III. OUR FATHER'S FORGIVENESS.

Belief in the possibility of pardon is essential to the asking it. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” But is pardon within the possibility of such reward? The "Forgiveness of Sins" is an article of the Creed much more easily pronounced than explained. The universe is under the great law of Cause and Effect. Every grain of sand and drop of dew, the rolling planets and the central sun, alike obey it. Influences once set in motion continue their operation both in the material and moral worlds. Violation of physical law entails physical suffering, of social law social disgrace, of moral law deterioration of character, of governmental law legal penalty. Conduct has appropriate consequences, and "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." But in asking pardon, we ask for an intervention between cause and effect, for the neutralizing of influences actually at work. We ask for the stone that has been flung to be stopped, for the flood that has been let loose to be arrested, for the fire that has been lighted to be quenched, and not only so, but also for the precious things it has ruined to be restored.

Nature does not forgive. Health enfeebled by folly is not renovated by remorse. The spendthrift's riches do not fly back at the call of regret. Repentance

does not atone for crime, acquit the criminal, or restore

him to his former social position. Thus it has been questioned whether there can ever be forgiveness of sin, and men under various systems have endeavoured by methods of their own to neutralize their guilt and its consequences, without any assurance of success. Socrates doubted whether sin could be forgiven. Without revelation, sinful men could never be free from fear. Job felt the difficulty when he said that if he should justify himself, his own mouth would condemn him; that if he made his hands never so clean, he would still be as one plunged in a ditch; that God was not as a man to come together with him in judgment; that there needed some intermediary to effect reconciliation; but that, alas! there was no such daysman to lay his hand on both. "The one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus," does "lay His hand on both," and by His atonement declares and explains forgiveness.

Cause and

"When Christ came, He spoke of forgiveness as the most difficult of all God's secrets. He said that no one could tell of Atonement but He who had been in heaven. If it were not for Christ's clear revelation, I could not believe in a free forgiveness. effect, antecedent and consequence, are so bound together on God's earth, that the idea of their severance--which is, in other words, the release of the soul that has sinned from the death which sin merits--can only be accepted as the explicit assertion. the direct revelation, of Him who knows all th (Vaughan).

Jehovah had revealed Himself to Moses as "merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin;" although "He will not always clear the guilty." The holy God who will uphold His law and punish wilful transgressors, is the pardoning God. This truth is extolled by the Psalmist, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities; and by the Prophet, "Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity? because He delighteth in mercy." The typical sacrifices connected with the confession of sin were about to be set aside when the Baptist said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Jesus said of Himself that He came to give His life a ransom for many." Him the apostles proclaimed as "a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins." When Saul the persecutor was himself forgiven, he proclaimed to all that "through this Man is preached the forgiveness of sins." Though "all have sinned," they who repent are "justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by His blood, to show His righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime." "God

was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses." Christ is the medium of forgiveness, to whom all whose debts are cancelled owe their deliverance, however defective their knowledge of Him. "In none other is there salvation for neither is there any other name under

heaven that is given among men, wherein we must be saved." However mysterious the doctrine of the Atonement, the apostle plainly taught the fact “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." "He was wounded for our transgressions, and with His stripes we are healed; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." The truth that "the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin," is the theme of the new song of heaven. "Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood, be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever."

Dr. Dale, commenting on Eph. i. 7, "In Christ we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace," says: "To those who have known the power of the Divine forgiveness to cancel the guilt of sin, the act is as clearly supernatural as any of the miracles recorded in the Gospels, and it is more wonderful, for it reveals the ascendency of the Divine will in a region of life far nobler than that in which the physical miracles of the Gospels were wrought. . . . That the ground of our forgiveness is in Christ, not in ourselves, and that His death has a unique relation to the remission of sins, are facts which lie at the foundation of the faith, and hope, and life of the Christian Church.

The death of Christ was an act in which there was a revelation of the righteousness of God which must otherwise have been revealed in the infliction of the penalty of sin on the human race. Theories

of the Atonement have exercised and baffled the speculation of a long series of theologians, but the Atonement itself has continued to give consolation and courage to all penitent hearts, transforming their despair into hope, their misery into peace, and their terror into perfect joy in the righteousness and love of God."

Some have supposed that Christ actually paid the debt we have incurred, His sufferings being exactly an equivalent for our punishment. If so, it follows that the debt once paid cannot be justly exacted afterwards. But if any for whom Christ suffered should themselves suffer, it is inferred that their debt would be twice paid; and as many do actually perish, some theological logicians have taught that for them Christ did not die, while all whose debts were included in His Atonement must necessarily be saved. Let it suffice here to say that Scripture nowhere teaches the absolute payment by Christ of our debts, but that His sacrifice is a sufficient provision for the pardon of all who, by repentance and faith, are willing to receive it. If only one transgressor is pardoned, the law seems to need to be honoured and righteousness vindicated; nay, we feel this to be needed for the mere offering of pardon. The difficulty is that of reconciling the holiness of God and His rule of the universe with His proclamation of pardon. When this is removed, we cease to feel a difficulty in reconciling the holiness of God with the pardon of any multitude of penitent sinners. If the amnesty may