There are questions which having been again and again settled, still from time to time, present themselves for _re_-solution; errors which having been refuted, and cut up by the roots, re-appear in the next century as fresh and vigorous as ever. Like the fabled monsters of old, from whose dissevered neck the blood sprung forth and formed fresh heads, multiplied and indestructible; or like the weeds, which, extirpated in one place, sprout forth vigorously in another.
In every such case it may be taken for granted that the root of the matter has not been reached; the error has been exposed, but the truth which lay at the bottom of the error has not been disengaged. Every error is connected with a truth; the truth being perennial, springs up again as often as circ.u.mstances foster it, or call for it, and the seeds of error which lay about the roots spring up again in the form of weeds, as before.
A popular ill.u.s.tration of this may be found in the belief in the appearance of the spirits of the departed. You may examine the evidence for every such alleged apparition; you may demonstrate the improbability; you may reduce it to an impossibility; still the popular feeling will remain; and there is a lurking superst.i.tion even among the enlightened, which in the midst of professions of incredulity, shows itself in a readiness to believe the wildest new tale, if it possess but the semblance of an authentication. Now two truths lie at the root of this superst.i.tion. The first is the reality of the spirit-world, and the instinctive belief in it. The second is the fact that there are certain states of health in which the eye creates the objects which it perceives. The death-blow to such superst.i.tion is only struck when we have not only proved that men have been deceived, but shown besides how they came to be deceived; when science has explained the optical delusion, and shown the physiological state in which such apparitions become visible. Ridicule will not do it. Disproof will not do it. So long as men feel that there is a spirit-world, and so long as to some the impression is vivid that they have seen it, you spend your rhetoric in vain. You must show the truth that lies below the error.
The principle we gain from this is that you cannot overthrow falsehood by negation, but by establishing the antagonistic truth. The refutation which is to last must be positive, not negative. It is an endless work to be uprooting weeds: plant the ground with wholesome vegetation, and then the juices which would have otherwise fed rankness will pour themselves into a more vigorous growth; the dwindled weeds will be easily raked out then. It is an endless task to be refuting error. Plant truth, and the error will pine away.
The instance to which all this is preliminary, is the pertinacious hold which the belief in a human absolving power retains upon mankind.
There has perhaps never yet been known a religion without such a belief. There is not a savage in the islands of the South Pacific who does not believe that his priest can shield him from the consequences of sin. There was not a people in antiquity who had not dispensers of Divine favour. That same belief pa.s.sed from Paganism into Romanism. It was exposed at the period of the Reformation. A mighty reaction was felt against it throughout Europe. Apparently the whole idea of human priesthood was proved, once and for ever, to be baseless; human mediation, in every possible form, was vehemently controverted; men were referred back to G.o.d as the sole absolver.
Yet now again, three centuries after, the belief is still as strong as ever. That which we thought dead is alive again, and not likely it seems, to die. Recent revelations have shown that confession is daily made in the country whose natural manners are most against it; private absolution asked by English men and given by English priests. A fact so significant might lead us well to pause, and ask ourselves whether we have found the true answer to the question. The negation we have got--the vehement denial; we are weary of its reiteration: but the positive truth which lies at the bottom of this craving--where is that?
Parliaments and pulpits, senators and clergymen, have vied with each other in the vehemence with which they declare absolution un-Christian, un-English. All that is most abominable in the confessional has been with unsparing and irreverent indelicacy forced before the public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and purity are beyond slander"s reach, come and crave a.s.surance of forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but G.o.d only?"
Shall we say it is all blasphemy; an impious intrusion upon the prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may; it is _popular_ to say we ought; but you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the Pharisees in this text: we establish a negation; but a negation is only one side of truth.
Moreover, we have been a.s.serting that for 300 years, with small fruits. We keep a.s.serting, Man cannot give a.s.surance that sin is pardoned; in other words, man cannot absolve: but still the heart craves human a.s.surance of forgiveness. What truth have we got to supply that craving? We shall therefore, rather try to fathom the deeps of the positive truth which is the true reply to the error; we shall try to see whether there is not a real answer to the craving contained in the Redeemer"s words, "The Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins." What power is there in human forgiveness? What does absolution mean in the lips of a son of man? These are our questions for to-day. We shall consider two points.
