English
But the same unveiling of God to our mind's eye, which contrasts His holiness with our sin, assures us also of our forgiveness in His love. He is represented by our faith as one who * frankly forgives;' and we are assured that the only condition He re- quires for this is that fitness of heart on our part, without which the other cannot be, but the beginning of which is attested even by our prayer, and the perfecting of which will be our health and our reconcilement to God. So great may seem the gulf to cross, for those who have sinned deeply, or who repent deeply, that I can never wonder at any awful austerities which in India or elsewhere men may inflict upon themselves in seeking a bridge of atonement. But now consider, how can such things bring us nearer to God? Suppose, first, that they are done by way of repairing any wrong to our fellow-men. In this case they are morally right, and where feasible, are requisite. Suppose, secondly, that they have the nature of prayers or sacrifices, which both express and deepen our contrition or change of will before God. In this case they are religiously right, and are the appointed means of cleansing our conscience. Extend the same idea a little farther, and suppose them, thirdly, to be dedication of ourselves or our substance to some good work, as if, for instance, a man should expose himself to contagion of small-pox or the plague, for the sake of tending in charity the sick. Here also they are very right, and so far as they come of a loving or devoted spirit, are doubtless acceptable to God, as well as means of improving ourselves. But no rightminded man will claim payment for such works of love, which are their own exceeding great reward, although God may sometimes honour them with an overflow of happiness or accompaniment beyond their efiicacy as claims. Still less will any deep thinker imagine such works which are done only through the Divine help, to be the causes of that Divine love, which first gave us *the preparation of heart' to do them. They are not grounds of a forgiveness 334 FORGIVENESS AND PENANCE. which must have preceded them. Nor, as you have justly observed, could works done in time merit an eternal reward. How far He who is eternal, and to whom the future is as the present, may in His wisdom lay a train of conditions, so that what are with Him only links and processes may seem to us for a moment superficially causes, inasmuch as they may be indispensable, I will not too nicely argue. But certainly what we feel to be Divine gifts to us are not grounds of meritorious claim upon the Giver. They would lose even their animating spirit, and the glory would perish from them, if they were done mercenarily, or in proud self-esteem. Nor, as you will own, could we ever do enough to be more than unprofitable servants to Him whose right in us is as infinite as Himself. Such things then may come after the forgiveness of sins as its fruits, its witnesses, and I would not mind saying its indis{)ensable conditions; but we must find in the very offering of them to God our happiness, and bless Him for them, rather than make them precedents to His forgiveness, or claims upon His favour. " But I have been speaking of good works as the sacrifices of a thankful heart, and even such I have denied to be properly propitiatory, or independently meritorious. I wish you to con- sider hereafter, how far you go along with such an idea, as your language might partly imply, or whether you have never risen to the ftiU Christian conception on this point. But now suppose, fourthly, that the things pleaded as grounds of Divine favour are not good works, so much as formal penances, and austerities of self-inflicted pain. Such seems, to strangers at least, to be too much the character of the Hindd asceticism and mortifica- tion. In so far as this is so, your own better wisdom should teach you, that such miserable efforts of us worms of an hour cannot merit eternal reward. But I go farther, and maintain, they are not even pleasing to God, but injurious to His holy name. For men who torture their bodies till they become use- less, unfit themselves for active good in the world, which is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. They increase pain, which is JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 335 against His blessed design, and so tliej obstruct His kingdom, aiiid enlarge that of the enemy. They cannot even change the Eternal Mind, which is ^ without shadow of changing ;* still less increase His love to them, which was infinite from the begin- ning. Rather see if they do not nm counter to His love, wliich wills their good, and so dishonour Him by an unchildlike mistrust of our Heavenly Father. If He sees pain necessary for us, He can send it at His will, which in every way we pray may be done. But if you introduce it in self-will, and beyond the necessities of right nature, which is the embodiment of His law, consider if you are not wandering greatly from His mind. " I wish I could persuade you, my dear friends, how much better than all this will-worship of self-inflicted torture, is that clear unveiling of the Divine love, which shews God as the Author and Giver of all good things to soul as well as body, and as more ready to hear than we are to pray. In such a faith the Christian is taught to say in simplicity, Forgive us our trespasses. The heart which breathes this prayer in confidence of its being after the Divine Will, and therefore granted, is, in the language of technical theologians, * justified by faith,' and by that better breathing of God which has guided it so far, is led on into all holy impulses and deeds. That these things are 80, is to Christians who live by their Lord's prayer, guaranteed in the following clause, as we forgive them that trespass against us. Here the Divine Wisdom teaches us how simple is the condition of our being forgiven in Heaven. Here also is revealed enough for our practical guidance, of the causes of misery in the world. Through pride we are angry and revengeful ; through anger and revenge, all war and mischief from man to man come, like evil B&kshasas, into the fair garden of delight which God had planted. AH things wild and tempestuous in nature are more easily controlled by law, than the agitated heart of man, whose immortal being makes his capacity for evil as boundless as for good. Yet the strongest passions may be tamed by that instinct of fear, which is a part of the law of self-preservation. 336 JUSTIFICATION. SANCTIFICATION. Thufl then Grod tames our wrath to our fellows, by revealing to us the possibility of what may fall upon ourselves. If we forgive not, neither are we truly praying to be forgiven. But if the sins which so easily encompass us, and the adherent infirmities of our life, are reckoned against us, and much more, if our pre- sumptuous violation of our better minds, and all the secrets of our heart, are brought to inexorable account in the light before which all thoughts are open, we may truly ask, who shall stand ? Yet * frank forgiveness' of God will not save us from such a trial, unless we forgive them that trespass against us. And as such a terror may with even the hardest natures impose the necessity of forgiving others, so to nobler spirits, and perhaps to all men once softened by an unveiling of the infinite compassion of our Heavenly Father, the sense of being forgiven is a more gracious persuasion to forgive. Thus the milder virtues, such as in India you seem to value, come out eminently in the religion of Christ. For as no other faith has so full a persuasion of that love of God which passeth knowledge, no other is so naturally firuitful in thoughts of kindness and words of meekness, and in well-doing to men. Such was the natural tendency, and such is in experience the fruit of a faith which more than any other in the world exalts both the dread holiness of God, and His infinite tenderness ; which abases man by a sense of sin, and exalts him by assurance of forgiveness ; and which, shrinking from the pride of putting our creature frames on a level with the very substance of the Creator, yet by participation of the holiest breathing, and so by a fellowship of spirit, binds all men into a brotherhood, as children of our Father which is in Heaven. " And lead us not into temptation.