of this 
 type, whom we meet in business, in society, 
 at the club, and even at church. 
 
 On the other hand, when we realize how 
 ruthlessly they strip the hard-working man 
 of the savings of a lifetime; how they im- 
 poverish the widow and orphan; how every 
 honest workingman in the community has 
 to work harder and live poorer to make up 
 for his share of the general loss that cor- 
 responds to their dishonest gains, we despise 
 the methods by which these men have 
 
 34 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 gained their wealth. What is the Christian 
 attitude toward these men? How does God 
 in his love regard them? 
 
 We ought to continue to be their friends. 
 We ought to get and keep as close to them 
 as we can. But at the same time we ought 
 to make them feel by our example, by our 
 expression, whenever a clear case comes to 
 our common attention, what a mean and 
 cruel thing this polite stealing really is. 
 The right attitude is well illustrated by the 
 act of a Wall Street friend of mine who 
 was offered a price considerably above the 
 market value for a block of stock, in which 
 he was the largest owner. He asked the 
 man who made the offer what he wanted it 
 for, and what he proposed to do for the 
 other stockholders. To these questions the 
 reply was, "Oh, we only want control.'' 
 Straight came the answer, — an answer 
 which, coming from a man influential in a 
 score of the great corporations of the coun- 
 35 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 try, was worth ten thousand sermons on 
 abstract honesty from the pulpit or the pro- 
 fessor's chair, — "You can't get it from me. 
 If you make an offer to all the stockholders 
 at the price you named, or even lower, I 
 might sell, and I might advise the stock- 
 holders to sell; but I won't do this. So 
 many of the small stockholders are in this 
 road because they believe in me, that I can- 
 not make any private deal with you. My 
 stock is for sale, but my stockholders are 
 not." 
 
 To go into business and there become a 
 power, and then to use that power, quietly, 
 unostentatiously, but firmly and effectively, 
 to rebuke the very men with whom you live 
 on friendly terms, and thus lift their stand- 
 ards by your own financial loss, — that is 
 what the forgiveness of sins means in a mod- 
 ern business man. That is first-hand sal- 
 vation. We who are not able to do that, as 
 most of us are not, can find a second best form 
 
 36 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 of the same service, in supporting churches 
 and schools, journals and clubs, writers and 
 speakers who, in friendliness and fairness, 
 yet with clearness and incisiveness, pro- 
 claim the beauty of honesty and the shame 
 of modern stealing. The actual condemna- 
 tion of sin, and forgiveness of the sinner, is 
 primarily a layman's affair: for in such a 
 sin as modern stealing, he is the only person 
 who lives close enough to the real life of 
 the thieves to make them at the same time 
 value his good opinion, and wince under his 
 rebuke. In this fundamental sin of modern 
 business, a preacher and teacher like myself 
 must confess that he is at one remove from 
 reality, and is merely a voice crying in the 
 distance. Still, those of us who are outside 
 of actual business, by our clear-cut distinc- 
 tions, by our indignation against fraud, by 
 our warm admiration of business honor, 
 can do something to support and strengthen 
 those who are in the thick of the fight. 
 
 37 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 is one of the 
 the modern church. 
 
 That is one of the neglected functions of 
 
 Murder is a widely prevalent form of 
 sin to-day. In saying this, I do not refer to 
 the rapidly increasing number of cases of 
 violence and bloodshed. Alarming as that 
 is, it is but an insignificant fraction of the 
 total murder that goes on in our modern 
 Christian civilization. As Professor Ross 
 has pointed out in his "Sin and Society," 
 the modern assassin " wears immaculate 
 linen, carries a silk hat and a lighted cigar, 
 sins with a calm countenance and a serene 
 soul, leagues or months from the evil he 
 causes. Upon his gentlemanly presence the 
 eventual blood and tears do not intrude 
 themselves. This is why good, kindly men 
 let the wheels of commerce and of industry 
 redden and redden, rather than pare or lose 
 their dividends. This is why our railroads 
 yearly injure one employee in twenty-six, 
 
 38 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 and we look in vain for that promised ' day 
 of the Lord' that ^will make a man more 
 precious than fine gold.' Our iniquity is 
 wireless, and we know not whose withers 
 are wnmg by it. The purveyor of spurious 
 life-preservers need not be a Cain. The 
 owner of rotten tenement houses, whose 
 ' pull ' enables him to ignore the orders of 
 the health department, foredooms babies, it 
 is true, but for all that he is no Herod. The 
 mob lynches the red-handed slayer, when 
 it ought to keep a gallows Haman-high for 
 the venal mine-inspector, the seller of in- 
 fected milk, the maintainer of a fire-trap 
 theatre." 
 
 The murderers we meet in every walk 
 of life to-day, members of every club or 
 church we ]oin,"present in evening dress 
 at almost every dinner or party, like the 
 thieves previously considered, are simply 
 the men who want big dividends with which 
 to maintain their families in luxury, and do 
 39 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 not inquire too curiously how many human 
 lives they needlessly shorten to increase 
 those dividends, or how many human heads 
 they cut off with their coupons. 
 
 Recent statistics of a year's accidents to 
 workingmen in Allegheny County, in which 
 Pittsburg is located, published in the "Na- 
 tion," of March i8, 1909, show that 526 men 
 were killed in that county by industrial ac- 
 cidents in the twelve months from July i, 
 1906, to June 30, 1907. In addition 2000 
 were seriously injured, of whom 500 were 
 so crippled as to be discharged from the 
 hospitals permanent wrecks. While the 
 speed and pressure of the work render a 
 large number of these accidents unavoid- 
 able, in a group of cases investigated 35 per 
 cent were attributable to the employers' 
 negligence; in other words, the employers 
 preferred to commit that amount of murder 
 rather than pay the slight cost of life-saving 
 precautions and devices. 
 40 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 In Bangor, Maine, a family moved into 
 a tenement which had previously been oc- 
 cupied by a patient sick with tuberculosis. 
 The landlord neither informed the incoming 
 tenant of the fact, nor had the house dis- 
 infected. The child of the family died of 
 tuberculosis in consequence. When asked 
 why he did not have the house disinfected, 
 the landlord excused himself on the ground 
 that he could not afford the ten dollars, 
 more or less, which it would cost. Murder 
 for ten dollars is a depth of depravity to 
 which most bandits would scorn to con- 
 descend. 
 
 The rookery landlord and the jerry- 
 builder, the adulterator and the maker and 
 vender of deleterious patent medicines, the 
 quack doctor and charlatan " healer," the 
 purveyor of polluted water and infected 
 milk, the man who fails to fence dangerous 
 machinery and provide safety couplers for 
 his cars, the owners of unsanitary tenements 
 
 41 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 and fire-trap theatres, the men who over- 
 work children, and employ women on con- 
 ditions fatal to either health or character, — 
 these murderers, numbered by hundreds, 
 and whose victims are counted by tens of 
 thousands, are the ones who do the whole- 
 sale human slaughter of to-day. There are 
 a hundred times as many men guilty of mur- 
 der through commercial complicity in the 
 United States to-day as there were five 
 hundred years ago, when the bow and arrow 
 and the tomahawk were the weapons em- 
 ployed. In so far as preventable disease and 
 calamity exist in our communities, we all 
 are sharers in responsibility for the murders 
 their permitted continuance entails. 
 
 What shall we do about it? What has 
 God's love to say? We must call it by its 
 plain hard name of murder every chance 
 we get. We must make the men who are 
 guilty feel themselves to be the murder- 
 ers they are. We must make their prac- 
 42 
 
EXTERNAL SINS 
 
 tices so odious, that every decent man will 
 be ashamed to have a hand in them. 
 
 At the same time, we must have charity 
 for them. Their motive was not murder, 
 but dividends; and so far forth they are no 
 worse than the rest of us. By kindness to 
 them, by close association with them, we 
 must get near enough to them in apprecia- 
 tion of their good qualities, to make them 
 feel our condemnation, by example and 
 by word, of the murderous acts they often 
 unwittingly commit. Vague, general con- 
 demnation from a distance, such for in- 
 stance as I am just now writing, will make 
 little or no impression on the real offend- 
 ers. Few of them read religious books, or 
 care much what is said in them. More of 
 them attend church, and what is said in 
 the pulpit sometimes makes a slight im- 
 pression on them. But the real work of 
 making them feel tlie condemnation of the 
 murder they commit, must be done by busi- 
 
 43 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 ness men who live and work with them 
 side by side; whose good opinion these 
 murderers care for, and yet whose good 
 opinion they cannot have so long as they 
 persist in murder. There is an important 
 function for the moral and religious teacher 
 to perform in making the issue clear, and 
 directing public attention; just as there is 
 an important work for the general in battle 
 who stands back of the firing line. But no- 
 thing short of close personal contact, where 
 ideals meet, and practices clash; where the 
 savior and the destroyer of life live together 
 on the same street, in the same offices, in 
 the same line of business, side by side, day 
 after day, — nothing short of this can at 
 once condemn the sin, forgive the sinner, 
 protect the victims, and save society. 
 
