Ill bested were the world
indeed if there were no one beyond whose pardon crime could not go!
Ah! but where was the good of pardon if still the conscious crime
kept stinging? and who would wish one he loved to grow callous to
the crime he had committed? Could one rejoice that his guilty friend
had learned to laugh again, able at length to banish the memory of
the foul thing? Would reviving self-content render him pleasant to
the eyes, and his company precious in the wisdom that springs from
the knowledge of evil? Would not that be the moment when he who had
most assiduously sought to comfort him in his remorse, would first
be tempted to withdraw his foot from his threshold? But if there was
a God--such a God as, according to the Christian story, had sent his
own son into the world--had given him to appear among us, clothed in
the garb of humanity, the armour that can be pierced, to take all
the consequences of being the god of obedience amongst the children
of disobedience, engulfing their wrongs in his infinite forbearance,
and winning them back, by slow and unpromising and tedious renewal,
to the heart of his father, surely such a God would not have created
them, knowing that some of them would sin sins from the horror of
which in themselves all his devotion could not redeem them!--And as
he thought thus, the words arose in his mind--"COME UNTO ME ALL YE
THAT LABOUR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.
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