lated act of one individual, which might seem to be personal partiality, but the act of many, of a society, a body—of the Church.

Let us show this historically. Throughout the ages God has been declaring Himself, in His character as Absolver, Liberator, Redeemer. For the history of the past has not been that of Man trying to express his religious instincts in institutions and priesthoods, but of God uttering Himself and His idea through humanity.

1. Moses is called a Mediator in the Epistle to the Galatians. How was this? God sent Moses to deliver his people. "I am come to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians." "I will send thee unto Pharaoh." And Moses understood his commission. He slew an Egyptian, and he supposed that they would have understood that he was their liberator, that they would have seen in the human deliverer the Divine Arm. God was revealing Himself through Moses as the Avenger and Redeemer.

2. The Judges. First of these came Joshua, whose name, originally Oshea, or Saviour, had Jah added to it to make this clear, that he was a deliverer in whom was to be seen the Unseen. A "Divine Deliverer," reminding the people that he was but the representative of One whose prerogative it is to break the rod of the oppressor.

3. The Prophets. They developed another kind of deliverance, founded on no prescriptive authority, but only on the authority of truth. They stood up against king and priest. They witnessed against kingeraft and priesteraft, against false social maxims, against superstitions, against all that was enslaving the Jewish soul. And how did they effect this deliverance? They proclaimed God as He is. Their invariable preface was this, "Thus saith the Lord." They fell back on deep first principles. They said, that "to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God," was better than praying, and fasting, and sacrifice. They revealed and declared the true character of God, which had become incredible to the people through the false glosses it had received. And so the prophet also was the deliverer of his people, loosing them from, not slavery, nor political oppression, but a worse bondage, the bondage which comes from ecclesiastical and civil institutions when they have ceased to be real. And thus did they once more exhibit to the world the absolving power of Humanity when it represents accurately the Divine mind and character.

One step farther. There is a slavery worse than all these: the power by which the soul, through ignorance of God, is

bound in sin.. Now consider what the Scribes had been doing; they had reduced the teaching about sin to a science; they had defined the nature and degrees of sins; they had priced each sin, named the particular penance and cost at which it could be tolerated. And thus they had represented God as one who, for a certain consideration, might be induced to sell forgiveness, might be bribed to change His will, and forgive those whom He had intended to condemn. Therefore was One manifested who represented the Divine character without flaw; in whom the mediatorial idea was perfect; in whom Humanity was the exact pattern and type of Deity; in whom God appeared as the Deliverer in the highest sense, where every miracle manifested the power to loose, and every tender word the will to forgive; who established the true relation between God and man, as being not that between a judge and a culprit, but as between a Father and a son. For once the love of man was identical with the love of God; for once Human forgiveness was exactly commensurate with the Divine forgiveness: therefore is He the one absolver of the race; therefore has He, because the Son of Man, "power on earth to forgive sins;" and therefore every absolver, so far as he would free consciences and characters from sins, must draw his power out of that same humanity. He can free only so far as he represents it, or, as St. Paul expresses it here, "forgive in the person of Christ”—that is, representatively, for "person means the character sustained on a stage, which represents, or is a medium through which the one represented is con

ceived.

In conclusion, let us make two applications.

1. From the fact that the whole Corinthian Church absolved, learn that the power of absolution belongs to every man as man-as made in the image of God." It belongs in the highest degree to the man who most truly reflects that image, who most truly stands in the person of Christ. Are you a rigid Protestant, stiffly content with a miserable negative, sturdily satisfied to reiterate forever, "Who can for give sins but God only ?" Well, remember, first, that maxim of which you are so proud was used by the Scribes before you a superficial half-truth it is, in its depths false. Next, remember that perhaps every act of yours is proving the case against you. If you will not do by love the absolving work of the Corinthian Church, you may by severity do the terrible, condemning work of the same Church in darkening the light of hope and of God in the souls of the erring. If you represent God as more severe under the Chris

tian than under the Jewish dispensation, or if you represent Him as the Father of a certain section in consideration of their faith, their church-membership, their baptism, or in consideration of any thing, except His own universal love; or if, chiming in with the false maxims of society, you pass proudly by the sinful and the wandering; then, so far as you have darkened the hope of any soul, though you may be saying loudly, "None can forgive but God;" yet, with a voice louder still, you will have demonstrated that, even if you will disclaim your power to loose, you can not part with your awful power to bind.

2. Inasmuch as St. Paul absolved, let us learn the true principle of ministerial absolution. Humanity is the representative of Deity. The Church is the representative of Humanity, the ideal of Humanity. The minister is the representative of the Church. When, therefore, the minister reads the absolution, he declares a fact. It does not depend on his character or his will. It is a true voice of man on earth echoing the voice of God in heaven. But if the minister forgets his representative character; if he forgets that it is simply in the name of Humanity and God, " in the person of Christ;" if by any mysterious language or priestly artifices he fixes men's attention on himself, or his office, as containing in it a supernatural power not shared by other men; then just so far he does not absolve or free the soul by declaring God. He binds it again by perplexed and awe-engendering falsehood, and so far is no priest at all; he has forfeited the priestly power of Christian humanity, and claimed instead the spurious power of the priesthood of superstition.

