Unspoken Sermons

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This man is a _little_ nearer the truth, inasmuch as a ground of
sympathy, though only that of common sin, is recognized as between the
offender and himself.

One more will say: "He has wronged me grievously. It is a dreadful
thing to me, and more dreadful still to him, that he should have done
it. He has hurt me, but he has nearly killed himself. He shall have no
more injury from it that I can save him. I cannot feel the same towards
him yet; but I will try to make him acknowledge the wrong he has done
me, and so put it away from him. Then, perhaps, I shall be able to feel
towards him as I used to feel. For this end I will show him all the
kindness I can, not forcing it upon him, but seizing every fit
opportunity; not, I hope, from a wish to make myself great through
bounty to him, but because I love him so much that I want to love him
more in reconciling him to his true self. I would destroy this evil
deed that has come between us. I send it away. And I would have him
destroy it from between us too, by abjuring it utterly."

Which comes nearest to the divine idea of forgiveness? nearest, though
with the gulf between, wherewith the heavens are higher than the earth?

For the Divine creates the Human, has the creative power in excess of
the Human. It is the Divine forgiveness that, originating itself,
creates our forgiveness, and therefore can do so much more. It can take
up all our wrongs, small and great, with their righteous attendance of
griefs and sorrows, and carry them away from between our God and us.

Christ is God's Forgiveness.

Before we approach a little nearer to this great sight, let us consider
the human forgiveness in a more definite embodiment--as between a
father and a son. For although God is so much more to us, and comes so
much nearer to us than a father can be or come, yet the fatherhood is
the last height of the human stair whence our understandings can see
him afar off, and where our hearts can first know that he is nigh, even
in them.

There are various kinds and degrees of wrongdoing, which need varying
kinds and degrees of forgiveness. An outburst of anger in a child, for
instance, scarcely wants forgiveness. The wrong in it may be so small,
that the parent has only to influence the child for self-restraint, and
the rousing of the will against the wrong. The father will not feel
that such a fault has built up any wall between him and his child. But
suppose that he discovered in him a habit of sly cruelty towards his
younger brothers, or the animals of the house, how differently would he
feel! Could his forgiveness be the same as in the former case? Would
not the different evil require a different _form_ of forgiveness? I
mean, would not the forgiveness have to take the form of that kind of
punishment fittest for restraining, in the hope of finally rooting out,
the wickedness? Could there be true love in any other kind of
forgiveness than this? A passing-by of the offence might spring from a
poor human kindness, but never from divine love. It would not be
_remission_. Forgiveness can never be indifference. Forgiveness is love
towards the unlovely.

Let us look a little closer at the way a father might feel, and express
his feelings. One child, the moment the fault was committed, the father
would clasp to his bosom, knowing that very love in its own natural
manifestation would destroy the fault in him, and that, the next
moment, he would be weeping. The father's hatred of the sin would burst
forth in his pitiful tenderness towards the child who was so wretched
as to have done the sin, and so destroy it. The fault of such a child
would then cause no interruption of the interchange of sweet
affections. The child is forgiven at once. But the treatment of another
upon the same principle would be altogether different. If he had been
guilty of baseness, meanness, selfishness, deceit, self-gratulation in
the evil brought upon others, the father might _say_ to himself: "I
cannot forgive him. This is beyond forgiveness." He might _say_ so, and
keep saying so, while all the time he was striving to let forgiveness
find its way that it might lift him from the gulf into which he had
fallen. His love might grow yet greater because of the wandering and
loss of his son. For love is divine, and then most divine when it loves
according to _needs_ and not according to _merits_. But the forgiveness
would be but in the process of making, as it were, or of drawing nigh
to the sinner. Not till his opening heart received the divine flood of
destroying affection, and his own affection burst forth to meet it and
sweep the evil away, could it be said to be finished, to have arrived,
could the son be said to _be_ forgiven.

