^ There is a fine Welsh poem in which the poet imagines that the Sun, and all the attendant planets and satellites in his sphere, passed before the Great White Throne of the Creator ; and as each passed. He smiled ; but when Earth came to her turn. He blushed. We may couple with that a true story which was recently told of human sin and crime. A girl was brought before a board of guardians for immoral conduct of a very gross and aggravated kind ; and, instead of showing any womanly shame, she was hard and l3razen-faced. A lady who was on the board sat amongst the guardians, and her face was dyed crimson with shame. Though the girl showed no shame for herself, the lady felt it for her sin and her hardness; and as the girl caught sight of that pure, shame-cast face, she broke down in a flood of tears, and afterwards asked to be permitted to speak to her unknown friend. The incident led to the girl's ultimate reclamation. And when, according to the poet, we are told that God blushed as the Earth passed beneath His eye, may not his suggestion be coupled with this story, and may not the blush that suffused the face of Christ be also reflected from the face of Earth ? ^
I wandered forth to meet the rising sun. To all infinity the snow lay bright Beneath the dawn — a seamless garb of white
In God's own looms immaculately spun.
^ F. D. Maurice. ' Horace Buahnell, Th« Vicarious Sacrifice, 42.
* F. B. Meyer, In (he Beginning God, 168.
2 COR. V. 21 227
Oh, spotless peace ! Yet, ere an hour should run, I knew that, with the broadening of the light, The feet of man would mar that perfect sight,
And blot it wholly ere the day were done.
And, as I went, my heart was full of pain To think of all man's deeds that would deface, Ere set of sun, the glistening garb of grace : Of truth that would be blotted with pretence, And of the treachery that would print its stain Upon the virgin snow of innocence.^
4 Sympathy has always an element of vicariousness in it, the more as it rises to the highest form of spiritual identification. Sympathy, by common consent one of the holiest and most influential forces in social life, is indeed itself a vicarious emotion. Its presence implies that we are putting ourselves into another man's place and participating in his experiences. By an act of imagination we bring our sensibilities into unison with kindred sensibilities in groups of sufferers, and so enter into their lot. There has been a mental substitution of our personality for that of a neighbour who is racked with pain, stricken by tragic bereavement, or wallowing in want and abject privation. It is quite possible we may suffer as much as the ill-fated victim him- self, or even more, if his temperament chance to be slow and stolid. By an act of mental transmigration we share the dire conditions of another, and the process may be momentary or persistent. This act of thinking ourselves into another's place may be so vivid that his trouble will continue to haunt us for years. Who will venture to deny that there is the dawn of a great virtue in every generous impulse which compels us to put ourselves at the standpoint of a sufferer ? Sympathy when divorced from wise, practical action may cease to be a virtue. It may pass into hypocrisy, and be cherished because of the sense of spurious self -approval to which it ministers. But all the same we are bound to recognize that it is the source of altruism, and that the sincere emotion is one of the great healing forces at work in a woe-begone world.
^ What we call the vicarious sacrifice of Christ is nothing strange as regards the principle of it, no superlative, unexampled,
' G. Thomas, The Wayside Altar, 32.
228 THE SINLESS MADE SIN
and therefore unintelligible grace. It only does and suffers, and comes into substitution for, just what any and all love will according to its degree. And in this view, it is not something higher in principle than our human virtue knows and which we ourselves are never to copy or receive, but it is to be imderstood by what we know already, and is to be more fully understood by what we are to know hereafter, when we are complete in Christ. Nothing is wanting to resolve the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus but the commonly known, always familiar principle of love, accepted as the fundamental law of duty, even by mankind. Given the universality of love, the universality of vicarious sacrifice is given also. Here is the centre and deepest spot of good, or goodness, conceivable. At this point we look into heaven's eye itself, and read the meaning of all heavenly grace.^
^ There is an authentic and beautiful little story told graphi- cally by Dr. Hanna — the biographer and the son-in-law of Dr. Chalmers. " In a household which enjoyed all the benefits of high culture and Christian care one of the children committed a grievous and unexpected fault — he told a falsehood to cover a petty theft. Eebuke and punishment were administered, carried further than they had ever been before, but without effect. The offender was not awakened to any real or deep sorrow for his offence. The boy's insensibility quite overcame his father. Sitting in the same room with his sullen and obstinate child, he bent his head upon his hand and burst into a flood of tears. For a moment or two the boy looked on in wonder ; he then crept gradually nearer and nearer to his sobbing parent, and at last got up on his father's knees, asking in a low whisper why it was that he was weeping so. He was told the reason. It wrought like a spell upon his young heart ; the sight of his father suffering so bitterly on his account was more than he could bear. He flung his little arms round his father and wept along with him. That father never needed to correct his child again for any like offence."