Ill 
 
 INTERNAL SINS 
 
 The sins thus far considered, though like 
 all sins rooted in the heart, have their im- 
 mediate occasion and expression in exter- 
 nal relations. They are raging conflagra- 
 tions, wasting and consuming vast areas of 
 human welfare. In addition to these obvious 
 external sins there is a large group of in- 
 ternal sins: sins which smoulder and run in 
 the dry, dead leaves, in the hard and hol- 
 low heart Ultimately they break out in 
 most unexpected places, and do widespread 
 damage; but for a long time they lie con- 
 cealed, unsuspected even by the very soul 
 in whose secret recesses they lurk. 
 
 The worst of these smouldering sins is 
 pride. It is the perversion of the whole- 
 some instinct of self-respect. Often pride 
 
 45 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 is at the outset an assumed mask to hide 
 sensitiveness and shyness: a rough husk 
 developed to protect the delicate life within 
 from too close contact with alien or hostile 
 spirits. Its aim originally is the innocent 
 one of shielding self; not the cruel one of 
 wounding others. If we could trace back 
 to its psychological genesis the pride in the 
 haughty man or the heartless woman, we 
 should find that it sprang from nothing 
 worse than this childish impulse to shield 
 one's self; and that only gradually had this 
 impulse of self- shielding grown into its 
 odious and hideous counterpart of ignoring, 
 slighting, and hurting others. 
 
 When full-blown, however, pride is one 
 of the most deadly sins. It is the very an- 
 tithesis of that love which is God's will for 
 us, and our own true good. Love looks 
 kindly and sympathetically on all: sees 
 others and ourselves in true proportions 
 and relations; recognizes how small and 
 
 46 
 
INTERNAL SINS 
 
 imperfect a part of the whole the individ- 
 ual, even at his best, must be ; and gladly 
 confesses that there is none good but one, 
 that is, God. Pride on the contrary is puffed 
 up; behaves itself unseemly, is easily pro- 
 voked, thinketh all manner of evil, rejoiceth 
 in other people's iniquity. The proud man 
 will hurt another's feelings to save his own. 
 The proud woman will make a score of 
 people miserable to give herself by contrast 
 the semblance of happiness. It is the denial, 
 the drying up within one, of the very prin- 
 ciple of love. In his cruel cutting of others 
 off from himself, the proud man cuts him- 
 self off from God. 
 
 Then, too, pride is real or pretended satis- 
 faction with what one has attained and now 
 is; while life, and growth which is the law 
 of life, depend on fixing the attention and 
 aspiration, not on what we have done and 
 are, but on what we aim and strive to be. 
 Pride is as lifeless as it is loveless. 
 
 47 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 How, then, does God regard this sin ? and 
 how should the Christian treat a man or 
 woman who is guilty of it? Instinctively 
 we react against it, with a corresponding 
 pride and contempt of our own. But that 
 is not Christian; that is not Godlike; that 
 is to surrender to it, and be overcome by 
 it. Furthermore, to meet the proud man 
 with a pride of our own, only drives him 
 further into himself, making him more hard 
 and hollow than ever. Not thus can this 
 deep root of bitterness be extracted. 
 
 Unpleasant as the proud man's company 
 is to one who has the spirit of humility; in- 
 tolerable as the proud woman is to one who 
 meets her with the self-forgetful modesty 
 of love; still, the Christian man must bear 
 with them patiently, and live with them on 
 such terms of intimate friendliness as will 
 make them feel their pride silently con- 
 demned by one whose good opinion they 
 value, and will bring home to them in win- 
 
 48 
 
INTERNAL SINS 
 
 some personal form the superiority of sim- 
 ple modesty and all-inclusive kindliness. 
 This is the high price of salvation from this 
 most odious and anti-social sin. 
 
 Censoriousness is a perversion of the 
 healthy impulse to pass judgment on moral 
 issues. Human conduct is the most in- 
 tensely interesting topic of thought and 
 conversation in the world. Nevertheless, 
 censoriousness is a mean delight in putting 
 and keeping other persons down in our 
 estimation; and is closely akin to pride, 
 which is a base delight in keeping ourselves 
 in our own estimation exalted and puffed 
 up. Censoriousness seizes on every fault 
 and foible in another, magnifies it, dwells 
 upon it, broods over it, until the whole 
 heart becomes a festering mass, a running 
 sore of venom and ill-will. It is the poison- 
 ous atmosphere out of which scandal is 
 brought forth. 
 
 49 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 Nothing is more contrary to the sweet 
 spirit of Christian charity than this sour 
 and belittling sin of censoriousness. We 
 feel the poisonous stench of it as soon as 
 we come into its fetid atmosphere. We 
 long to get out, into the fresh air of kindli- 
 ness and sympathy. We are tempted in our 
 own hearts to berate and denounce the lit- 
 tleness of soul which we so despise. 
 
 That, however, would be falling into 
 censoriousness ourselves. That would be 
 doing in ourselves the very thing we con- 
 demn in others. So subtly contagious are 
 these internal forms of sin, that, unless we 
 are very alert to apply the great spiritual 
 disinfectant of charity, we catch them be- 
 fore we know it! No. That is not Christian; 
 that is not the way to overcome the sin, 
 and win the sinner back to a sweet chari- 
 tableness. 
 
 If we would forgive him, and save him, 
 we must listen to his wretched querulous- 
 50 
 
INTERNAL SINS 
 
 nesSj hear him run down persons bigger 
 and better than himself, all the while watch- 
 ing our opportunity to throw in a word of 
 appreciation or praise or extenuation for 
 the poor victim of his censoriousness. Only 
 by bringing a deeper, broader charity, 
 which includes both him and the persons 
 whom he censures, can we draw him out 
 of his censoriousness into its glorious op- 
 posite. So costly is the price of forgiveness 
 and regeneration for this most miserable 
 sin! How few of us there are who are will- 
 ing to go on paying this price, day after day, 
 week after week, until slowly and surely 
 the soul-poison is extracted, and the vic- 
 tory is won! 
 
 Laziness is a sin which has its roots in 
 a wholesome and natural self-protection. 
 In these days of overstrain, when so many 
 men and women are recklessly consuming 
 the physical capital they ought to hold as 
 SI 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 a sacred trust for the benefit of future gen- 
 erations, the lazy man and woman, who 
 live on their interest, and a low rate of 
 interest at that, may be serving God and 
 humanity more wisely, if not more meri- 
 toriously, than their more strenuous and 
 straining neighbors. 
 
 Yet laziness, in spite of this far-fetched 
 biological justification, when it involves the 
 preference of privation for others, for our 
 family, or even for ourselves, rather than 
 the pain of effort, becomes a clear case of 
 that loveless selfishness which is the com- 
 mon mark of sin. To let somebody go hun- 
 gry, or ill-clothed, or uneducated, that I 
 may take my luxurious ease, is to put the 
 infinitesimal and trivial above the infinite 
 and the essential. It is to put self before 
 God. 
 
 No words are necessary to add to our 
 instinctive contempt for the man who pre- 
 fers to loaf rather than to provide for his 
 52 
 
INTERNAL SINS 
 
 family; or the woman who is willing her 
 husband should become a drudge at his 
 business, in order that she may live a life 
 of ostentatious indolence. Yet reproaches 
 alone are not sufficient to rouse the lazy 
 from their lethargy. We must bring our 
 earnest lives into close contact with their 
 frivolous and indolent ones; showing them 
 at the same time that we care for them, 
 and care for better things than they have 
 learned to care for. To lift into earnestness 
 a life that has never known anything bet- 
 ter worth while than bridge-playing and 
 automobiling, under-exercising and over- 
 feeding, we must bring home to it forms 
 of service which we thoroughly enjoy, and 
 offer in friendliness to share with the soul 
 that is empty and idle. That, however, we 
 shall find hard. It is easier far to do a 
 piece of work alone than to bother with 
 the help of a lazy person. But we must 
 do this harder thing; otherwise the con- 
 
 53 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 tagion of laziness has captured and con- 
 quered us. 
 
 Malice is the extreme antithesis of love, 
 the farthest remove from God to which a 
 soul can go short of the unforgivable sin. 
 Malice takes a fiendish delight in bullying 
 the weak, torturing the helpless, and inflict- 
 ing pain on all whom it dares to hurt. In 
 the family it crops out as the brutality of a 
 husband to an intimidated wife, or a shrew's 
 nagging of a long-suffering husband. In 
 business it appears as a cut-throat compe- 
 tition, not for the sake of extra profits, but 
 for the devilish satisfaction of crushing 
 competitors, and driving the defenseless 
 to the wall. 
 
