And thus those who make their boast in God, and do not boast of the morrow, find that the morrow itself becomes clear to them in the light of His countenance; they do in a sense know what it will bring forth: it will bring forth what they desire, for it will bring forth their Father's will; it will bring forth the victory and the glory of Christ. "Henceforth ye shall see Him coming in the clouds of heaven." Is not that enough? When our hearts have learnt to hanker only after God's will, to desire only Christ's victory, they may boast themselves even of to-morrow; for to-morrow holds in its bosom an assurance of blessing and joy.
[673] Browning, _Pippa Passes_.
[674] Prov. xxiv. 27.
[675] Prov. xxii. 3; xxvii. 12.
[676] Psalm xliv. 8.
[677] Prov. xxvii. 20.
[678] See heading of chapter.
[679] Prov. xxvii. 4.
[680] Sir Edward Dyer (_b._ 1540).
[681] Prov. xv. 15.
[682] Matthew Arnold.
[683] Phil. i. 21.
[684] Prov. xxvii. 18.
"He that hideth (מְכַסֶּה) his transgressions shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall obtain mercy."--PROV. xxviii. 13.
"Happy is the man that feareth alway; but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief."--PROV. xxviii. 14.
"The fear of the Lord tendeth to life, and he that hath it shall abide satisfied. He shall not be visited with evil."--PROV. xix. 23.
"By mercy and truth iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil."--PROV. xvi. 6.
The Hebrew word (כָּפַר) which is used for the idea of atonement is one which originally signifies _to cover_. Sin is a hideous sore, a shocking deformity, which must be hidden from the eyes of men, and much more from the holy eyes of God. Thus the Old Testament speaks about a Robe of Righteousness which is to be thrown over the ulcerated and leprous body of sin. Apart from this covering, the disease is seen working out its sure and terrible results. "A man that is laden with the blood of any person shall flee unto the pit: let no man stay him,"[685] and though blood-guiltiness appears to us the worst of sins, all sin is alike in its issue; every sinner may be seen by seeing eyes "fleeing unto the pit," and no man can stay him or deliver him. Or, to vary the image, the sinful man is exposed to the violence of justice, which beats like a storm upon all unprotected heads; he needs to be covered; he needs some shelter, some hiding-place, or he must be swept away.
But the objection which immediately occurs to us is this: what is the use of covering sin if the sin itself remains? The disease is not cured because a decent garment is drawn over the suffering part; indeed, it is not hard to conceive a case in which the covering might aggravate the mischief. If the idea of covering is to be of any service, it must be cleared from all misconception; there is a kind of hiding which may be ruinous, a garment which may drive the disease inward and hasten its deadly operation, a covert from the storm which may crush and stifle the person whom it professes to protect. "He that _covereth_ his transgressions," in that way, "shall not prosper." Every attempt to conceal from God or from man or from oneself that one is diseased with sin is ineffectual: every lame excuse which seeks to palliate the guilt; every hypocritical pretence that the thing done has not been done, or that it is not what men usually suppose it to be; every ingenious argumentation which seeks to represent sin as something other than sin, as a mere defect or taint in the blood, as a hereditary and unavoidable weakness, as an aberration of the mind for which one is not responsible, or as a merely conventional and artificial offence,--all such attempts at hiding must be failures, "covering" of that kind can be no atonement. Quite the reverse; this trifling with conscience, this deluded self-righteousness, is the worst possible aggravation of the sin. Hidden in that way, though it be, as it were, in the bowels of the earth, sin becomes a poisonous gas, more noxious for confinement, and liable to break out in awful and devastating explosions.