I. The impotency of the negation.
II. The power of the positive truth.
The Pharisees denied the efficacy of human absolution: they said, "None can forgive sins, but G.o.d only:" that was a negation. What did they effect by their system of negations? They conferred no peace; they produced no holiness. It would be a great error to suppose that the Pharisees were hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the term--that is, pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they felt no anxiety. They _were_ anxious, in their way. They heard a startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart--in their own language, "this fellow--of whom every man knew whence he was," were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work onwards; bidding men"s consciences be at rest; and commanding them not to _fear_ the G.o.d whom they had offended, but to _trust_ in Him--what would become of morality and religion? This presumptuous Absolver would make men careless about both. If the indispensable safeguards of penalty were removed, what remained to restrain men from sin?
For the Pharisees had no notion of any other goodness than that which is restrained; they could conceive no goodness free, but only that which is produced by rewards and punishments--law-goodness, law-righteousness: to dread G.o.d, not to love and trust Him, was their conception of religion. And this, indeed, is the _ordinary_ conception of religion--the ordinary meaning implied to most minds by the word religion. The word religion means, by derivation, restriction or obligation--obligation to do, obligation to avoid. And this is the negative system of the Pharisees--scrupulous avoidance of evil, rather than positive and free pursuit of excellence. Such a system never produced anything but barren denial. "_This_ is wrong;" "_that_ is heresy;" "_that_ is dangerous."
There was another cla.s.s of men who denied human power of absolution.
They were called Scribes or writers--pedants, men of ponderous learning and accurate definitions; from being mere transcribers of the law, they had risen to be its expounders. They could define the exact number of yards that might be travelled on the Sabbath-day without infringement of the law; they could decide, according to the most approved theology, the respective importance of each duty; they would tell you, authoritatively, which was the _great_ commandment of the law. The Scribe is a man who turns religion into etiquette: his idea of G.o.d is that of a monarch, transgression against whom is an offence against statute law, and he the Scribe, is there to explain the prescribed conditions upon which the offence may be expiated; he has no idea of admission to the sovereign"s presence, except by compliance with certain formalities which the Scribe is commissioned to declare.
There are therefore Scribes in all ages--Romish Scribes, who distinguish between venial and mortal sin, and apportion to each its appointed penance and absolution. There are Protestant Scribes, who have no idea of G.o.d but as an incensed judge, and prescribe certain methods of appeasing him--a certain price--in consideration of which He is willing to sell forgiveness; men who accurately draw the distinction between the different kinds of faith--faith historical and faith saving; who bewilder and confuse all natural feeling; who treat the natural love of relations as if it were an idolatry as great as bowing down to mammon; who make intelligible distinction between the work that _may_ and the work that may _not_ be done on the Sabbath-day; who send you into a perilous consideration of the workings of your own feelings, and the examination of your spiritual experiences, to ascertain whether you have the feelings which give you a right to call G.o.d a Father. They hate the Romish Scribe as much as the Jewish Scribe hated the Samaritan and called him heretic. But in their way they are true to the spirit of the Scribe.
Now the result of this is fourfold. Among the tender-minded, despondency; among the vainer, spiritual pride; in the case of the slavish, superst.i.tion; with the hard-minded, infidelity. Ponder it well, and you will find these four things rife amongst us: Despondency, Spiritual Pride, Superst.i.tion, and Infidelity. In this way we have been going on for many years. In the midst of all this, at last we are informed that the confessional is at work again; whereupon astonishment and indignation are loudly expressed. It is not to be borne that the priests of the Church of England should confess and absolve in private. Yet it is only what might have been expected.
With our Evangelicalism, Tractarianism, Scribeism, Pharisaism, we have ceased to front the _living fact_--we are as zealous as Scribes and Pharisees ever were for negatives; but in the meantime Human Nature, oppressed and overborne, gasping for breath, demands something real and living. It cannot live on controversies. It cannot be fed on protests against heresy, however vehement. We are trying who can protest loudest. Every book, every journal, rings with warnings.
"Beware!" is written upon everything. Beware of Rome; beware of Geneva; beware of Germany; some danger on every side; Satan everywhere--G.o.d _nowhere_; everywhere some man to be shunned or dreaded--nowhere one to be loved freely and without suspicion. Is it any wonder if men and women, in the midst of negations, cry, "Ye warn me from the error, but who will guide me into truth? I want guidance.
I am sinful, full of evil! I want forgiveness! Absolve me; tell me that I am pardoned; help me to believe it. Your quarrels do not help me; if you cannot do _that_, it matters little what you _can_ do. You have restricted G.o.d"s love, and narrowed the path to heaven; you have hampered religion with so many mysterious questions and quibbles that I cannot find the way to G.o.d; you have terrified me with so many snares and pitfalls on every side, that I dare not tread at all. Give me peace; give me human guidance: I want a human arm to lean on."