 Yet if we could know the inner history 
 of the malicious man; if we could trace his 
 origin back through the abuse received in 
 childhood, when in self-defense he acquired 
 the attitude of antagonism; back to the 
 
 54 
 
INTERNAL SINS 
 
 struggle for existence of our animal ances- 
 tors in the primeval jungle, we perhaps 
 should pity the man who is malicious even 
 more than we pity the victims who suffer 
 from it. 
 
 Of course our instinctive reaction is one 
 of intense hostility: the desire to smite the 
 man who is wantonly striking others. But 
 that would be simply catching from him 
 the contagion of his own malice, and pay- 
 ing him back in his own coin. There is no- 
 thing Christian about that. The Christian, 
 who comes to the malicious person in the 
 love of God, will be kind to him, show him 
 that he has sympathy for his victims, show 
 him that he desires to be a true friend to 
 him, yet cannot be the perfect friend he 
 would be so long as the malicious person 
 harbors in his breast and acts out in his life 
 this odious trait which his would-be friend 
 abhors. That is forgiveness ; and, if anything 
 can, will purge the man's heart of its malice. 
 
IV 
 
 THE CROSS OF CHRIST 
 
 A SOUND theology is simply the facts of 
 our personal life, as Plato would say, " writ 
 large." We know God only through man. 
 A revelation that is not an incarnation is no 
 revelation at all, but blank mystery and 
 magic. An attribute or act of God that can- 
 not be translated into appreciable human 
 terms can have no meaning for us. Hence, 
 as human experience develops, the divine 
 attributes have to be retranslated into terms 
 of the deepening experience of the race. 
 Startling as this sounds, the only alternative 
 is to have a God who is symbolized by the 
 outgrown experience of a bygone stage of 
 human evolution. And this is perilously 
 near to having no God at all; for the God 
 of a transcended stage of human history is 
 hardly worshipful. 
 
 56 
 
THE CROSS OF CHRIST 
 
 There have been times when arbitrary 
 punishment for wrong-doing was a familiar 
 spectacle in courts of law; when personal 
 intercession was a potent factor in securing 
 remission of such penalty; when fear and 
 favor alternated on the throne of human 
 government. In Oriental communities this 
 stage persists, and recent events in France 
 indicate that this stage of the development 
 of " justice " is not altogether transcended 
 there. 
 
 Wherever Anglo-Saxon law and institu- 
 tions have spread, however, right is no 
 longer justified by might, or swayed by 
 favor; it must justify itself by the good it 
 serves; and to remit essential penalty by 
 special favor is seen to be a grievous wrong. 
 Consequently, the interpretation of the di- 
 vine government in these arbitrary and 
 capricious terms no longer appeals to the 
 Anglo-Saxon and German conscience. Tor- 
 ments of hell make men rebel against what 
 
 57 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 in a civil government they would brand as 
 tyranny; and offers of forgiveness on too 
 easy terms make them suspicious of a dis- 
 cipline which, if it existed in their own 
 communities, they would despise as senti- 
 mental. Hence, while the sinner may admit 
 that he is a fool and a knave, and confess 
 that he ought to rule his greed and thirst, 
 yet when th^ only agencies brought to bear 
 on him are the threats of punishment and 
 the promises of pardon, he is likely to obey 
 his own sweet will, in defiance alike of the 
 warnings and of the consolations of religion. 
 The religion of fear and favor, based on the 
 Oriental and mediaeval heaven and hell, has 
 lost its moral grip on the Anglo-Saxon sin- 
 ner of to-day. 
 
 There is one hold on such a sinner, one 
 only. He is not blind; he is not all unkind. 
 Through the carnal crust he sometimes sees 
 the man he ought to be. Especially when 
 his greed has plundered the poor; when his 
 
 58 
 
THE CROSS OF CHRIST 
 
 lust has ruined the innocent; when his dis- 
 sipation, his profligacy, has grieved those 
 who love him and have made great sacri- 
 fices on his behalf, and brought down their 
 gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, — then he 
 is truly sorry; then he repents; then he re- 
 solves to be a better man. Perhaps of all 
 men in the modern world, the college offi- 
 cer comes closest to the real motives which 
 sway the hearts of men who have done 
 wrong. Doctor Eliot declares that his expe- 
 rience at Harvard has taught him that the 
 only way to save a bad young man is to 
 bring to bear on him the influence of some 
 one whom he loves, and make him face his 
 evil deeds in terms of what they mean in 
 sorrow to the loved one. We all know that 
 if we cannot find some person for whom 
 such a young man cares, and for whose 
 sake he is willing to try to do better, neither 
 threats nor entreaties are ever of avail. Con- 
 sequence to others, — yes, to others who are 
 59 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 innocent, and whose sorrow is the free sac- 
 rifice of love, — this is the one thing that 
 will get hold of a bad man's heart when all 
 else fails. 
 
 The cross of Christ is the symbol of the 
 consequence of sin, writ large. Where there 
 is greed, there is privation; where there is 
 corruption, there is oppression; where there 
 is lust, there is anguish; where there is 
 drunkenness, there is misery; where there 
 is falsehood, there is distrust; where there 
 is cruelty, there is suffering; where there is 
 pride, there is despair; where there is osten- 
 tation, there is heartburning; where there 
 is unkindness, there are tears; in a word, 
 where there is sin, there is punishment; 
 though the bearers of the heaviest punish- 
 ment are more frequently the innocent vic- 
 tims than the guilty doers of the wrong. 
 Christ, in coming into a world full of hypo- 
 crisy and avarice and pride and malice, 
 had his life embittered, and finally was 
 60 
 
THE CROSS OF CHRIST 
 
 brought to death, as the inevitable conse- 
 quence of being a good man in an evil 
 world. He loved the world, and, in trying 
 to do it good, won its hate. In seeking to 
 save it he laid down his life. Hence he 
 stands as the great historic representative 
 of suffering love seeking to save the world. 
 He is to all who have sinned and gone 
 astray what the sorrowing father and griev- 
 ing mother are to their wayward boy, what 
 the true friend who sticks to him through 
 thick and thin is to the fellow who has fallen 
 into bad habits and disgrace. Christ stands, 
 therefore, as the revealer and interpreter 
 of God in terms of the highest and holiest 
 human experience we know — that of suf- 
 fering love bearing the consequences of sin, 
 and appealing to the sinner who has caused 
 the sorrow, to be a better man. 
 
 The law of vicarious sacrifice is written 
 into the constitution of the moral universe. 
 Society is organic. If one does wrong, 
 6i 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 others must suffer. For wrong is maladjust- 
 ment; and the symptom of maladjustment 
 is pain. The great deinand of the hour is 
 ethical insight; to point out in precise terms 
 the meanness and cruelty and misery-pro- 
 ducing power of specific sins. If the pro- 
 moter of dishonest business schemes could 
 see the privation in country homes, where 
 the hard earnings of years of toil are swept 
 away by the floods of water with which he 
 has diluted the stock they purchased in good 
 faith; if the licentious man could see the 
 years of agony and degradation, released 
 at last by squalid and ignominious death, 
 which the victims of his passing pleasure 
 must drag out in consequence of what he and 
 men like him have made of them; if the 
 inconsiderate husband, the merciless em- 
 ployer, the glib scandalmonger, the corrupt 
 legislator, the reckless speculator, could be 
 made to see just what their conduct means 
 in want and woe and lingering pain and 
 62 
 
r 
 
 THE CROSS OF CHRIST 
 
 premature death to their innocent and help- 
 less victims, they would speedily repent 
 and mend their ways. 
 
 The problem of religion is to present 
 Christ as the representative of all humanity; 
 so to hold up the cross of Christ as to make 
 every man who is doing wrong feel that he 
 is rolling up the mighty mass of misery 
 which Christ and humanity must bear. It 
 must show that every deed of dishonesty 
 or lust, every word of unkindness or insin- 
 cerity, every indulgence in sensuality or 
 selfishness, is an addition to the burden 
 Christ came to bear; a crucifying of him 
 afresh in the person of his brethren. It must 
 point out the countless concrete condi- 
 tions, in home and school, in business and 
 society, in politics and philanthropy, in 
 charity and reform, in which, by work that 
 scorns to shirk because unwatched,by kind- 
 liness that expects no personal return, by 
 truth that shrinks not from inevitable mis- 
 
 63 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 interpretation, by fidelity that gets no ap- 
 preciation, by perseverance that receives 
 no encouragement, by courage that wins 
 no recognition, by endurance that attracts 
 no notice, by sacrifice the very existence of 
 which is unsuspected, by suffering that re- 
 mains a sacred secret locked forever in the 
 silent sufferer's heart, we all may bear our 
 little fraction of the great cross of Christ, 
 which is the naturally selected, divinely ap- 
 pointed method of the salvation of the world. 
 
 The old doctrine of the solidarity of man 
 in sin, through inheritance from Adam, has 
 lost for the modern mind whatever force it 
 ever had. If that were the only alternative, 
 individualism of the Stoic type, both in sin 
 and salvation, would come in to take its 
 place. Salvation in and through Christ 
 would have no place in such individualism. 
 