God is forgiving us every day--sending from between him and us our sins
and their fogs and darkness. Witness the shining of his sun and the
falling of his rain, the filling of their hearts with food and
gladness, that he loves them that love him not. When some sin that we
have committed has clouded all our horizon, and hidden him from our
eyes, he, forgiving us, ere we are, and that we may be, forgiven,
sweeps away a path for this his forgiveness to reach our hearts, that
it may by causing our repentance destroy the wrong, and make us able
even to forgive ourselves. For some are too proud to forgive
themselves, till the forgiveness of God has had its way with them, has
drowned their pride in the tears of repentance, and made their heart
come again like the heart of a little child.

But, looking upon forgiveness, then, as the perfecting of a work ever
going on, as the contact of God's heart and ours, in spite and in
destruction of the intervening wrong, we may say that God's love is
ever in front of his forgiveness. God's love is the prime mover, ever
seeking to perfect his forgiveness, which latter needs the human
condition for its consummation. The love is perfect, working out the
forgiveness. God loves where he cannot yet forgive--where forgiveness
in the full sense is as yet simply impossible, because no contact of
hearts is possible, because that which lies between has not even begun
to yield to the besom of his holy destruction.

Some things, then, between the Father and his children, as between a
father and his child, may comparatively, and in a sense, be made light
of--I do not mean made light of in themselves: away they must go--
inasmuch as, evils or sins though they be, they yet leave room for the
dwelling of God's Spirit in the heart, forgiving and cleansing away the
evil. When a man's evil is thus fading out of him, and he is growing
better and better, that is the forgiveness coming into him more and
more. Perfect in God's will, it is having its perfect work in the mind
of the man. When the man hath, with his whole nature, cast away his
sin, there is no room for forgiveness any more, for God dwells in him,
and he in God. With the voice of Nathan, "Thou art the man," the
forgiveness of God laid hold of David, the heart of the king was
humbled to the dust; and when he thus awoke from the moral lethargy
that had fallen upon him, he found that he was still with God. "When I
awake," he said, "I am still with thee."

But there are two sins, not of individual deed, but of spiritual
condition, which _cannot be forgiven_; that is, as it seems to me,
which cannot be excused, passed by, made little of by the tenderness
even of God, inasmuch as they will allow no forgiveness to come into
the soul, they will permit no good influence to go on working alongside
of them; they shut God out altogether. Therefore the man guilty of
these can never receive into himself the holy renewing saving
influences of God's forgiveness. God is outside of him in every sense,
save that which springs from his creating relation to him, by which,
thanks be to God, he yet keeps a hold of him, although against the will
of the man who will not be forgiven. The one of these sins is against
man; the other against God.

The former is unforgivingness to our neighbour; the shutting of him out
from our mercies, from our love--so from the universe, as far as we are
a portion of it--the murdering therefore of our neighbour. It may be an
infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The
former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's
choice. It is _spiritual_ murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the
feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the
idea of the hated. We listen to the voice of our own hurt pride or hurt
affection (only the latter without the suggestion of the former,
thinketh no evil) to the injury of the evil-doer. In as far as we can,
we quench the relations of life between us; we close up the passages of
possible return. This is to shut out God, the Life, the One. For how
are we to receive the forgiving presence while we shut out our brother
from our portion of the universal forgiveness, the final restoration,
thus refusing to let God be All in all? If God appeared to us, how
could he say, "I forgive you," while we remained unforgiving to our
neighbour? Suppose it possible that he should say so, his forgiveness
would be no good to us while we were uncured of our unforgivingness. It
would not touch us. It would not come near us. Nay, it would hurt us,
for we should think ourselves safe and well, while the horror of
disease was eating the heart out of us. Tenfold the forgiveness lies in
the words, "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your
heavenly Father forgive your trespasses." Those words are kindness
indeed. God holds the unforgiving man with his hand, but turns his face
away from him. If, in his desire to see the face of his Father, he
turns his own towards his brother, then the face of God turns round and
seeks his, for then the man may look upon God and not die. With our
forgiveness to our neighbour, in flows the Consciousness of God's
forgiveness to us; or even with the effort, we become capable of
believing that God can forgive us. No man who will not forgive his
neighbour, can believe that God is willing, yea, wanting to forgive
him, can believe that the dove of God's peace is hovering over a
chaotic heart, fain to alight, but finding no rest for the sole of its
foot. For God to say to such a man, "I cannot forgive you," is love as
well as necessity. If God said, "I forgive you," to a man who hated his
brother, and if (as is impossible) that voice of forgiveness should
reach the man, what would it mean to him? How would the man interpret
it? Would it not mean to him, "You may go on hating. I do not mind it.
You have had great provocation, and are justified in your hate"? No
doubt God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is,
into the account; but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be
urged for the hate, the more reason, if possible, that the hater should
be delivered from the hell of his hate, that God's child should be made
the loving child that he meant him to be. The man would think, not that
God loved the sinner, but that he forgave the sin, which God never
does. Every sin meets with its due fate--inexorable expulsion from the
paradise of God's Humanity. He loves the sinner so much that he cannot
forgive him in any other way than by banishing from his bosom the demon
that possesses him, by lifting him out of that mire of his iniquity.