This is a cry, I believe, becoming daily more pa.s.sionate, and more common. And no wonder that all our information, public and private, is to the same effect--that the recent converts have found peace in Rome; for the secret of the power of Rome is this--that she grounds her teaching, not on variable feelings and correct opinions, but on _facts_. G.o.d is not a highly probable G.o.d, but a _fact_. G.o.d"s forgiveness is not a feeling, but a _fact_; and a material symbolic fact is the witness of the invisible one. Rome puts forward her absolution--her false, priestly, magical absolution--a visible fact, as a witness of the invisible. And her perversion prevails because founded on a truth.
II. The power of the positive truth.
Is it any wonder, if taught on every side distrust of man, the heart should by a violent reaction, and by an extravagant confidence in a priest, proclaim that its normal, natural state is not distrust, but trust?
What is forgiveness?--It is G.o.d reconciled to us. What is absolution?--It is the authoritative declaration that G.o.d is reconciled. Authoritative: that is a real power of conveying a sense and feeling of forgiveness. It is the power of the Son of Man _on earth_ to forgive sins. It is man, G.o.d"s image, representing, by his forgiveness on earth, G.o.d"s forgiveness in heaven.
Now distinguish G.o.d"s forgiveness of sin from an arresting of the consequences of sin. When G.o.d forgives a sin, it does not follow that He stops its consequences: for example, when He forgives the intemperate man whose health is ruined, forgiveness does not restore his health. Divine pardon does not interfere with the laws of the universe, for it is itself one of those laws. It is a law that penalty follows transgression. Forgiveness will not save from penalty; but it alters the feelings with which the penalty is accepted. Pain inflicted with a surgeon"s knife for a man"s good, is as keen as that which results from the knife of the torturer; but in the one case it is calmly borne, because remedial--in the other it exasperates, because it is felt to be intended by malevolence. So with the difference between suffering which comes from a sin which we hope G.o.d has forgiven, and suffering which seems to fall hot from the hand of an angry G.o.d. It is a fearful truth, that so far as we know at least, the consequences of an act are connected with it indissolubly. Forgiveness does not arrest them; but by producing softness and grateful penitence, it transforms them into blessings. This is G.o.d"s forgiveness; and absolution is the conveyance to the conscience of the conviction of forgiveness: to absolve is to free--to comfort by strengthening--to afford repose from fear.
Now it was the way of the Redeemer to emanc.i.p.ate from sin by the freeness of absolution. The dying thief, an hour before a blasphemer, was unconditionally a.s.sured; the moment the sinner"s feelings changed towards G.o.d, He proclaimed that G.o.d was reconciled to him: "This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise." And hence, speaking humanly, hence, from this absolving tone and spirit, came His wondrous and unparalleled power with sinful, erring hearts; hence the life and fresh impulse which He imparted to the being and experience to those with whom He dealt. Hence the maniac, freed from the legion, sat at His feet, clothed, and in his right mind. Hence the outcast woman, whom human scorn would have hardened into brazen effrontery, hearing an unwonted voice of human sympathy, "washed His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head."
And this is what we have forgotten: we have not yet learned to trust the power of redeeming love; we do not believe in the omnipotence of grace, and the might of an appeal to the better parts, and not the slavish parts of human nature. Settle it in your minds, the absolving power is the central secret of the Gospel. Salvation is unconditional; not an offer, but _a Gift_; not clogged with conditions, but free as the air we breathe. G.o.d welcomes back the prodigal. G.o.d loves without money and without price. To this men reply gravely, It is dangerous to speak thus; it is perilous to dispense with the safeguards of restriction. Law! law! there is nothing like law--a salutary fear--for making men holy. O blind Pharisee! had you ever known the spring, the life which comes from feeling _free_, the gush of grat.i.tude with which the heart springs to duty when all chains are shattered, and it stands fearless and free in the Light, and in the Love of G.o.d--you would understand that a large trusting charity, which can throw itself on the better and more generous impulses of a laden spirit, is the safest as well as the most beautiful means of securing obedience.
So far however, there will not be much objection to the doctrine: it will be admitted that absolution is true in the lips of Christ, because of His Divinity. It will be said He was G.o.d, and G.o.d speaking on earth is the same thing as G.o.d speaking in heaven. No my brethren, it is _not_ the same thing. Christ forgiving on earth is _a new truth_ added to that of G.o.d"s forgiving in heaven. It is not the same truth.
The one is forgiveness by Deity; the other is the declaration of forgiveness by Humanity. He bade the palsied man walk, that they might know that "the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins."
Therefore we proceed a step further. The same power He delegated to His Church which He had exercised Himself. "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted." Now perhaps, it will be replied to this, that that promise belongs to the apostles; that they were supernaturally gifted to distinguish genuine from feigned repentance; to absolve therefore, was their natural prerogative, but that we have no right to say it extends beyond the apostles.