 But, as Dr. S. M. Crothers has recently 
 pointed out, we are confronted to-day by a 
 new solidarity in sin, which requires a so- 
 
 64 
 
w 
 
 THE CROSS OF CHRIST 
 
 cial rather than an individual redemption. 
 A vast mass of disease, accident, wrong, 
 suffering, which we used to cast on Provi- 
 dence, we now have learned, through phy- 
 sical, medical,and social science, to be pre- 
 ventable. Typhoid fever and tuberculosis, 
 child-labor and the sweat-shop, certain types 
 of poverty and crime, are absolutely pre- 
 ventable by proper sanitary, social, political, 
 and moral measures. In so far, then, as these 
 avoidable evils persist, they do so with our 
 common consent; and for them we are 
 unitedly responsible. The individual alone 
 does not produce them, but we all are jointly 
 responsible for them. The individual alone 
 cannot remove them, but is helpless and im- 
 potent in the face of these gigantic evils, re- 
 sponsibility for the continued existence of 
 which he shares. His only escape from this 
 mountainous burden of social sin lies in 
 giving himself, mind and heart, soul and 
 body, time and strength, influence and 
 
 65 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 money, to a great social force which on 
 a scale commensurate with these evils is 
 working for their removal. 
 
 Now that great social force is Christ, 
 and the spirit of Christ in the hearts of his 
 followers and in the life and work of the 
 Christian community. In his name the great 
 spiritual forces of the modern world are 
 marshaled against evil. In his spirit the 
 fight against these evils is carried on. 
 
 Henceforth, to be an indifferent indi- 
 vidual is impossible. Each man, whether he 
 wills it or not, must be on one side or the 
 other of these vast historic, social forces, 
 greater than himself. Each one of us must 
 be bearing either an unrepented and there- 
 fore unforgiven share of responsibility for 
 the avoidable evils under which the world 
 is groaning and travailing in pain, or else 
 a generous share in the effort to conquer 
 them and save the world from them, of 
 which Christ is the historic leader, and his 
 66 
 
THE CROSS OF CHRIST 
 
 cross the accepted social symbol. Each one 
 of us must be either a betrayer or a servant 
 of humanity, a crucifier of the Lord, or else 
 a bearer of his cross. So mighty are these 
 two opposed social forces, that each indi- 
 vidual is bound to be swept along by the 
 one or the other. Between them the liberty 
 of indifference is impossible. To choose 
 which one we will serve is our only liberty. 
 Only as we bear the cross of Christ in for- 
 giving, serving, saving love to the sinning, 
 suffering world, can we escape the con- 
 demnation of being guilty partners in the 
 sins and sorrows under which it suffers. 
 
V 
 
 THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN 
 
 Ordinary sins, such as we have been 
 considering, are compounded of some little 
 selfish good for the sake of which they are 
 committed, and great personal or social 
 evils in spite of which they are committed. 
 In all these sins, the mind is more or less 
 blind; the will is choosing the lesser in 
 preference to the greater good, and is there- 
 fore perverse; but the heart is not neces- 
 sarily bent on evil for the sake of evil; it is 
 not irreconcilably arrayed against what it 
 knows and feels to be good. 
 
 Consequently, when a friendly person 
 comes close to the sinner, shows him 
 kindly and modestly the evil of his way, 
 and that, in spite of the evil he does, he is 
 still loved for the man that he is capable of 
 68 
 
THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN 
 
 being, sinners whose sin is of this thought- 
 less, naturally selfish type, usually welcome 
 the love that comes to them in expressed 
 or implied reproof, tempered with gentle- 
 ness and kindliness; give up the sins that 
 grieve the friend who loves them; and for 
 his sake, and to stand well with him, try to 
 make their own the conduct and character 
 which they admire in their friend, and 
 which they must have in themselves to 
 please him, and be worthy of his unquali- 
 fied approval. Ninety-nine sinners out of a 
 hundred will abandon any sin that they are 
 clearly and intensely made to feel is a 
 source of grief to some one who loves them, 
 and whose love they appreciate and desire 
 to retain. So potent a redeeming and regen- 
 erating power is love, brought close home 
 to the heart and everyday life of the of- 
 fender, by one whose love the offender ap- 
 preciates and is eager to retain ! Most men 
 and women in their inmost hearts prize such 
 
 69 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 love, kindliness, good opinion, and good- 
 will, offered by persons whom they respect 
 and admire, as the supremely precious thing 
 in life. For the sake of that, they will give up 
 everything else, even their cherished sins, 
 their favorite vices, their habitual short- 
 comings. The love that works this miracle, 
 to be sure, must come close; it must be 
 simple and genuine, without assumption of 
 superiority or airs; it must be backed by a 
 character that commands respect and admi- 
 ration on other grounds than that of the par- 
 ticular moral issue at stake. 
 
 If this truth were the whole truth, we 
 could take a very rosy and optimistic view 
 of the speedy regeneration of mankind, and 
 the completed redemption of the world. 
 Unfortunately, comparatively few wrong- 
 doers ever have a forgiving, redeeming, 
 transforming love, of the intensity and inti- 
 macy described above, brought close home 
 to them in human terms. The harvest of 
 70 
 
THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN 
 
 men ready to be transformed by the touch 
 of such a love is plenteous; but labourers 
 in that harvest, persons who live high up 
 with God and his ideals, and at the same 
 time sympathetically and intimately with 
 those who fall short of them, are lament- 
 ably few. Not one wrong-doer in ten, even 
 in a nominally Christian land, ever feels 
 the strain between his sin and a loving 
 heart by his side that hates it. Hence so 
 few are drawn away from the sins that so 
 easily beset them. 
 
 The difficulty largest in size is our lack 
 of redeemers. But the difficulty deepest in 
 nature is that there are apparently persons 
 who refuse to be redeemed. There are per- 
 sons, apparently, who not merely sin in the 
 ordinary way, by preferring their own petty 
 satisfactions to larger personal and social 
 goods; but who, when the nobler life of 
 unselfishness is brought close home to them 
 in the person of one who loves them, and 
 71 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 offers them his love^ who sorrows for them 
 and suffers with them, who is eager to share 
 the better life with them, and who com- 
 mends the better Hfe, by the brave, patient, 
 generous way he lives it, — there apparently 
 are persons who despise love itself, turn 
 from it, trample on it, pervert the charity 
 it offers into an excuse for continued wick- 
 edness, impose on the offered sympathy, 
 and even hate the one who offers his love, 
 for the implied or expressed rebuke his bet- 
 ter life brings home to them. 
 
 Such swinish trampling on the pearls of 
 proffered affection, such shutting of the 
 heart against the best love that human 
 hearts can bring, such perversion of offered 
 forgiveness into a renewed license to sin, 
 such contempt for the holiest gift of God 
 through human agency, is the unforgivable 
 sin. It is unforgivable, not because God, 
 or Christ, or the men who have caught the 
 Christlike spirit, do not stand ready to for- 
 72 
 
THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN 
 
 give; but rather because the hardened heart 
 refuses to let the offered forgiveness enter, 
 and shuts its door upon the love that knocks 
 and waits without. 
 
 Whether such an attitude can be perma- 
 nently maintained; whether a soul can for- 
 ever go on hardening, and feeding on hate ; 
 or whether at last even a Guido must cry 
 out to his Pompilia in entreaty (though 
 even then it is a question whether the 
 scared selfishness that merely wants to es- 
 cape outward penalty has any capacity to 
 appreciate and admit the love it blindly 
 reaches out for in its cowardly fright), is a 
 problem it is not necessary here to raise. 
 The tragic fact is, that sometimes unprin- 
 cipled men and heartless women do take 
 that attitude, and so make forgiveness, 
 and the regeneration forgiveness works, 
 impossible. From such persons, while we 
 must ever be as ready to forgive and love 
 as God is to send his sun and rain upon 
 
 73 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 them, we must withhold our pearls so long 
 as they would be trampled on; we must 
 let social condemnation, and civil law, 
 and nature's inexorable retributions, do 
 their purging, and it may be their destroy- 
 ingj work. 
 
VI 
 
 PUNISHMENT AS A FAVOR 
 
 What has been said thus far doubtless 
 has seemed to many readers as weak, in- 
 dulgent, soft-hearted, lacking in virility and 
 force. So it would be if it were the whole 
 story; but it is only half the truth. It is 
 to be sure the central half. " The heart of 
 the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.'^ 
 Tenderness and forgiveness are initial and 
 fundamental; not afterthoughts, or the re- 
 sult of special arrangements. 
 
 Furthermore, hitherto we have assumed 
 in all cases except that of the unforgivable 
 sin, that when the meanness of his sin is 
 brought home to the offender by one who 
 loves him in spite of it, he is sorry and re- 
 pents. In all such cases forgiveness is full, 
 free, and instantaneous. God would not be 
 75 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 God, but a devil; the Christian man would 
 not be aChristian,but worse than a heathen, 
 were he to withhold forgiveness for an in- 
 stant from an offender who is truly penitent. 
 