No one, however, supposes for a moment that a man who has once refused
to forgive his brother, shall therefore be condemned to endless
unforgiveness and unforgivingness. What is meant is, that while a man
continues in such a mood, God cannot be with him as his friend; not
that he will not be his friend, but the friendship being all on one
side--that of God--must take forms such as the man will not be able to
recognize as friendship. Forgiveness, as I have said, is not love
merely, but love _conveyed as love_ to the erring, so establishing
peace towards God, and forgiveness towards our neighbour.

To return then to our immediate text: Is the refusal of forgiveness
contained in it a condemnation to irrecoverable impenitence? Strange
righteousness would be the decree, that because a man has done wrong--
let us say has done wrong so often and so much that he _is_ wrong--he
shall for ever remain wrong! Do not tell me the condemnation is only
negative--a leaving of the man to the consequences of his own will, or
at most a withdrawing from him of the Spirit which he has despised. God
will not take shelter behind such a jugglery of logic or metaphysics.
He is neither schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in heaven. He
knows that that in him would be the same unforgivingness for which he
refuses to forgive man. The only tenable ground for supporting such a
doctrine is, that God _cannot_ do more; that Satan has overcome; and
that Jesus, amongst his own brothers and sisters in the image of God,
has been less strong than the adversary, the destroyer. What then shall
I say of such a doctrine of devils as that, even if a man did repent,
God would not or could not forgive him?

Let us look at "_the_ unpardonable sin," as this mystery is commonly
called, and see what we can find to understand about it.

All sin is unpardonable. There is no compromise to be made with it. We
shall not come out except clean, except having paid the uttermost
farthing. But the special unpardonableness of those sins, the one of
which I have spoken and that which we are now considering, lies in
their shutting out God from his _genial_, his especially spiritual,
influences upon the man. Possibly in the case of the former sin, I may
have said this too strongly; possibly the love of God may have some
part even in the man who will not forgive his brother, although, if he
continues unforgiving, that part must decrease and die away; possibly
resentment against our brother, might yet for a time leave room for
some divine influences by its side, although either the one or the
other must speedily yield; but the man who denies truth, who
consciously resists duty, who says there is no truth, or that the truth
he sees is not true, who says that which is good is of Satan, or that
which is bad is of God, supposing him to know that it is good or is
bad, denies the Spirit, shuts out the Spirit, and therefore cannot be
forgiven. For without the Spirit no forgiveness can enter the man to
cast out the satan. Without the Spirit to witness with his spirit, no
man could know himself forgiven, even if God appeared to him and said
so. The full forgiveness is, as I have said, when a man feels that God
is forgiving him; and this cannot be while he opposes himself to the
very essence of God's will.

