II A genial sense of " camaraderie " was inspired and main- tained by sacred dance, song, and simple prayer, and especially by the sacrificial banquet at which the deity and his tribe were imagined as feasting together. And whatever ritual was in vogue
^6 THE LAMB OF GOD
for the purging of the people's sins was external and mechanical merely, accompanied by no call to real repentance, no appeal to the individual conscience.^
T[ Nor, when the dying Indian had been induced at last to express a desire for Paradise, was it an easy matter to bring him to a due contrition for his sins ; for he would deny with indigna- tion that he had ever committed any.^
^ A sense of darkness and ignorance made the Greek sorrow, a sense of sin and evil the Hebrew sorrow. The Hebrew sorrow expressed itself in three ways — in a passion for forgiveness, in a passion for redemption, and in a passion for life ; and these three passions are pointed out by the Baptist in this new phrase which he has coined for the new age, " Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world ! " ^
^ Dale's sense of sin was deep and vivid. Sin — not merely as revealed in speech and conduct, but as that principle of evil within us by which the very springs of life are corrupted ; sin, whether ours by inheritance, or through our own defect, or by our mysterious community in the moral life of the race — sin, in all its forms and degrees, he felt to be the most terrible of realities. No one who knew him intimately could fail to perceive it. He some- times referred, half wonderingly, half sadly, to the experience of a friend of his who once asked him what theologians meant by " original sin " : — " I cannot understand what they mean," he said, "I have never been conscious of any inclination to do what 1 knew to be wrong." The fact of original sin presented no difficulty to Dale. He knew only too well the unremitting energy of moral evil, and the incessant struggle against its malignant power. Altogether apart from any special incentive, he would never have dealt lightly with the baser elements in human character and conduct; and anxiety to avert any mora] degeneracy in those who had accepted the new doctrine intensified his natural antipathy to evil. At times his denunciation of sin was overwhelming in its force. He never stormed; but his wrath, as it grew, glowed with passion at a white heat. It swept on in waves of living fire. It seemed to scorch, to shrivel, to consume. And if it was not often that he let indignation break into flame, there was always a certain austerity — it might even be called harshness — in his moral judgment, which strongly contrasted with his charitable temper in dealing with individual
* L. R. Farnell, The. Higher Aspects of Greek Religion, 132. ' Paikman, The Jesuits in North America, i. 178. ' W. W. Peyton.
ST. JOHN I. 29 ^^
oiBfenders ; though even with them his sternness, when provoked, could be terrible.^
(2) It is impossible to have any adequate sense of sin without a_^ great conp.p.ption of H-nrl _ It was because the Hebrew prophets \ saw God to be high and lifted up that they felt themselves to be t sinners. I " am but dust and ashes," says Abraham. " Behold, 1 1 am vile ; I will lay my hand upon my mouth," says Job. " Woe I is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips/'/ says Isaiah. All the great Hebrews, from Abraham to John the! Baptist, lie with their faces in the dust, crying, " God be merciful/ to me a sinner ! "
\ Where in any literature will you find a poem like the Fifty- first Psalm ? " Have mercy upon me, 0 God, according to thy lovingkindness : according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions : and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." " Create in me a clean heart, 0 God ; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence ; and take not thy holy spirit from me." The man who wrote that is a Shake- speare in the realm of spiritual expression.^
(3) The world thinks that the Church makes much ado about ^ little. Men of the world cannot see that sin is terrible, or that it needs to be shunned or feared. Men sometimes confess in a jocose tone that they are sinners ; they confess their sinfulness between loud bursts of laughter. One would think from their behaviour that sinning is a joke. Every generation has brought forth its host of writers who have endeavoured to persuade the world that sin is nothing but a trifle, a straw that some happy wind will / some day blow away. Or they make it out a form of immaturity, I an imperfection, a crudity, a greenness, a rawness, a pardonable I ignorance which will certainly be outgrown. " You do not blame \ the apple tree in the early spring because the blossoms are not full blown. Give the tree sufficient time, and the apples will be / forthcoming."