 Still there remain the great majority of 
 cases, where forgiving love fails to reach 
 the offender, and make itself felt, and trans- 
 form him. In the complexity of life, in the 
 chasms between different classes, in the re- 
 moteness of the offense from the one who 
 suffers for it, and in the scarcity of persons 
 who are able to manifest forgiving love in 
 its beauty and transforming power, there 
 are bound to be a great many offenders 
 who do not keenly feel the shame of their 
 offense, and consequently are not disposed 
 to stop it, and turn from it. What is the 
 will of God, what is the right attitude of 
 the Christian man, toward these offenders ? 
 
 It is punishment; and that as a double 
 favor: a protection to society, and an inci- 
 pient remedy for the offender. 
 
 76 
 
PUNISHMENT AS A FAVOR 
 
 If the title of this chapter strikes us as 
 strange and paradoxical, it is a sad com- 
 mentary on the crudeness and brutality of 
 our current Christianity. For the truth con- 
 tained in it is centuries older than Chris- 
 tianity. The mystic poet of Persia asked of 
 God the irrefutable question: "If because 
 I do evil, Thou punishest me by evil, what 
 is the difference between Thee and me ? '' 
 It was a commonplace with Plato, and 
 comes out in the "Apology," in the "Re- 
 public,'' and as the inevitable conclusion of 
 a protracted argument in the "Gorgias." 
 Socrates's last request of his judges was that 
 they would do him the favor to punish his 
 sons whenever they might deserve it. "Still 
 I have a favor to ask. When my sons are 
 grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, 
 to punish them; and I would have you 
 trouble them, as I have troubled you, if 
 they seem to care about riches, or anything, 
 more than about virtue; or if they pretend 
 
 77 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 to be something when they are really no- 
 thing, — then reprove them, as I have re- 
 proved you, for not caring about that for 
 which they ought to care, and thinking 
 that they are something when they are 
 really nothing. And if you do this, I and 
 my sons will have received justice at your 
 hands." 
 
 Plato compares a man who contrives to 
 escape punishment to a man who has a 
 bodily disease and contrives to escape the 
 treatment of the physician. At the conclu- 
 sion of the argument in the "Gorgias," he 
 represents Socrates as saying: "I maintain 
 that he who has done wrong and has not 
 been punished, is and ought to be the most 
 miserable of all men ; and that the doer of 
 wrong is more miserable than the sufferer; 
 and he who escapes punishment more mis- 
 erable than he who suffers." 
 
 Of course, in different terms, in the para- 
 ble of the Prodigal Son, in the treatment 
 
 78 
 
r 
 
 PUNISHMENT AS A FAVOR 
 
 of the woman taken in adultery, in the 
 teaching that the Father sends sun and 
 rain on the good and on the evil, and in 
 the doctrine of "free grace," all this is 
 taught most clearly and convincingly in the 
 New Testament. But, unfortunately, other 
 elements, survivals from the cruder Judaism 
 that preceded it, are mingled with it; and 
 the Christian Church, in its theological con- 
 structions, has usually manifested a greater 
 affinity for the Jewish and Pagan survivals 
 in the New Testament, than for the dis- 
 tinctively Christian contribution. The re- 
 sult has been that Christian theology has 
 fallen far below the teaching of Omar 
 Khayyam and Plato. Vengeance has held 
 the foreground 5 and forgiveness, or " par- 
 don" has been brought in by a special 
 forensic scheme. The result has been a 
 reversion to practical paganism, tinged, 
 however, in spite of its sacrificial and fo- 
 rensic terminologj^, with a few faint traces 
 79 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 of the distinctive Christian attitude. Thus 
 forgiveness, instead of being central, has be- 
 come peripheral 5 and punishment, instead 
 of being recognized as a favor granted by 
 God, and by all right-minded men, to so- 
 ciety as a protection, and to the offender 
 as an aid to a just appreciation of his sin, 
 has been regarded as an evil, inflicted in 
 malignity. 
 
 What is God's will? What should the 
 Christian man do ? Let us take a concrete 
 case. I have worked hard for a lifetime, 
 and as a provision for myself and my family 
 in old age have my entire savings deposited 
 temporarily in a bank. An officer in that 
 bank borrows that money illegally, specu- 
 lates with it, and is unable to replace it. I 
 find it out Ought I as a Christian man to 
 cover up his wrong-doing, give him a check 
 for the amount, receiving nothing in return 
 but his promise to pay what little he can 
 from time to time as his salary will allow? 
 80 
 
PUNISHMENT AS A FAVOR 
 
 Would that be Christian love? Certainly 
 notj if he had not repented. Certainly not, 
 if he is simply sorry for the plight he is in, 
 and desirous of escaping disgrace and im- 
 prisonment. In that case, it will be the truer 
 kindness to him to expose him, and let him 
 take his punishment; — disgrace to himself 
 and humiliation to his family and friends. 
 That experience of punishment will reveal 
 to him the intrinsic hatefulness of his deed, 
 as mere smoothing it over never would. 
 At the same time it protects others from 
 being sacrificed, as I have been, to his gam- 
 bling and stealing propensities. Punish- 
 ment, hard as it is, is the real kindness to 
 him, and to society. 
 
 Every judge of a court, every head of a 
 school or college, every parent, every per- 
 son who lives in close and vital contact with 
 persons who do wrong, knows that the 
 severest punishment maybe inflicted, not 
 only without the slightest trace of vindic- 
 8i 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 tiveness or malice, but with sorrow and com- 
 passion for the pain of the person punished. 
 Unless we bear in our own hearts the pen- 
 alty of another's wrong-doing we cannot, 
 as Christians, inflict the penalty on him. 
 
 In the case cited above, what ought we 
 to do if thoroughly convinced that the 
 speculating bank officer is not merely sorry 
 for the plight he is in, and the punishment 
 it promises to bring upon him, but is sin- 
 cerely sorry for the harm he has done me, 
 so profoundly penitent that nothing would 
 ever induce him to be guilty of such a 
 wrong deed again, and earnestly desirous 
 of doing everything in his power to make 
 reparation? Ought I then to expose him, 
 and bring him to punishment and his fam- 
 ily to shame and sorrow? No. In that 
 case the Christian will forgive, and bear in 
 silence the painful consequences of the evil 
 deed. Harm has been done, irreparable 
 harm, but no good would come of expos- 
 82 
 
PUNISHMENT AS A FAVOR 
 
 ing and punishing a man who already is 
 suffering sorrow and remorse for the 
 wrong that he has done, and is doing all 
 in his power, however little that may be, 
 to make amends. 
 
 If this seems too good to be true, too 
 hard for human nature, the only answer is 
 that all of us who try to carry the Christian 
 spirit into life, all of us who live at points 
 where the real forces of society come into 
 collision, know many persons who invari- 
 ably forgive; who do it in this vital, costly, 
 sacrificial way; in the way Christ did it, 
 and taught his followers to do it. Out of 
 many such persons whom I have known, 
 I will cite one, who illustrates both the 
 favor of punishment to the unrepenting, 
 and forgiveness to the truly penitent. 
 
 He was a Roman Catholic saint, to whom 
 in student days I used to go quite regu- 
 larly, as often as I felt the need of a spir- 
 itual bath. He lived the life of a mediaeval 
 
 83 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 mystic, though he had been in early life 
 the leading physician of the orthodox town 
 of Andover, Massachusetts. I remember 
 well his reproof when one Monday even- 
 ing, I came to him, thoroughly exhausted 
 after a foolishly ambitious effort to be elo- 
 quent as a preacher the day before. " Do 
 you know what you are like ? " he said as 
 soon as I entered. "You are like a pipe 
 closed toward the reservoir and open 
 toward the outlet.'' Once, when an able- 
 bodied beggar came to his door asking for 
 bread, he gave him such a merciless scold- 
 ing as I never heard before or since ; and, 
 as the beggar turned away in shame and 
 confusion, the old saint remarked to me in 
 the quietest, gentlest tones, " That was the 
 kindest thing I could say to the poor fel- 
 low. I hope it will do him the good I 
 meant." 
 