LECTURE XII.

1 CORINTHIANS v. 1-13. November 30, 1851.

THERE is but one subject in this chapter on which I shall address you to-day-I mean St. Paul's judgment on the scandal which had befallen the Corinthian Church. The same case was treated before you last Sunday. I took the Absolution first, that we might be prepared for a sentence of great severity, and that we should not think that sentence was final. The whole of this chapter is an eloquent, earnest appeal for judgment on the offender. St. Paul's sentence was excommunication. "I have judged," he says, "to deliver such an one unto Satan." This is

the form of words used in excommunication. The presiding bishop used to say, formally, "I deliver such an one unto Satan." So that, in fact, St. Paul, when he said this, meant -My sentence is, "Let him be excommunicated."

Our subject, then, is Ecclesiastical Excommunication, or rather the grounds upon which human punishment rests. The first ground on which it rests is a representative one. "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ." There is used here, then, precisely the same formula as that in Absolution. "For your sakes forgave I it, in the person of Christ." In this place, "person" is a dramatic word. It means the character sustained on the stage by one who represents another. So then, absolving "in the person of Christ," excommunicating "in the name of Christ," implied that St. Paul did both in a representative capacity. Remember, then, man is the image of God, man is the medium through which God's absolution and God's punishment are given and inflicted. Man is the mediator, because he represents God.

If man, then, were a perfect image of God, his forgiveness. and his condemnation would be a perfect echo of God's. But in respect of his partaking of a fallen nature, his acts, in this sense, are necessarily imperfect. There is but One, He in whom humanity was completely restored to the Divine image, Whose forgiveness and condemnation are exactly commensurate with God's. Nevertheless, the Church here is the representative of humanity, of that ideal man which Christ realized, and hence, in a representative capacity, it condemns and forgives.

Again, as such, that is as representative, human punishment is expressive of Divine indignation. Strong words are these: "To deliver unto Satan." Strong, too, are those: "Yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge!" And St. Paul approved that feeling. Now I can not explain such words away. I can not say the wrath of God is a figurative expression, nor dare I say the vengeance of the law is figurative, for it is a mistake to suppose that punishment is only to reform and warn. There is, unquestionably, another truth connected with it; it is the expression on earth of God's indignation in heaven against sin. St. Paul says of the civil magistrate, "For he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”

Doubtless our human passions mingle with that word vengeance." It is hard to use it and not conceive of some

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thing vindictive and passionate. Yet the Bible uses it, and when our hearts are sound and healthy, and our view of moral evil not morbid and sentimental, we feel it too. feel that the anger of God is a reality, an awful reality, and that we dare not substitute any other expression. There can not be such a thing as perfect hatred of wrong and unmixed love of the wrong-doer. He who has done wrong has identified himself with wrong, and so far is an object of indiguation. This, of course, in infinite degrees.

In our own day we are accustomed to use strange, weak words concerning sin and crime: we say, when a man does wrong, that he has mistaken the way to happiness, and that if a correct notion of real happiness could be given to men, crime would cease. We look on sin as residing, not in a guilty will, but in a mistaken understanding. Thus the Corinthians looked on at this deed of iniquity, and felt no indignation. They had some soft, feeble way of talking about it. They called it "mental disease," "error," ""mistake of judgment," "irresistible passion," or I know not what.

St. Paul did feel indignation; and which was the higher nature, think you? If St. Paul had not been indignant, could he have been the man he was? And this is what we should feel; this it is which, firmly seated in our hearts, would correct our lax ways of viewing injustice and our lax account of sin.

Observe, the indignation of society is properly representative of the indignation of God. I tried last Sunday* to show how the absolution of society looses a man from the weight of sin, by representing and making credible God's forgiveness -how it opens to him hope and the path to a new life. Now, similarly, see how the anger of society represents and makes credible God's wrath. So long as the Corinthians petted this sinner, conscience slumbered; but when the voice of men was raised in condemnation, and he felt himself everywhere shunned, conscience began to do its dreadful work, and then their anger became a type of coming doom. Remember, therefore, there is a real power lodged in humanity to bind as well as to loose; and remember that though Man, God's representative, may exercise this fearful power wrongly, too long, and too severely, in venial faults, yet there is still a power, a terrible human power, which may make outcasts, and drive men to infamy and ruin. Whosesoever sins we bind on earth, they are bound. Only, therefore, so far as man is Christlike can he exercise this power in an entirely *This subject is also treated of in a sermon on "Absolution," which is published in the Third Series of Mr. Robertson's Sermons.