As far as we can see, the men of whom this was spoken were men who
resisted the truth with some amount of perception that it was the
truth; men neither led astray by passion, nor altogether blinded by
their abounding prejudice; men who were not excited to condemn one form
of truth by the love which they bore to another form of it; but men so
set, from selfishness and love of influence, against one whom they saw
to be a good man, that they denied the goodness of what they knew to be
good, in order to put down the man whom they knew to be good, because
He had spoken against them, and was ruining their influence and
authority with the people by declaring them to be no better than they
knew themselves to be. Is not this to be Satan? to be in hell? to be
corruption? to be that which is damned? Was not this their _condition_
unpardonable? How, through all this mass of falsehood, could the pardon
of God reach the essential humanity within it? Crying as it was for
God's forgiveness, these men had almost separated their humanity from
themselves, had taken their part with the powers of darkness.
Forgiveness while they were such was an impossibility. No. Out of that
they must come, else there was no word of God for them. But the very
word that told them of the unpardonable state in which they were, was
just the one form the voice of mercy could take in calling on them to
repent. They must hear and be afraid. I dare not, cannot think that
they refused the truth, knowing all that it was; but I think they
refused the truth, knowing that it was true--not carried away, as I
have said, by wild passion, but by cold self-love, and envy, and
avarice, and ambition; not merely doing wrong knowingly, but setting
their whole natures knowingly against the light. Of this nature must
the sin against the Holy Ghost surely be. "This is the condemnation,"
(not the sins that men have committed, but the condition of mind in
which they choose to remain,) "that light is come into the world, and
men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
In this sin against the Holy Ghost, I see no single act alone, although
it must find expression in many acts, but a wilful condition of mind,

As far removed from God and light of heaven,
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.

For this there could be no such excuse made as that even a little light
might work beside it; for there light could find no entrance and no
room; light was just what such a mind was set against, almost because
it was what it was. The condition was utterly bad.

But can a man really fall into such a condition of spiritual depravity?

That is my chief difficulty. But I think it may be. And wiser people
than I, have thought so. I have difficulty in believing it, I say; yet
I think it must be so. But I do not believe that it is a fixed, a final
condition. I do not see why it should be such any more than that of the
man who does not forgive his neighbour. If you say it is a worse
offence, I say, Is it too bad for the forgiveness of God?

But is God able to do anything more with the man? Or how is the man
ever to get out of this condition? If the Spirit of God is shut out
from his heart, how is he to become better?

The Spirit of God is the Spirit whose influence is known by its
witnessing with our spirit. But may there not be other powers and means
of the Spirit preparatory to this its highest office with man? God who
has made us can never be far from any man who draws the breath of
life--nay, must be in him; not necessarily in his heart, as we say, but
still in him. May not then one day some terrible convulsion from the
centre of his being, some fearful earthquake from the hidden gulfs of
his nature, shake such a man so that through all the deafness of his
death, the voice of the Spirit may be faintly heard, the still small
voice that comes after the tempest and the earthquake? May there not be
a fire that even such can feel? Who shall set bounds to the consuming
of the fire of our God, and the purifying that dwells therein?

The only argument that I can think of, which would with me have weight
against this conclusion, is, that the revulsion of feeling in any one
who had thus sinned against the truth, when once brought to acknowledge
his sin, would be so terrible that life would never more be endurable,
and the kindest thing God could do would be to put such a man out of
being, because it had been a better thing for him never to have been
born. But he who could make such a man repent, could make him so
sorrowful and lowly, and so glad that he had repented, that he would
wish to live ever that he might ever repent and ever worship the glory
he now beheld. When a man gives up self, his past sins will no longer
oppress him. It is enough for the good of life that God lives, that the
All-perfect exists, and that we can behold him.