 One night his son, a dissipated young 
 man, was brought home dead, having been 
 
 84 
 
PUNISHMENT AS A FAVOR 
 
 taken from the railroad track where ap- 
 parently he had been killed by a locomo- 
 tive. The father, in examining the body, 
 noticed marks of hands upon the throat, and 
 concluded that he had been strangled in a 
 fight, and that afterwards his body had been 
 placed on the track to conceal the crime 
 under the appearance of accident. He 
 said nothing; but, when he met the guilty 
 man, looked at him, and through him. A 
 few days later the murderer came to his 
 house to confess. The father of the mur- 
 dered young man said, " You need not con- 
 fess. I know." The murderer then asked 
 him, "What are you going to do about 
 it ? " The father replied, " I shall do no- 
 thing. I have simply one request to make 
 of you. Promise that you will repeat from 
 your heart the Lord's Prayer every day of 
 your life." The man promised and went 
 away; a changed, because a forgiven, man. 
 These two sides — stern exposure of the 
 
 85 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 sin and relentless punishment of the sinner 
 so long as he still clings to the sin, and 
 forgiveness until seventy times seven for 
 the man who is truly penitent and genu- 
 inely responsive — these two sides of the 
 divine and Christian attitude toward sin 
 are inseparable. Forgiveness that is too 
 blind to loathe the sin, or too cowardly to 
 condemn it, or too weak to punish it, is 
 mere milk - and - water sentimentality, a 
 wretched counterfeit of Christianity. On 
 the other hand, punishment that is not a 
 sincere sorrow to him who inflicts it; 
 punishment which is not inflicted as a re- 
 gretful second best because the offender 
 would misinterpret the forgiveness which 
 we yearn to offer, but in his unrepentant 
 state cannot rightly grant; punishment that 
 is not directed toward society's and the 
 offender's good, is brutal, cruel, heathen- 
 ish; unworthy of any man who calls him- 
 self a Christian. 
 
 86 
 
PUNISHMENT AS A FAVOR 
 
 Punishment sorrowfully but sternly in- 
 flicted, and forgiveness sacrificially but 
 lovingly bestowed, are different expres- 
 sions of the sarne love to the offender ; and 
 whether this love shall express itself in 
 one way or the other, depends on whether 
 the offender is still clinging to his offense, 
 and needs to be shocked and shaken out 
 of it, or whether he has already seen the 
 evil of it, is sincerely ashamed of it, and 
 sorry for it. 
 
 In practical life this is often very hard to 
 determine. It is the most diflScult decision 
 the parent, the teacher, the executive offi- 
 cer ever has to make. Tears, entreaties, 
 and protestations of reform are no relia- 
 ble indication. They are quite as likely to 
 express selfish sorrow over exposure and 
 impending pain, as unselfish sorrow for 
 sin and the harm to others it has wrought. 
 With the best intentions we shall some- 
 times make mistakes. Nothing less than 
 
 87 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 omniscient insight into the offender's heart 
 could tell us infallibly when to punish and 
 when to forgive. Anger is always blind- 
 ing ; and unless we can punish without 
 wrath, we should never punish at all. On 
 the other hand, love is wonderfully illumi- 
 nating. Sympathy is interpretative. If we 
 are actuated sincerely and solely by regard 
 for the good of the offender and of society, 
 we shall not often go far astray, nor ever 
 beyond the power to confess and correct 
 whatever mistakes we make. 
 
 The difference between the new and the 
 old theology, in other words the difference 
 between Christianity as Jesus exemplified 
 and taught it, and heathenism as theologi- 
 ans have imported it into Christianity and 
 given it an elaborate Christian nomencla- 
 ture, is simply the difference between pre- 
 senting vengeance as the fundamental di- 
 vine, and therefore normal human impulse, 
 with pardon as a secondary consideration 
 88 
 
PUNISHMENT AS A FAVOR 
 
 introduced by special arrangement; and 
 presenting forgiveness as the fundamental 
 divine, and therefore normal human atti- 
 tude, with punishment a sorry substitute, 
 to be regretfully applied whenever the 
 offender's condition renders forgiveness 
 inapplicable. 
 
 Both types of theology, both Christianity 
 and heathenism, hate sin; but in heathen- 
 ism, and in the old theology which retains 
 such large elements of heathenism, the 
 hatred of sin is primary and the love of the 
 sinner is secondary. In Christianity, and in 
 the new theology as its more adequate 
 representative, the love of man as man, 
 whether saint or sinner, is primary, and 
 the punishment of the sinner is secondary; 
 a derivative from society's need of pro- 
 tection, and the hardness of the offender's 
 heart. 
 
 Both views are earnest and honest efforts 
 to drive sin out of the world, and bring in 
 
 89 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 the kingdom of heaven. It may be that the 
 alloy of heathenism has hardened Christian- 
 ity at times into a more effective weapon 
 for dealing with rough men in crude con- 
 ditions. There may be classes and races 
 of men where this alloy has still important 
 work to do. It certainly is a far better 
 agency than a pseudo-Christianity which 
 has grasped only the half-truth of forgive- 
 ness, without its complementary half-truth 
 that punishment must be severe and un- 
 flinching so long as the offender remains 
 impenitent. 
 
 Still, "Love is the strong thing," and 
 with its two-edged sword of eternal pun- 
 ishment for sin as long as the sinner clings 
 to it, and instantaneous and infinite forgive- 
 ness, until seventy times seven, for whom- 
 soever penitence has separated from his 
 sin, love can be trusted in its purity and 
 power to work even better and more dur- 
 ably than any of its traditional alloys. 
 
VII 
 
 THE AGENT OF FORGIVENESS 
 
 The preceding study of typical forms of 
 both external and internal sin has made 
 increasingly clear the common characteris- 
 tic of forgiveness, whatever maybe the spe- 
 cific sin it meets. Forgiveness is kindness 
 toward a person who has been doing some- 
 thing which we abhor. It is personal good- 
 will shining through intense disapproval. 
 It is close and friendly contact with a per- 
 son whose act and attitude we shrink from 
 and antagonize. It is not natural, and there- 
 fore rare. When it occurs it is supernatural 
 and indicates the presence in the heart of 
 him who forgives of something superhu- 
 man, divine. That something, of course, 
 is love : love in its most costly, sacrificial 
 form. 
 
 91 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 Who is the agent of forgiveness ? In the 
 deepest sense, of course, God, and God 
 alone, can forgive sins. That, however, is 
 only another way of saying what was said 
 above, that forgiveness is an act of super- 
 natural, divine love. For God is love; and 
 whatever can be done only in love, is done 
 in God and through God. 
 
 In another sense, equally profound, 
 Christ is the one through whom all sins 
 are forgiven. For Christ is the historic 
 representative, accepted as such by an 
 ever increasing proportion of the race, of 
 that self-sacrificing, outgoing love which 
 holds dear and sacred every human soul, 
 however depraved. Since Christ means 
 that, and without that forgiveness is im- 
 possible, we rightly regard him as the 
 Forgiver and Saviour of all who have 
 sinned. There is no other door into the 
 sheepfold. Other foundation can no man 
 lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 
 92 
 
THE AGENT OF FORGIVENESS 
 
 All this, however, may be accepted either 
 in a dry, dead, traditional sense, or in a 
 fresh, vital, world-conquering sense. Of late 
 the world, and the church with it for the 
 most part, has accepted it in the dry, dead, 
 unfruitful sense. The church that takes it 
 in this sense is doomed. The preachers 
 that preach it are offering their dimin- 
 ishing congregations a gospel of mere 
 words. 
 
 If we are to save the world, we must 
 not merely report God's forgiveness, not 
 merely preach Christ's sacrificial love; we 
 must act it out, we must be the agents 
 of it. Apart from its human manifestation 
 in the Son, the Father's love would never 
 have become a potent force in the world. 
 Apart from the reproduction of Christ's 
 forgiveness in the life and attitude of his 
 followers, the world to-day will get no 
 more of Christ's forgiveness than if he had 
 never lived. Some one, who has the love 
 
 93 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 of Christ for men in his hearty must come 
 close to the individual sinner, touch him 
 at the sensitive point of his particular sin 
 with mingled kindness for him and con- 
 demnation of the sin, and win him to a life 
 in which he shall share with the one who 
 forgives him, and with Christ and the 
 Father, the condemnation which love 
 passes on his repented sin. Preaching of 
 Christ, when backed by a congregation 
 who are practicing his forgiveness, preach- 
 ing of Christ to sinners who know in their 
 own experience what it is to receive gen- 
 uine human forgiveness from another, or 
 better still, who know what it is to give it 
 to another, is indeed powerful to save. 
 But what saves is not the mere report, nor 
 yet the far-off historic fact reported, but 
 the reported fact interpreted by some hu- 
 man friend in whom it lives and loves 
 anew. Ecclesiasticism is like an army of 
 generals, who plan campaigns and give 
 94 
 
THE AGENT OF FORGIVENESS 
 
 orders which nobody executes and obeys. 
 Like the soldiers in battle it is the laymen, 
 or the clergy as pastors doing essentially 
 la3^men's hand-to-hand personal work, who 
 bring forgiveness home to the heart of 
 the sinner, and so save souls. 
 
 In saying this, it is not meant to deny 
 that the preacher, and even the priest, has 
 an important function to perform. The fun- 
 damental work, the actual transmission of 
 forgiveness from God through one soul to 
 another, is a personal, hand-to-hand, heart- 
 to-heart relation, of which no rites, cere- 
 monies, preachments, or proclamations can 
 ever take the place. 
 
