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seemed to himself when Christ sat beside him silent; and how the life of the woman of Samaria seemed to her when he spoke to her; and how every one, as he came near them, felt within them this sense of their incompleteness, their lack of life, their positive and present sin becoming apparent to them, and a longing to be better; and with this longing to be better, and this leaving of the old life, they were brought into the new conditions of life which are everywhere present.

This air about us is healing and helpful to some; hurtful to others who, by foolish exposure, or causes they can not control, suffer from inflamed lungs. We say to them, Go where there are resinous breezes; go where there is a purer air. And if they go into the resinous air of the pine woods of Georgia or Alabama, very soon the healing quality that is in that air begins. to build up the broken lungs, and health comes. In a certain sense you may call this nature's forgiveness, when one has the consciousness of the wrong that has been done physically, and, needing to be well, puts himself under the conditions by means of which health shall come. Bring a diseased body into new and healthful conditions, and the healing process is set up and life comes.

When these troubled and diseased souls and broken lives came under the influence of these new thoughts of Jesus Christ, they came to love that which is best and to hate that which is evil. Then, all at once, the health processes of their souls were set up, the healing began, and health or salvation came to them; and whether the word forgive had been pronounced or not, they had been forgiven. So with this beautiful thought of peace-forgiveness of sin. Christianity went into the world in the spirit of Jesus Christ, and it found people everywhere in conscious need of it; for no one could be satisfied with the life he was living at that

time. Even the most correct and noble of the Stoics lifted up his arms as if trying to attain something that was beyond, feeling that it was not enough to make one's life correct; not enough simply to refrain from doing wrong; missing something which we believe Christ came to give-a positiveness to life.

So the Christian saint, or the Christian soldier, preached this gospel of the forgiveness of sins; preached it to the slave who, in his slavery to sin, had descended into the lowest depths of degradation of spirit; preached it to the woman who had fallen, and to the man under influence of evil habit; preached it to weary wanderers, seeking to bring them back to the place they had lost. That is why they were received so gladly, because on every hand were the dissatisfied, the troubled, the broken and the sinful, who longed for peace and longed for rest; and it said to them, "Your life is not lost, you may find it again; your place is not filled, you may take it again. God's face has not a frown; you shall see his smile again. Leave the old, take on this new life;" and it pronounced the forgiveness of sins.

This doctrine of the forgiveness of sin, with no theological entanglement or mystification, was pronounced, just as your mother pronounced it in times past, when you said, "I am sorry I did it," and she said, "Well, I forgive you," you having to suffer the pain in consequence of the wrong which you did, but caring not for that, only wanting to have the smile come back to that face again, to feel the softness of her touch upon your cheek, to gain her favor again. In just such simple ways as this Christ forgave, and it is so that God forgives the sins of the world.

I know how changes have come into this thought in the days past, but they were not put there by Christ, who simply said to every one of broken life and of troubled

spirit, Are you sorry for what you have done; do you want to be well, true, strong and whole again; will you leave that old life; will you seek to make restitution for the wrong which you have done; will you bear patiently the pain which is the consequence of your wrong doing; will you devote yourself in the future to making right, as far as possible, that which you have made wrong? Then your sins are forgiven you. In just such a simple manner as this, just as I might say to a child to-day, so he said then. This was the glad tidings that went out into the world, and this is the forgiveness of sins.

Let us leave that thought for just a moment and take up what I may call its complementary thought of retribution. For this is only one side of the truth, and retribution is another. Here are these great laws, which we call the laws of nature or the laws of God, laws for the ordering of the world in all its beauty and strength and goodness; laws which were meant to make everything work together for good to the whole world, but which we break, consciously or ignorantly. Laws broken, consciously or ignorantly, bring with them their consequences of pain, or their consequences, as we say, of punishment. And every one comes into conflict with them at some time. Is there any one who has not either ignorantly or consciously broken them, and found himself out of relation with them when they became painful to him? The moment one is out of relation with these laws they become sharp and insistent, and the consequence becomes the cause of fu ture ill.

When you have taken cold it is easier to take another cold. The lung is inflamed, and now the balmiest of airs and the slightest exposure induces more, and the injury thus set up propagates itself until at last the whole delicate structure of the lung is broken

down. Trivial at first, it brings its consequence, and that consequence becomes a cause, and that cause brings another consequence, and so, each effect becoming a cause, these broken laws roll down upon us their burden of consequences. And they never forgive, and they make no allowance for ignorance or inexperience. The little child puts its hand upon the stove, and the heat burns it just as much as it would burn me in my wisdom and knowledge of it; and the pain becomes there the consequence of the wrong it has done. Why should the little thing suffer so? It is because God has to teach us in that way to avoid the fire.

All we call pain, all we call punishment in this world, is simply a natural and necessary consequence of wrong doing. The thing to be remembered is that, in all this natural order, there is no pity, and there is no forgiveness for any wrong. So in the Old Testament, among the Hebrews, it was indeed a serious thing to do wrong, and they couched their thought of it in words like these: "The wages of sin is death."

It is death to the tissue that touches the stove, and it sloughs off; it is death to the lung which exposes itself to the sharp wind; it is death to the inflamed eye that looks to the light; it is death to the soul that speaks untruth, does injustice, or lives impurely. "The wages of sin is death." That is nature's own. law. Whatsoever we sow, that shall we reap. He that sows wheat, shall reap wheat; he that sows oats, reaps oats. Sow a lie, and you reap falsehood; sow injustice, and you reap cruelty; sow impurity, and you reap the consequences of it. Whatsoever one sows, that shall he reap. Nature is just, impartial and equitable, in all transactions. Sow kindness, and you reap kindness; sow truth, and you reap truth; sow love, and you reap love. The law is as just on one side as on the other, but with no forgiveness, and

with no pity. That, and that only, that you sow, shall

you reap.

That is what gives depth to the Greek tragedies. They are all based upon this one thought, that an action once committed can never be recalled; a wrong can never be made right; a lie can never be overtaken. Poor Edipus who, all unconsciously, has slain his father, and done the great deed of wrong, living in ignorance and innocence as he knows, yet through all the years has to meet the fate that has been awaiting him, and has to pay with blindness and poverty and death, for the wrong he has done.

Yes, in every case it is so. We are taught by those old Greek tragedies that we can not escape the consequences of our sin. There is no forgiveness in the order of nature, or in that old order, for wrong doing. In the works of George Eliot, this thought is brought out with peculiar force; and perhaps this is the one great work that she has been able to do by her writings, to show us this truth, that "The wages of sin is death." "Curds can not be turned to cream again, nor the half-made crock be turned to clay again."

That is the thought, and that is the fact in nature. everywhere. What we do can not be recalled. It belongs not only to history, and is written in our memory, but to the great complicated effects in the world. What would not a man give when he has sown mustard seed in his garden, and it comes up and spreads among his plants, choking them out, to have it out again? What would not a man give to call back a lie he has thrown out into the world? But he can not recall it. It has slipped from his grasp, and now it goes on propagating its kind. What would not one give to be able to recall the harsh word which he has spoken to one he loves, and which went jarring and crashing through the

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