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," said the
Divine, making excuse for his murderers, not after it was all over, but
at the very moment when he was dying by their hands. Then Jesus had
forgiven them already. His prayer the Father must have heard, for he
and the Son are one. When the Father succeeded in answering his prayer,
then his forgiveness in the hearts of the murderers broke out in
sorrow, repentance, and faith. Here was a sin dreadful enough surely--
but easy for our Lord to forgive. All that excuse for the misled
populace! Lord Christ be thanked for that! That was like thee! But must
we believe that Judas, who repented even to agony, who repented so that
his high-prized life, self, soul, became worthless in his eyes and met
with no mercy at his own hand,--must we believe that he could find no
mercy in such a God? I think, when Judas fled from his hanged and
fallen body, he fled to the tender help of Jesus, and found it--I say
not how. He was in a more hopeful condition now than during any moment
of his past life, for he had never repented before. But I believe that
Jesus loved Judas even when he was kissing him with the traitor's kiss;
and I believe that he was his Saviour still. And if any man remind me
of his words, "It had been good for that man if he had not been born,"
I had not forgotten them, though I know that I now offer nothing beyond
a conjectural explanation of them when I say: Judas had got none of the
good of the world into which he had been born. He had not inherited the
earth. He had lived an evil life, out of harmony with the world and its
God. Its love had been lost upon him. He had been brought to the very
Son of God, and had lived with him as his own familiar friend; and he
had not loved him more, but less than himself. Therefore it had been
all useless. "It had been good for that man if he had not been born;"
for it was all to try over again, in some other way--inferior perhaps,
in some other world, in a lower school. He had to be sent down the
scale of creation which is ever ascending towards its Maker. But I will
not, cannot believe, O my Lord, that thou wouldst not forgive thy
enemy, even when he repented, and did thee right. Nor will I believe
that thy holy death was powerless to save thy foe--that it could not
reach to Judas. Have we not heard of those, thine own, taught of thee,
who could easily forgive their betrayers in thy name? And if thou
forgivest, will not thy forgiveness find its way at last in redemption
and purification?

Look for a moment at the clause preceding my text: "He that denieth me
before men shall be denied before the angels of God." What does it
mean? Does it mean--"Ah! you are mine, but not of my sort. You denied
me. Away to the outer darkness"? Not so. "It shall be forgiven to him
that speaketh against the Son of man;" for He may be but the truth
revealed _without_ him. Only he must have shame before the universe of
the loving God, and may need the fire that burneth and consumeth not.

But for him that speaketh against the Spirit of Truth, against the Son
of God revealed _within_ him, he is beyond the teaching of that Spirit
now. For how shall he be forgiven? The forgiveness would touch him no
more than a wall of stone. Let him know what it is to be without the
God he hath denied. Away with him to the Outer Darkness! Perhaps _that_
will make him repent.

My friends, I offer this as only a contribution towards the
understanding of our Lord's words. But if we ask him, he will lead us
into all truth. And let us not be afraid to think, for he will not take
it ill.

But what I have said must be at least a part of the truth.

No amount of discovery in his words can tell us more than _we_ have
discovered, more than we have seen and known to be true. For all the
help the best of his disciples can give us is only to discover, to see
for ourselves. And beyond all our discoveries in his words and being,
there lie depths within depths of truth that we cannot understand, and
yet shall be ever going on to understand. Yea, even now sometimes we
seem to have dim glimpses into regions from which we receive no word to
bring away.

The fact that some things have become to us so much more simple than
they were, and that great truths have come out of what once looked
common, is ground enough for hope that such will go on to be our
experience through the ages to come. Our advance from our former
ignorance can measure but a small portion of the distance that lies,
and must ever lie, between our childishness and his manhood, between
our love and his love, between our dimness and his mighty vision. To
him ere long may we all come, all children, still children, more
children than ever, to receive from his hand the _white stone, and in
the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that
receiveth it_.

THE NEW NAME.

_To him that overcometh, I will give a white stone, and in the stone a
new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.--
REV. ii. 17._

Whether the Book of the Revelation be written by the same man who wrote
the Gospel according to St John or not, there is, at least, one element
common to the two--the mysticism.

I use the word _mysticism_ as representing a certain mode of embodying
truth, common, in various degrees, to almost all, if not all, the
writers of the New Testament. The attempt to define it thoroughly would
require an essay. I will hazard but one suggestion towards it: A
mystical mind is one which, having perceived that the highest
expression of which the truth admits, lies in the symbolism of nature
and the human customs that result from human necessities, prosecutes
thought about truth so embodied by dealing with the symbols themselves
after logical forms. This is the highest mode of conveying the deepest
truth; and the Lord himself often employed it, as, for instance, in the
whole passage ending with the words, "If therefore the light that is in
thee be darkness, how great is the darkness!"

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