 Preacher and priest are secondary and 
 subordinate : ministers and servants, as Jesus 
 ordained them to be. Laymen, and minis- 
 ters acting as laymen, that is as individual 
 men in personal relations with other individ- 
 ual men, do the real work. Yet in keeping 
 laymen up to their Christian privilege, 
 
 95 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 in holding before them Christ as the great 
 historic leader, and God as the infinite love, 
 the preacher performs a valuable work. 
 The more its subordinate and serviceable 
 character is recognized, the more important 
 does it become. 
 
 The actual agents of God's forgiveness 
 are individual Christian men and women. 
 The real church is the company of those 
 who have God's forgiving love in their 
 hearts, and bestow it on their fellow men. 
 Wherever one such soul forgives and loves 
 another, however unworthy that other be, 
 there the kingdom of God comes and 
 spreads. Whoever forgives others has the 
 indispensable experience within him by 
 which to interpret the reported and trans- 
 mitted forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ. 
 To those who lack that experience in them- 
 selves, or lack some human friend to act as 
 its interpreter to them, forgiveness, how- 
 ever eloquently reported in book or ser- 
 
 96 
 
THE AGENT OF FORGIVENESS 
 
 mon, remains a sealed message, an untrans- 
 lated and untranslatable cipher. 
 
 If this sounds strange and startling to our 
 modern ears, it is simply an indication that, 
 when stated in other than traditional terms, 
 the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is something 
 we have never so much as heard of, and in 
 which we have no vital faith. For that doc- 
 trine is simply the truth set forth above, 
 that God does his forgiving, saving, regen- 
 erating work through the touch of a heart 
 that has his love on the life of another who 
 needs it. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE PO.WER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 The best test of the position taken in 
 this book is its interpretation of the words 
 in which Jesus, discussing with his disciples 
 this subject of Sin and its Forgiveness, 
 conferred the power to bind and loose. 
 " Verily I say unto you, What things soever 
 ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in 
 heaven: and what things soever ye shall 
 loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 
 
 There are three possible interpretations 
 of these words. First, the interpretation of 
 traditional ecclesiasticism. According to 
 this view, heaven and earth are distinct 
 places, to be occupied by the individual soul 
 only at separate times. God is in heaven in 
 a sense in which He is not on the earth. 
 There He has certain terms, which to our 
 
 98 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 limited understanding must appear as more 
 or less arbitrary, on which in his discretion 
 He forgives those whom He sees fit to for- 
 give. 
 
 At a certain time God sent his Son into 
 the world, announcing his advent by signs 
 and wonders intended to accredit the mes- 
 senger and attest the message. His Son was 
 authorized to forgive sinners who conform 
 to the terms revealed. 
 
 Before leaving the world, Jesus trans- 
 mitted this miraculously attested power to 
 his Apostles, and they in turn have trans- 
 mitted it to their successors, who have the 
 power to pronounce a forgiveness here 
 which assures absolution hereafter, and, on 
 the other hand, to pronounce an anathema 
 here which will exclude from blessedness 
 hereafter. 
 
 It is needless to criticise this view. 
 The modern world, at least the intelligent 
 and thoughtful portion, has outgrown it, 
 99 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 and the conceptions on which it rests. 
 Other things being equal, the thoughtful 
 modern man would not give the snap of his 
 fingers for the difference between ecclesi- 
 astical forgiveness of this traditional sort 
 and ecclesiastical condemnation. We pay no 
 more attention to it than the practical farmer 
 would pay to agricultural suggestions pur- 
 porting to be based on the results of ex- 
 periments conducted at some experiment 
 station on the planet Mars. For the hard 
 and fast distinctions between earth and 
 heaven, present and future, natural and su- 
 pernatural, priest and layman, God and 
 man, have completely broken down. 
 
 The second view, widely though not 
 consciously held by most Protestant sects, 
 is that Jesus did not mean much of anything 
 in particular by this power to bind and 
 loose. To the sinner it practically says, 
 "God is gracious; go to Him alone in 
 prayer; confess your sins and ask his for- 
 
 lOO 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 giveness, and He will forgive you." If you 
 ask for assurance, you will be referred to 
 the Bible, and the written promises con- 
 tained in specific verses, as final and suffi- 
 cient authority. All human mediation be- 
 tween the sinner on the one hand and God 
 and his promises in the Bible on the other 
 is dispensed with, save in so far as the 
 preacher, supported by the congregation, 
 proclaims the grace of God, and announces 
 his promised forgiveness. 
 
 This view, by reducing the function of 
 the church to that of a mere preaching 
 station, and sending the repentant sinner 
 straight to God, and Christ, and the Bible, 
 for forgiveness, relieves the Christian man 
 and the Christian community of that close 
 personal contact, illuminated by the insight 
 of love, which makes forgiveness a personal, 
 social relationship. The power to bind and 
 loose, on this view, is an utterly unintel- 
 ligible mystery. There is no place what- 
 loi 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 ever for it. No practical meaning can be 
 attached to it. The preacher is a mere re- 
 porter of a forgiveness which is offered in 
 the Bible, and is bestowed directly from 
 God upon the individual, without human 
 and social expression. 
 
 What wonder that, wherever this view is 
 held, the church is a declining power, a 
 waning influence! A church that has been 
 reduced to a mere preaching station, a 
 repository of traditions, a performer of rites 
 and ceremonies, is not far from its inevita- 
 ble extinction. The practical logic of this 
 view is that because God forgives sin, and 
 Christ came once for all to reveal the terms 
 of that forgiveness, therefore all that is left 
 is for preachers to preach, and laymen to 
 hear, the forgiveness of God as it was re- 
 vealed in Christ. In so far as that logic is 
 accepted, the minister is a mere reporter, 
 and the laity mere listeners. Such forgive- 
 ness by hearsay does not work, and was 
 
 I02 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 never intended to work. A church that does 
 nothing but listen to ministers who do no- 
 thing but talk is doomed to die of inanition. 
 Important sections of Protestantism are 
 dying that slow and painless death to-day. 
 
 If neither ecclesiastical pretensions on 
 the one hand, nor hearsay traditions on the 
 other, carry with them the power to bind 
 and loose, where does that power lie? 
 
 Forgiveness is a personal and social rela- 
 tion. It is personal kindness and good-will, 
 shining through intense disapproval of the 
 wrong the forgiven man has done. It in- 
 volves close and friendly contact with a 
 person whose conduct we shrink from and 
 deplore. It is not natural, and is therefore 
 rare. It is supernatural, and indicates the 
 presence of something superhuman, divine. 
 That something, of course, is lovej love in 
 its most costly, sacrificial form. 
 
 In the deepest sense God, and God alone, 
 forgives sins. That however is only another 
 103 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 way of saying what was said above, that 
 forgiveness is an act of supernatural, divine 
 love. For God is love; and what can be 
 done only in love is done in God and through 
 God. 
 
 In another sense, equally profound, Christ 
 is the one through whom all sins are for- 
 given. For Christ is the historic representa- 
 tive, accepted as such by an ever increasing 
 proportion of the race, of that self-sacrific- 
 ing, outgoing love which holds sacred every 
 human soul, however depraved. Since 
 Christ stands for that, and, without that, 
 forgiveness is impossible, we rightly regard 
 Christ as the Saviour of all who have sinned. 
 There is no other door into the sheepfold. 
 Other foundation can no man lay than that 
 is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 
 
 All this, however, as we have seen, may 
 
 be taken in either of two ways that are 
 
 about equally dead. Those who believe in 
 
 the mechanical, miraculous commission of 
 
 104 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 the church to bind and loose, and those 
 who think there is practically nothing for 
 the church to do but listen to a report of 
 what was done long ago, and is laid up in 
 heaven, find a meaning in these texts. In 
 addition to these two views, is there a third 
 view, which takes these truths in a fresh, 
 vital, world-conquering sense, and carries 
 with it the power to bind and loose so 
 really and truly that what the Christian 
 man and the Christian community forgive 
 here and now is forgiven universally and 
 forever, and what they refuse to forgive 
 stands unforgiven always and everywhere ? 
 Yes, there is. According to this view, 
 the view which this book has sought to 
 set forth, while God eternally forgives, and 
 Cl\rist revealed the divine forgiveness once 
 for all, yet it remains for Christian men 
 and women to embody and express, indi- 
 vidually, and as a community, this divine- 
 human forgiveness toward every person 
 105 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 who needs it, and is fitted to receive it. 
 Forgiveness is a personal relation, and re- 
 quires for its full and adequate expression 
 two parties, both human, sharing together 
 the condemnation of whatever has been 
 wrong in either; bearing toward each other 
 mutual respect, and mutual affection. Until 
 God's forgiveness is thus incarnated, until 
 Christ's forgiveness is thus reproduced, in 
 the specific situation where it is needed, 
 toward the particular individual who has 
 done the wrong, it remains something up 
 in the clouds, back in ancient history. It 
 is not a vital, flesh-and-blood reality, doing 
 its redeeming, transforming work in the 
 midst of breathing, erring, repenting men 
 and women, in the homes, and factories, 
 and farms, and stores, and offices of the 
 actual modern world. 
 
