consideration of their faith, their church-membership, their baptism, or in consideration of anything, except His own universal Love; or if, chiming in with the false maxims of society, you pass proudly by the sinful and the wandering; then, so far as you have darkened the hope of any soul, though you may be saying loudly, "None can forgive but God;" with a voice louder still, you will have demonstrated that even if you will disclaim your power to loose, you cannot part with your awful power to bind.

2. Inasmuch as St. Paul absolved, let us learn the true principle of ministerial absolution. Humanity is the representative of Deity. The Church is the representative of Humanity, the ideal of Humanity. The minister is the representative of the Church. When therefore, the minister reads the absolution, he declares a Fact. It does not depend on his character or his will. It is a true voice of man on earth echoing the Voice of God in heaven. But if the minister forgets his representative character; if he forgets that it is simply in the name of Humanity and God, " in the person of Christ; if by any mysterious language or priestly artifices he fixes men's attention on himself, or his office, as containing in it a supernatural power not shared by other men; then just so far, he does not absolve or free the soul by declaring God. He binds it again by perplexed and awe-engendering falsehood, and so far is no priest at all; he has forfeited the priestly power of Christian Humanity, and claimed instead the spurious power of the priesthood of Superstition.

LECTURE XII.

I CORINTHIANS, v. 1-13.

-November 30, 1851.

`HERE is but one subject in this chapter on which I shall

Titles you today. I mean St. Paul's judgment on the

scandal which had befallen the Corinthian Church.

The same

case was treated before you last Sunday. I took the Absolution first, that we might be prepared for a sentence of great severity, and that we should not think that sentence was final. The whole of this chapter is an eloquent, earnest appeal for judgment on the offender.

St. Paul's sentence was excommunication. "I have judged," he says, "to deliver such an one unto Satan." This is the form of words used in excommunication. The presiding bishop used to say, formally, "I deliver such an one unto Satan." So that, in fact, St. Paul, when he said this, meant-My sentence is, "Let him be excommunicated."

"In

Our subject, then, is Ecclesiastical Excommunication, or rather the grounds upon which human punishment rests. The first ground on which it rests is a representative one. the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ." There is used here, then, precisely the same formula as that in Absolution. "For your sakes forgave I it, in the person of Christ." In this place, "person" is a dramatic word. It means the character sustained on the stage by one who represents another. So then, absolving "in the person of Christ," excommunicating "in the name of Christ," implied that St. Paul did both in a representative capacity. Remember

then, man is the image of God, man is the medium through which God's absolution and God's punishment are given and inflicted. Man is the mediator, because he represents God.

If man then, were a perfect image of God, his forgiveness and his condemnation would be a perfect echo of God's. But in respect of his partaking of a fallen nature, his acts, in this sense, are necessarily imperfect. There is but One, He in whom Humanity was completely restored to the Divine Image, Whose forgiveness and condemnation are exactly commensurate with God's. Nevertheless, the Church here is the representative of Humanity, of that ideal man which Christ realized, and hence, in a representative capacity, it condemns and forgives.

Again as such, that is as representative, human punishment is expressive of Divine indignation. Strong words are these, "To deliver unto Satan." Strong, too, are those-" Yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge!" And St. Paul approved that feeling. Now, I cannot explain such words away. cannot say the wrath of God is a figurative expression, nor dare I say the vengeance of the Law is figurative, for it is a mistake to suppose that punishment is only to reform and

warn.

I

There is unquestionably another truth connected with it; it is the expression on earth of God's indignation in Heaven against sin. St. Paul says of the Civil Magistrate, "For he is the Minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil."

Doubtless, our human passions mingle with that word " vengeance." It is hard to use it, and not conceive of something vindictive and passionate. Yet the Bible uses it, and when our hearts are sound and healthy, and our view of moral evil not morbid and sentimental, we feel it too. We feel that the anger of God is a reality, an awful reality, and that we dare not substitute any other expression. There cannot be such a

thing as perfect hatred of wrong, and unmixed love of the wrong-doer. He who has done wrong has identified himself with wrong, and so far is an object of indignation. This, of course, in infinite degrees.

In our own day we are accustomed to use strange weak words concerning sin and crime: we say, when a man does wrong, that he has mistaken the way to happiness, and that if a correct notion of real happiness could be given to men, crime would cease. We look on sin as residing, not in a guilty will, but in a mistaken understanding. Thus the Corinthians looked on at this deed of iniquity, and felt no indignation. They had some soft, feeble way of talking about it. They called it "mental disease," "error," "mistake of judgment," "irreristible passion," or I know not what.

St. Paul did feel indignation; and which was the higher nature, think you? If St. Paul had not been indignant, could he have been the man he was? And this is what we should feel; this it is which, firmly seated in our hearts, would correct our lax ways of viewing injustice and our lax account of sin.

Observe, the indignation of Society is properly representative of the indignation of God. I tried last Sunday* to show how the absolution of Society looses a man from the weight of sin, by representing and making credible God's forgivenesshow it opens to him hope and the path to a new life. Now similarly, see how the anger of Society represents and makes credible God's wrath. So long as the Corinthians petted this sinner, conscience slumbered; but when the voice of men was raised in condemnation, and he felt himself everywhere shunned, conscience began to do its dreadful work, and then their anger became a type of coming doom. Remember therefore, there is a real power lodged in Humanity to bind as well as to loose; and remember that though Man, God's representative, may

*This subject is also treated of in a Sermon on 'Absolution," which is published in the third volume of Mr. Robertson's Sermons.

exercise this fearful power wrongly, too long, and too severely, in venial faults, yet there is still a power, a terrible human power, which may make outcasts, and drive men to infamy and ruin. Whosesoever sins we bind on earth, they are bound. Only, therefore, so far as man is Christ-like, can he exercise this power in an entirely true and perfect manner. The world's excommunication or banishment is almost always unjust, and that of the nominal Church more or less so.

The second ground on which human punishment rests is the reformation of the offender. "That the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Of all the grounds alleged for punishment, that of "an example to others" is the most heartless and the most unchristian. In Scripture I read of two principal objects of punishment:-first, that which has been given already-punishment as an expression of righteous indignation; the other, the amelioration of the sinner, as is expressed in the above verse. And here the peculiarly merciful character of Christianity comes forth: the Church was never to give over the hope of recovering the fallen. Punishment then, here is remedial. If St. Paul punished, it was "that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." And hence (putting capital punishment out of the present question) to shut the door of repentance upon any sin, to make outcasts for ever, and thus to produce despair, is contrary to the idea of the Church of Christ, and alien from His Spirit. And so far as Society does that now, it is not christianized, for Christianity never sacrifices, as the world-system does, the individual to the Society. Christianity has brought out strongly the worth of the single soul. Let us not, however, in treating of this subject, overstate the matter, for it would be too much to say that example is never a part of the object of punishment. Perhaps of the highest Christian idea of punishment it is not. Yet in societies, where, as the spirit of the old world still lingers, Christianity can never be fully carried out, it must be