(2) But there is the feeling already hinted at, namely, that every sinner feels himself to be permanently associated with his own evil deeds. Suppose that a man has committed a great sin, such, for instance, as the betrayal of a trust. If that sin becomes
^ Life and Letters of Dean Church, 248.
2 COR. V. 2i ^31
known to society the sinner will be punished, not only by the censures of his fellows but by their remembrance of his action. He will always be pointed at as the man who did such and such things in such and such a year. No matter how much he tries, he will never wholly live it down, if he has really been guilty of the offence. But suppose that the world does not know of the misdeed. Will his experience be very different ? If he is a man of low sordid nature he will probably suffer no pangs of re- morse, but if he is a man of high temper, with capacity for nobler things, he will discover that, as Milton says.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
It is noteworthy that the sense of guilt, as we have now stated it, is the product of the influence of Jesus Christ in the world. Nothing precisely like it is to be found apart from that influence. As Professor Van Dyke says, " It was Jesus of Nazareth who illuminated the moral evil in the world most deeply and clearly. He showed its spring, its secret workings, and the power which lies behind it." Thus, to state the point briefly, Jesus, who showed to mankind the foulness of sin, must also be the Person who can deal with guilt, otherwise it were better that He had never come at all. As a matter of fact, this is just what Christians have always believed their Master was able to do. The Christian doctrine of Atonement is the only remedy that has ever been propounded to the world to deal with the psycho- logical fact of guilt. It satisfies a Christ-awakened need. It has been verified by experience during nineteen hundred years. The belief that Christ by His sufferings has wrought out our redemption has been the secret that has lifted thousands of our fellow-men out of the slough of sin and made a holy life possible. Men are not saved by fancies. There must therefore be somewhere in the doctrine a truth that has shown itself able to free men from the thraldom of sin and the worst of its consequences.
^ In Ellen Thorneycrof t Fowler's interesting book. Concerning Isabel Carndby, there occurs a conversation between a godly father and a noble son. I may here venture to give an extract from the same.
" The teaching of modern philosophy is that what is done is done, and what we have written we have written ; and that there
232 THE SINLESS MADE SIN
is no atonement for the deed once accomplished, and no washing out of the handwriting against us. But I have not so learnt of Christ."
" Then do you believe that what is done can ever be undone ? " asked Paul. " Surely that is impossible."
" I do not wish to prophesy smooth things," replied his father, " nor to sprinkle the way of life with rose-water. I know that if a man breaks the law of Nature he will be punished to the utter- most, for there is no forgiveness in Nature. I know that if a man breaks the laws of society he will find neither remission nor mercy, for there is no forgiveness in society ; but I believe that if a man breaks the law of God his transgression can be taken away as though it had never been, for ' there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.' "
" It is a grand gospel that you preach, father, and seems almost too good to be true."
"Nothing is too good to be true; the truth is the best of everything." ^
II.
The Sinner Become Eighteousness.
Having identified Christ with sin, the Apostle goes on in a somewhat similar way to identify believing souls with righteous- ness. " That we might become the righteousness of God in him." The usual interpretation of these words applies them to the acceptance of the believing soul — ^his forgiveness, his justification. That of course is included, but it is also transcended. Just as on the one hand it takes a whole Christ, and not merely a portion of His history, to fill out the great meaning of the words " He was made to be sin," so it requires a whole Christian experience, and not merely the initial stages of it, to fill out the full meaning of these words, " that we might become righteousness in him." As on the one hand you cannot find such a commentary upon sin as you find in the experience of Christ, so on the other hand you cannot find such an illustration of righteousness as in the souls in whom the work of Christ bears its fruits, beginning and growing and going on to perfection. Just as Christ was treated i^ this world as if He were sin, so His people are treated here and hereafter as if they were righteousness.