SERM. XIX.] THE LONGSUFFERING OF CHRIST.

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often, how can we ever refuse forgiveness? Seventy times seven, seven times in a day, what is this to those who have the forgiveness of God through the blood of Jesus Christ?

But the point I wish to draw attention to is, not the duty of forgiveness as it is here enjoined, but the character of Christ as it is revealed in these words. It is plain that He does not lay on us a rule of mercy by which He does not proceed Himself. He has not two measures, or an unequal balance. As He would have us measure to others, so He will mete to us. The law He here lays down is a transcript of Himself: this seventy times sevenfold remission, what is it but His unwearied mercy? and what is this "seven times in a day," but His all-enduring patience?

Now it is this particular truth which distinguishes the Gospel from all religions of nature, and even from all other measures of the earlier revelations of God. The great truth here revealed to us is, the love, clemency, forgiveness of God to sinners. All this was, indeed, exhibited before in promises and prophecies, and in God's manifest dealings with His chosen people of old; but it was never so fully revealed as by the Incarnation and atonement of Christ. It may be said with truth, that a full perception of this great mystery of mercy is the very life of faith; and that there is nothing we are slower and more unwilling to believe in its truth and fulness. The greatness of it is too large for our narrow hearts. It is very easy to say, God is merciful, Christ is full of compassion; but these general truths, as we utter them, are limited and overcast by others not less certain. For if the Gospel has revealed God's mercy, it has also revealed God's holiness; if it has taught us that God is Love, it has also taught us that He is "a consuming fire." With the atonement, we have learned the judgment to come; with the sacrifice of Christ, we

have learned the guilt of sin; with the gift of regeneration, the defilement of our inmost soul; if baptism has brought us remission, it has made sins after baptism more fearful. The Gospel is an awful twofold light, before which even faithful Christians tremble, and often see but in part, and, through weakness and fear, and the earthliness of their hearts, often believe and speak amiss. It seems inconceivable that God should pardon so great sins as ours; or if He pardon us once, that He should pardon us when we fall again. The number and the frequency of our falls and swervings, the many warnings and the full light against which we often offend; the periodical returns of temptation, and, with them, of disobedience; the depth and intensity of guilt which even lesser sins attain by repetition after repentance; above all, when committed neither by surprise, nor by suddenness, but with a certain measure of deliberation, and with enough of resistance to show that nothing can be pleaded in excuse: all these, and a multitude more of particulars, which it is impossible to touch on in detail, make people often feel that, undoubted as is the perfect and exhaustless mercy of Christ, yet in their particular case there are features which shut them out from the consolation they would readily minister to others.

Now I am not going to argue against this feeling, so far as it promotes in us bitterness of repentance, fear, humiliation, and prayer for pardon. It is to be corrected only when it clashes with the perfect revelation of our Lord's character, and of His dealings with us. Too much humbled we cannot be, too tender of conscience, too fearful to offend; but we may dishonor Him by unworthy and faithless mistrusts, by thinking that He is verily such an one as ourselves, and that His forgiveness is no readier and broader than the perception we form of it in our hearts. If there

be any one thing of vital force in a life of Christian obedience, it is a true and full knowledge of Him whom we obey. His character is our very law; it imposes on us the conditions of our whole life, in thought, word, and deed, and defines the whole of our relations to Him. Now these words of His in the text reveal to us that to those who repent, howsoever often they may have sinned, there is perpetual forgiveness; that as often as we turn to Him, saying in truth, "I repent," He will take us back again. And this is, indeed, the very grace and mystery of the Gospel. Let us consider it a little more fully.

1. The state of man by creation was this: God made him sinless; he sinned, and died,-one sin, and all was lost. The work of creation had in it no remedial provision; it was a state of sanctity for a sinless creature; it contemplated no fall, no imperfection, no infirmity. Once fallen, all was marred; the relation of God and man once broken, the power of restoration must be sought in a new order and law of grace. The state of creation, then, was awful and severe in its perfection, and in itself had no remedy or healing for sin. Adam fell, lost his gift of righteousness, and passed under the power of death. He begat a son in his own likeness, and handed on the dark inheritance of the fall; the tide had set away from God, and every generation swelled the stream and made it run more fiercely. The first Adam was shorn of all his powers, and there was no help in him. The fall and sorrow were the heirloom of his children.

2. Now it is exactly in this point that the Gospel, or the new creation, of which Christ our Lord, the second Adam, is the head and root, differs from the first. It is a mystery of restoration; it has in it an inexhaustible source of healing for the sin of the world. By one act of disobedience the

first creation passed away for ever. The second is the perpetual remedy of sin. And this is the meaning of St. St. Paul's words: "As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. . . . Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of Him that was to come. But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ."* In the first creation repentance had no place in the second, repentance is the first idea and law; it is a dispensation given to penitents. That is to say, Christ has made atonement for sin; He has taken away the sin of the world. By His obedience, and by His death, He has cancelled, in the unseen world, the sentence which is to us as inscrutable as the existence and origin of evil, to which mystery it is related. In this sense, then, the Gospel is emphatically a remedial dispensation; and for this end the Incarnation and atonement of the Son of God was accomplished. And farther: by its very first law it contemplates in us imperfection, frailty and evil. It is a power to heal, and its mission is to the sick. That which could not so much as enter into the scope of the covenant of creation, fills the whole field of intention, so to speak, under the Gospel. It has to do

* Rom. v. 12, 14-17.

with creatures both infirm and infected with sin; and for their raising, cleansing, and recovery, the whole ministration of the Spirit by mysteries and sacraments is shed abroad. And still more: even in those who are made. partakers of these gifts of peace and grace—that is, in the regenerate there yet remains the infection of original sin. To the end of life, though never so much subdued, it lingers still. The most perfect saint is not sinless; this, since creation, has been the prerogative of One alone. It will be the inheritance of saints in bliss; but on earth, so long as they are in the flesh, there is in them the mystery of the fall. In some it is the spur to watchings, fastings, mortifications, prayers; it keeps them in perpetual watchfulness. God wonderfully keeping them, their footsteps never slide. These are they of whom St. John says, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in Him; and he cannot sin, because He is born of God." And again: "He that is begotten of God keepeth Himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not."* There is, doubtless, a state in which the fallen nature, though still in us, does not shape itself into sin-a high and rare endowment, the earthly crown of those who walk with God in a perfect way. In others (and they are the greater number, even among such as may be counted holy), the sin of our nature still abides, in the form of ignorance, obliquity, passion, frailty, and the like. Though these things be not imputed to them to their condemnation; though they do not so far prevail as to break their bond of peace with their unseen Lord; yet they are imperfections which the law of the first creation would not endure; they could find no sufferance but in a dispensation of healing, and under a law of restoration. The obedienee of imperfect saints, though it could

* St. John iii. 9; v. 18,