We therefore, bring the question to a point by referring to an instance in which an apostle did absolve. Let us examine whether St.
Paul confined the prerogative to himself. "To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also: for to whom I forgave anything for your sakes, forgave I it in the person of Christ."
Observe now: it is quite true here that the apostle absolved a man whose excommunication he had formerly required; but he absolved him because the congregation absolved him; not as a plenipotentiary supernaturally gifted to convey a mysterious benefit, but as himself an organ and representative of the Church. The power of absolution therefore, belonged to the Church, and to the apostle through the Church. It was a power belonging to _all_ Christians: to the apostle, because he was a Christian, not because he was an apostle. A priestly power no doubt, because Christ has made all Christians kings and priests.
Now let us turn again, with this added light, to examine the meaning of that expression, "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins." Mark that form of words--not Christ as G.o.d, but Christ as Son of man. It was manifestly said by Him, not solely as divine, but rather as human, as the Son of man; that is, as Man. For we may take it as a rule: when Christ calls himself Son of man, He is a.s.serting His Humanity. It was said by the High Priest of Humanity in the name of the race. It was said on the principle that human nature is the reflection of G.o.d"s nature: that human love is the image of G.o.d"s love; and that human forgiveness is the type and a.s.surance of divine forgiveness.
In Christ Humanity was the perfect type of Deity, and therefore Christ"s absolution was always the exact measure and counterpart of G.o.d"s forgiveness. Herein lies the deep truth of the doctrine of His eternal priesthood--the Eternal Son--the Humanity of the Being of G.o.d--the ever Human mind of G.o.d. The Absolver ever lives. The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son--hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.
But further than this. In a subordinate, because less perfect degree, the forgiveness of a man as man carries with it an absolving power.
Who has not felt the load taken from his mind when the hidden guilt over which he had brooded long has been acknowledged, and met by forgiving human sympathy, especially at a time when he expected to be treated with coldness and reproof? Who has not felt how such a moment was to him the dawn of a better hope, and how the merciful judgment of some wise and good human being seemed to be the type and the a.s.surance of G.o.d"s pardon, making it credible? Unconsciously it may be, but still in substance really, I believe some such reasoning as _this_ goes on in the whispers of the heart--"He loves me, and has compa.s.sion on me--will not G.o.d forgive? He, this man, made in G.o.d"s image, does not think my case hopeless. Well, then, in the larger love of G.o.d it is not hopeless." Thus, and only thus, can we understand the _ecclesiastical_ act. Absolution, the prerogative of our humanity, is represented by a formal act of the Church.
Much controversy and angry bitterness has been spent on the absolution put by the Church of England into the lips of her ministers--I cannot think with justice--if we try to get at the root of these words of Christ. The priest proclaims forgiveness authoritatively as the organ of the congregation--as the voice of the Church, in the name of Man and G.o.d. For human nature represents G.o.d. The Church represents what human nature is and ought to be. The minister represents the Church.
He speaks therefore, in the name of our G.o.dlike, human nature. He declares a divine fact, he does not create it. There is no magic in his absolution: he can no more forgive whom G.o.d has not forgiven, by the formula of absolution, or reverse the pardon of him whom G.o.d has absolved by the formula of excommunication, than he can transfer a demon into an angel by the formula of baptism. He declares what every one has a right to declare, and ought to declare by his lips and by his conduct: but being a minister, he declares it authoritatively in the name of every Christian who by his Christianity is a priest to G.o.d; he specializes what is universal; as in baptism, he seals the universal Sonship on the individual by name, saying, "The Sonship with which Christ has redeemed all men, I hereby proclaim for this child;"
so by absolution he specializes the universal fact of the love of G.o.d to those who are listening then and there, saying, "The Love of G.o.d the Absolver, I authoritatively proclaim to be _yours_."
In the Service for the Visitation of the Sick, the Church of England puts into the lips of her ministers words quite unconditional: "I absolve thee from all thy sins." You know that pa.s.sage is constantly objected to as Romish and superst.i.tious. I would not give up that precious pa.s.sage. I love the Church of England, because she has dared to claim her inheritance--because she has courage to a.s.sert herself as what she ought to be--G.o.d"s representative on earth. She says to her minister, Stand there before a darkened spirit, on whom the shadows of death have begun to fall: in human flesh and blood representing the Invisible,--with words of human love making credible the Love Eternal.