 If we are to help save the world, we 
 must not merely delegate God's forgive- 
 ness to an institution or an order; we must 
 1 06 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 not merely report it as a fact in eternity, 
 or as an event in past time. We must not 
 merely symbolize Christ's sacrificial love 
 upon the altar, or announce it from the pul- 
 pit: we must act it out; we must be the 
 agents of it. For though it is true that one 
 may learn of Christ's forgiveness from 
 sermon or Bible, even then it is expe- 
 rience of forgiveness by a human mother, 
 teacher, or friend, which gives the hearer 
 or reader the power to interpret in real 
 terms the re-ported or recorded forgiveness 
 of Christ. 
 
 Real forgiveness, genuine salvation, re- 
 quires, as has been said, that some one who 
 has the love of Christ for men in his heart 
 shall come close to the individual who 
 has done wrong, touch him at the sensitive 
 point of his particular wrong-doing with 
 mingled kindness for him and condemna- 
 tion for his sin, and win him to share with 
 the one who loves him, and with God, their 
 107 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 common condemnation of the wrong which 
 he has done. 
 
 Laymen, and pastors doing laymen's 
 personal work with individuals, are the 
 real agents of forgiveness. They actually 
 take the forgiveness of God in Christ, and 
 bestow it upon the man whom, in spite of 
 his shortcomings, they still welcome as a 
 brother and a friend. The community of 
 such laymen, sharing together the loving 
 and forgiving spirit of Christ, and mani- 
 festing it toward one another and toward 
 all, is the church. Whoever makes such 
 loving forgiveness the principle and spirit 
 of his life, thereby enters and abides in the 
 kingdom of God, and the body of Christ. 
 Wherever one such soul forgives and 
 loves another who has done wrong, there 
 the kingdom of God comes, there the 
 church of Christ extends and spreads. All 
 who have that experience, whether laymen 
 or clergymen, have the experience where- 
 io8 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 with to assure themselves that the reported 
 forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ includes 
 and applies to them; and to all whom, with 
 the insight of love, they lovingly forgive. 
 Loosed from condemnation on earth, they, 
 and all whom they forgive, are loosed in 
 heaven. 
 
 Finally, those who deliberately refuse a 
 proffered forgiveness, generously brought, 
 and adequately interpreted in loving hu- 
 man terms, those, in other words, who are 
 guilty of the one unforgivable sin, by their 
 own act bind themselves in a bondage to 
 sin, from which there is no escape. Conse- 
 quently, when any Christian, clergyman or 
 layman, finds a person in that condition, 
 and therefore finds it impossible to forgive 
 him for a sin to which he clings, and for 
 which he refuses to be forgiven, then and 
 there that Christian man leaves him bound 
 in a bondage which God does not unbind. 
 
 In failing to forgive a man in such an 
 109 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 attitude, the Christian man is simply doing 
 what God does. In other words, forgiving 
 love in God and forgiving love in man are 
 essentially the same; and what one cannot 
 consistently and properly do, the other can- 
 not consistently and properly do. Such is 
 the inevitable conclusion of the doctrine 
 that God was incarnate in Christ, and that 
 Christ's attitude toward sin and the sinner 
 is reincarnated in the person of every 
 Christian man, and in the community of 
 Christian men. Such, in other words, is the 
 inevitable conclusion of the doctrine that 
 love in God is of the same nature as love 
 in man, and that God does his saving and 
 regenerating work through the touch of 
 human hearts that have his love on other 
 human hearts that need it. 
 
 In the days when these doctrines were 
 
 clearly grasped and vitally believed, they 
 
 were called the Divinity of Christ, and the 
 
 Holy Spirit: and taken together in their 
 
 no 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 implications and relations constituted the 
 doctrine of the Trinity. If these formula- 
 tions are held to-day in very loose and 
 precarious fashion, it is simply because we 
 have lost our hold on those spiritual expe- 
 riences they were formulated to express. 
 
 If, then, the power to bind and loose re- 
 sides in the Christian man and the Chris- 
 tian community, irrespective of any special 
 order or office; if it is a layman's preroga- 
 tive and a layman's task, what, then, is the 
 prerogative and task of the clergy? How 
 does a clergyman differ from a layman? 
 
 Simply in this: that he is set apart to 
 lead his fellow Christians in this common 
 work, much as a standard-bearer is de- 
 tailed to carry the colors before the regi- 
 ment. As a standard-bearer, the man who 
 carries the colors does no fighting, though 
 he leads the way and encourages and in- 
 spires others to see and do their duty. Pre- 
 cisely so, the minister is detailed to keep 
 III 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 clearly before his eyes and before the e3^es 
 of his Christian comrades, to keep warm 
 within his own heart, and in the hearts of 
 his Christian comrades, the spirit of forgiv- 
 ing, sacrificing love; to discover opportu- 
 nity and need for its practical expression; 
 to mass the forces of righteousness at the 
 points where sin attacks society; and ever 
 to seek to win over to the service and love 
 of the right those who through ignorance, 
 or bad example, or appetite, or passion, 
 have become enlisted for the wrong. 
 
 As a pastor, a missionary, a settlement- 
 worker, a teacher, a friend, the Christian 
 minister will have abundant occasion and 
 opportunity to do, like any layman, the ac- 
 tual work of reproving, forgiving, and lov- 
 ing individual men, which is the essential 
 Christian work. Indeed, his relief from the 
 necessity of earning his livelihood in other 
 ways gives him a unique opportunity to do 
 these things. But in all such Christian ser- 
 
 112 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 vice, he has no authority different from 
 other men, or higher than theirs. He sim- 
 ply has the opportunity to gain and impart 
 the clearer intellectual grasp of spiritual 
 truth and motive, and the leisure to make 
 of them more frequent and constant appli- 
 cation. He is the servant of those who 
 serve, the minister of those who minister. 
 In assigning to the minister this secon- 
 dary and subordinate function, as Jesus 
 assigned it to his disciples, when he girded 
 himself with a towel and washed their feet, 
 we are not degrading but rather exalting 
 the ministry. For Jesus himself was among 
 men as one who served. The only rank 
 recognized in the kingdom of heaven is 
 gradation of service; and in that grada- 
 tion, the last to think of himself and his 
 special prerogatives stands first in the esti- 
 mation of his Lord; the lowest in preten- 
 sions is highest in usefulness; the least in 
 desiring to have others look up to him is 
 113 
 
SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 greatest in the appreciation with which the 
 Master looks down upon him. To hold the 
 love of the Father in his heart, and the life 
 of the Master before his eyes, with so 
 much learning and devotion that brothers 
 by his side shall catch from him the vision 
 and the fire, and share with him the com- 
 mon task of reproving and condemning the 
 sins that dishonor God, hurt men, and harm 
 society; and at the same time forgiving 
 and loving every brother, however guilty, 
 whom forgiving love can reach and touch 
 and transform and save ; — this is the pre- 
 cious privilege, the glorious prerogative of 
 the minister; all the more precious and glo- 
 rious because of its Christlike character of 
 simple, humble, human serviceableness. 
 
 The church and the clergy, therefore, 
 are simply the community of Christian 
 men and women, and its appointed lead- 
 ers, who are united in a common hatred 
 of all forms of sin, whether in themselves 
 114 
 
THE POWER TO BIND AND LOOSE 
 
 or others, a common desire to stop the 
 wretchedness that sin entails on its vic- 
 tims, and a common effort to save those 
 who are guilty of it from their meanness 
 and their shame. 
 
 The power to bind and loose, accord- 
 ingly, inheres in every Christian man, and 
 every group of Christian men, in propor- 
 tion to the intensity of their love, and the 
 insight love imparts. It is simply the power 
 to discriminate between the great mass of 
 sins which are forgivable because men 
 have fallen into them in a passionate pur- 
 suit of some petty good, which has blinded 
 their eyes and hardened their hearts so that 
 they do not see clearly and feel intensely 
 the meanness of their deeds and the misery 
 they cause, on the one hand, and the one 
 sin which is unforgivable, because it shuts 
 out the love that would forgive and save, 
 on the other hand. 
 
 If most sins, both external and internal, 
 "5 
 
' SIN AlVD ITS FORGIVENESS 
 
 are wrought in this blind pursuit of petty 
 good, and yet there is one sin a man may 
 commit with eyes wide open to the beauty 
 of the forgiving love he scorns and tram- 
 ples on, then the power to bind and loose, 
 the power to grant a forgiveness and pass 
 a condemnation which are ratified in hea- 
 ven, and hold always and everywhere, re- 
 sides not alone in God, not alone in Christ, 
 not exclusively in the clergy, but in every 
 Christian man who shares with the Father 
 and with Christ their forgiving love and 
 the spiritual insight forgiving love imparts. 
 
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