Forgiveness.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2900, 1 June 1878, Page 4

Forgiveness.

The common conception of the pardon of sin upon repentance and conversion seems to us to embody a very transparent fallacy. " Who can forgive sins but God only?" asked the Pharisees. There is great confusion and contradiction in our ideas on this subject. God is the only being who can not forgive sins. " Forgiveness of sins " means one of two things: it either means saving a man from the consequences of his sins ;' that ia interposing between cause and effect, in which case it is working a miracle; or it means an engagement to forbear retaliation, a suppression of the natural anger felt against the offender by the offended party —a foregoing of vengeance on the part of the injured—in which meaning it is obviously quite inapplicable to a being exempt and aloof from human passions. When we entreat a fellow-creature to forgive the offences we have committed against him, we mean to entreat that he ■will not, by any act of his, punish us for them, that he will not revenge nor repay them, that he will retain no rancour in his breast against us on account of them ; and such a prayer addressed to a being of like passions to our-selves is i rational and intelligible, because we know that it is natural for him to feel anger at our injuries, and that, unless moved to the contrary, he will probably retaliate. But when we pray to our Heavenly Father to "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us," we overlook the want Of parallelism of the two cases, and show that our notions on the subject are altogether misty and confused ; for God cannot be injured by our sins. And He is inaccessible to the passions of anger and revenge. Yet the plain expression of the Book of Common Prayer—' Neither take Thou vengeance of our sins "—embodies the ,real signification attached "to the prayer for forgiveness, by aIJ who attach any definite signification to their prayers. Now this expression can only be consistently and intelligibly used by those who entertain the same low ideas of God as the ancient Greeks and Hebrews entertained—that is, who think of Him as an irritable, jealous, and averging Potentate.

If, from this inconsistency, we take refuge iv the other meaning of the prayer for forgiveness, and assume that*" it is a prayer to God that he will exempt us from the natural and appointed consequences of our misdeeds, it is important we should clearly define to our minds what it is that we are asking for. In our view of the matter, punishment for sins by the divine law is a wholly different thing and process from punishment for violation of human laws. It-is not an infliction for crime, imposed by an external authority and artificially executed by external force, but a natural and inevitable result of the offence —a sequence following an antecedent— a » consequence arising out of a cause :—

" The Lord is just: Ho made the chain

Which binds together guilt and pain." The punishment of sin consists in the consequences of sm. These form a penalty most adequately, heavy. A sin without its punishment is as impossible as a cause without effect. To pray that God will forgive us bur sins, therefore, appears in all logical accuracy to involve either a most unworthy couception of His character, or an entreaty of incredible audacity—viz., that He will daily work miracles in our behalf. It is either beseeching Him to renounce feelings, and intentions which it is impossible that a nature like. His should entertain : or it is asking Him to violate the eternal and harmonious order of the universe, for the comfort of one out of the infinite myriads of its inhabitants. ■

It may perhaps, be objected that punishment of sins may be viewed, not as a vengeance taken for injury or insult committed, nor yet as the simple and

necessary sequence of a cause—but as chastisement, inflicted to work repentance and amendment. But even when considered in this light, prayer for forgiveness remains still a marvellous inconsis-

tency. It then-becomes the entreaty of the sick man to his physician not to heal bim. " Forgive us our sins," then, means, '• Let us continue in bur iniquity." It is clear that the first meaning we have mentioned, as attached to the prayer for forgiveness of sins, is both the original and the prevailing one; and_ that it

irises from an entire misconception of ihe character of the Deity, and of the feelings with which He may be supposed to regard sin—a misconception inherited from our Pagan and Jewish predecessors ; \t is a prayer to. deprecate the just resentment of a Potentate whom; we have offended— a petition which would be more suitably addressed to an earthly foe or master than to a Heavenly Father. The

misconception is natural to a rude state of civilisation and of theology. It is the same notion from which arose sacrifices {i.e., offerings to appease wrath), and which caused their universality in early ages and among barbarous nations. It is a relic of anthropomorphism; a belief that God, like man, is enraged by neglect or disobedience, and can be pacified by submission and entreaty; a belief consistent and intelligible among the Greeks, inconsistent and .irrational among Christians, appropriate as applied to Jupiter, unmeaning and blasphemous as applied to Jehovah.

! We have, in fact, come to regard sin, not as ah injury done to our own nature, an offeDce against our own souls, disfiguring of the image of the Beautiful and Good, but as a personal affront offered to a powerful and avenging Being, which, unless apologised for, will bechastised as such. We luive come to regard it as an injury to another party, for which atonement and reparation can be made, and satisfaction can bo given ; not as a deed which cannot be undone, eternal in its consequence; an act which, once committed, is numbered with the irrevocable past. In a word, sin contains its own retributive penalty as surely, and as naturally, as the atom contains the oak. Its conse-, quence is its punishment, it needs no other, ar.d can have no heavier; and its consequence is involved in its commission, and. cannot be separated from it. Punishment (let us fix this in our minds) is not the execution of a sentence, but the occurrence of an effect. It is ordained to follow guilt by God, not as a judge*, but as the Creator and Legislator of the Universe. This conviction, once settled in our understandings, will wonderfully clear up our views on the subject of pardon and redemption. Redemption becomes, then, of necessity, not a saving but a regenerating process We can c saved from the punishment of sin only by being saved from its commission. IS 1 cither can there be any Buch thing as vica-

rious atonement or punishment. Punishment, being not the penalty, but the re suit of sin, being not an arbitrary and artificial annexation, but an ordinary and logical consequence, cannot be borne by other than the sinner. If the foregoing reflections arc sound, the awful, yet wholesome, conviction presses upon our minds that there can le no forgiveness of sins ; that God will not interpose between the cause and its consequence ; that — " whatsoever a man spweth, that shall he also reap ! "—Christian Eclecticism.—W. B. Gbeg.