Say boldly, I am here to declare not a perhaps, _but a fact_. I forgive thee in the name of Humanity. And so far as Humanity represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of G.o.d"s. She does not put into her ministers" lips words of incantation. He cannot bless whom G.o.d has not blessed--he cannot curse whom G.o.d has not cursed. If the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a heart diseased, and binding up the wound that _will_ bleed afresh, to which no a.s.surances can give comfort, because they are not authoritative, it must have crossed your mind that such a power as that which the Church of England claims, if it were believed, is exactly the remedy you want. You must have felt that even the formula of the Church of Rome would be a blessed power to exercise, could it but once be accepted as a pledge that all the past was obliterated, and that from that moment a free untainted future lay before the soul--you must have _felt_ that; you must have wished you had dared to _say_ it. My whole spirit has absolved my erring brother. Is G.o.d less merciful than I? Can I--dare I--say or think it conditionally? Dare I say, I hope? May I not, must I not, say, _I know_ G.o.d has forgiven you?
Every man whose heart has truly bled over another"s sin, and watched another"s remorse with pangs as sharp as if the crime had been his own, _has_ said it. Every parent has said it who ever received back a repentant daughter, and opened out for her a new hope for life. Every mother has said it who ever by her hope against hope for some profligate, protested for a love deeper and wider than that of society. Every man has said it who forgave a deep wrong. See then, _why_ and _how_ the church absolves. She only exercises that power which belongs to every son of man. If society were Christian--if society, by its forgiveness and its exclusion, truly represented the mind of G.o.d--there would be no necessity for a Church to speak; but the absolution of society and the world does not represent by any means G.o.d"s forgiveness. Society absolves those whom G.o.d has _not_ absolved--the proud, the selfish, the strong, the seducer; society refuses return and acceptance to the seduced, the frail, and the sad penitent whom G.o.d has accepted; therefore it is necessary that a selected body, through its appointed organs, should do in the name of Man what man, as such, does not. The Church is the ideal of Humanity.
It represents what G.o.d intended man to be--what man is in G.o.d"s sight as beheld in Christ by Him; and the minister of the Church speaks as the representative of that ideal Humanity. Church absolution is an eternal protest, in the name of G.o.d the Absolver, against the false judgments of society.
One thing more. Beware of making this a dead formula. If absolution be not a living truth, it becomes a monstrous falsehood; if you take absolution as a mystical gift conveyed to an individual man called a priest, and mysteriously efficacious in _his_ lips, and his _alone_, you petrify a truth into death and unreality. I have been striving to show that absolution is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft, but a living, blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and to me, and just so far as we exercise it lovingly and wisely, in our lives, and with our lips, we help men away from sin: just so far as we do not exercise it, or exercise it falsely, we drive men to Rome. For if the heart cannot have a truth it will take a counterfeit of truth.
By every magnanimous act, by every free forgiveness with which a pure man forgives, or pleads for mercy, or a.s.sures the penitent, he proclaims this truth, that "the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins"--he exhibits the priestly power of humanity--_he does_ absolve; let theology say what it will of absolution, he gives peace to the conscience--he is a type and a.s.surance of what G.o.d is--he breaks the chains and lets the captive go free.
VI.
_Preached June 9, 1850._
THE ILLUSIVENESS OF LIFE.
"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is G.o.d."--Hebrews xi. 8-10.
Last Sunday we touched upon a thought which deserves further development. G.o.d promised Canaan to Abraham, and yet Abraham never inherited Canaan: to the last he was a wanderer there; he had no possession of his own in its territory: if he wanted even a tomb to bury his dead, he could only obtain it by purchase. This difficulty is expressly admitted in the text, "In the land of promise he sojourned as in a strange country;" he dwelt there in tents--in changeful, moveable tabernacles--not permanent habitations; he had no home there.
It is stated in all its startling force, in terms still more explicit, in the 7th chapter of the Acts, 5th verse, "And He gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet He promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child."
Now the surprising point is that Abraham, deceived, as you might almost say, did not complain of it as a deception; he was even grateful for the non-fulfilment of the promise: he does not seem to have expected its fulfilment; he did not look for Canaan, but for "a city which had foundations;" his faith appears to have consisted in disbelieving the letter, almost as much as in believing the spirit of the promise.
And herein lies a principle, which, rightly expounded, can help us to interpret this life of ours. G.o.d"s promises never are fulfilled in the sense in which they seem to have been given. Life is a deception; its antic.i.p.ations, which are G.o.d"s promises to the imagination, are never realized; they who know life best, and have trusted G.o.d most to fill it with blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of disappointments. And in the spirit of this text we have to say that it is a wise and merciful arrangement which ordains it thus.