Thy mercy greater is than any sin, Thy greatness none can comprehend:
Wherefore, 0 Lord, let me Thy mercy win, Whose glorious name no time can ever end :
Wherefore I say all praise belongs to Thee,
Whom I beseech be merciful to me.^
And if, thus, human goodness is the more merciful in pro- portion as it approaches nearer to perfection, if amongst the highest, heavenliest spirituality is the most tolerant, the last to
1 William Byrd, Psalms. Sonnets, and Songs,
ISAIAH 403
let go the fallen or to lose its faith in human goodness, and the possibility for the worst of better things,— might we not con- clude that when goodness becomes absolutely perfect, just then will mercy reach its climax and become absolutely unlimited ?
(2) Again, in proof of the assertion that God's nature, in so far as it differs from man's, makes Him more and not less Hkely to forgive, consider that in God there is not, and cannot be, any personal irascibihty or resentment; He can never regard a sinful soul with any feelmg of vindictiveness, any desire to extract from His sufferings reparation for wrong. There are certain defective theological notions according to which the relations of sinful man to God have been represented as turning on the principle of what is called " vindictive justice," and the so-called " scheme of redemption " as based on the necessity of extracting from suffering, reparation for wrong. Now, there may be a true notion which men try thus to express, but the form in which they express it is erroneous and unworthy. In God, and therefore in that moral order of the world which is the expres- sion of His nature, there is no vindictiveness, no personal resentment ; and it is the utter absence of this in His nature that makes Him infinitely more forgiving than men, even the best of men, are.
ir Conceive for a moment what a change would take place in our relations to those who offend or injure us, how far it would go to the removal of everything that hinders forgiveness, if we could eliminate from our feelings every vestige of what is due to personal irritation or resentment. Conceive a man looking on all insults, wrongs, offences, with absolute, passionless indifference as regards his own personality, and contemplating them only with the pam a.nd grief due to their moral culpabiHty. Suppose further, that, with a mmd thus no longer agitated by personal teehng, no longer biassed by wounded self-love, he could see in the wrong or injury an evil inflicted on the wronger's own nature tar greater than any inflicted on himself, the exhibition of a morally diseased spiritual state so deplorable as to swallow up every other emotion than that of profoundest sorrow and pity for his wretchedness : and so, that instead of retaliating or inflicting fresh evil upon him, or never resting till the ofJence should be worked out m his misery, there should arise in the injured man's breast an intense longing to cure the diseased spirit, to save him from himself and win him back to goodness— conceive such a
404 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
state of mind, and though, as we depict it, it seems to imply a magnanimity and self-forgetfulness almost impossible in a being of flesh and blood, yet is it an exact representation of the heart and life of Him who was God manifest in the flesh, and therefore of the relation of God to all sinful and guilty men.
For what is the life of Christ on earth but a long, silent, immovable patience ; an absolute, Hfe-loug superiority to personal feeling ; a sorely-tried yet unshaken calm and freedom of spirit amidst insults and wrongs. He could feel, He could grieve, He was not incapable of anger, but where in the record of His life shall we find Him betrayed into one whisper of resentful or vindictive feeling for the ills He suffered at the hands of men ? He moved through life exposed to almost ceaseless hostility, subjected to almost every form of injury that human hatred and cruelty could inflct — to scorn, contumely, misrepresentation of motives, treachery, ingratitude, desertion; He was subjected to foul personal indignities, disowned and deserted by the friends He most trusted, and, in His sore need, betrayed by one of them to His enemies. The tenderest, kindest, most loving Spirit that ever breathed. He lived rejected and despised of men, and He died amidst the cries and taunts of an infuriated mob. There were moments when His personal followers, amazed at His forbearance, would have unsheathed the sword in His defence, or called down heaven's artillery on His persecutors. And yet never, from first to last, can we find in His history one slightest sign of personal irritation, one transient flash of exasperated sensibility, or cry for redress of His cruel wrongs. All other feeling in His breast was swallowed up in an infinite pity and sorrow for those at whose hands He suffered. He lived their unwearied benefactor, and He died invoking, amidst the paroxysms of His agony, heaven's mercy on His murderers. And in all this He was to us the manifestation of that Being into whose nature personal irascibility can never enter, who has no personality apart from goodness — the incarnate image of that God who is long-suffering and slow to wrath, abundant in goodness and mercy, and who, exalted in the infinitude of His goodness far above the agitation of man's resentful passions, declares that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His thoughts above our thoughts, and His ways above our ways, and that if the wicked will forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return unto the Lord, He will have mercy upon him, and will abundantly pardon him.^