must be expiated. A victim must be offered for it. It was guilt before
God, and needed atonement. Our Lord, in His prayer for His murderers,
said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." The act of
crucifying the Lord of glory was certainly a sin, and one of an awful
nature. But the authors of it were not fully aware of its import. They
did not understand the dreadful significance of the crucifixion of the
Son of God, as we now understand it, in the light of eighteen centuries.
Our Lord alludes to this, as a species of mitigation; while yet He
teaches, by the very prayer which He puts up for them, that this
ignorance did not excuse His murderers. He asks that they may be
_forgiven_. But where there is absolutely no sin there is no need of
forgiveness. It is one of our Lord's assertions, that it will be more
tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than it will be
for those inhabitants of Palestine who would not hear the words of His
apostles,--because the sin of the former was less deliberate and wilful
than that of the latter. But He would not have us infer from this, that
Sodom and Gomorrah are not to be punished for sin. And, finally, He sums
up the whole doctrine upon this point, in the declaration, that "he who
knew his master's will and did it not shall be beaten with many stripes;
but he who knew not his master's will and did it not shall be beaten with
few stripes." The sin of thoughtlessness shall be beaten with fewer
stripes than the sin of deliberation,--but it shall be _beaten_, and
therefore it is _sin_.

The almost universal indifference and thoughtlessness with which men live
on in a worldly and selfish life, will not excuse them in the day of
accurate accounts. And the reason is, that they are capable of _thinking_
upon the law of God; of _thinking_ upon their duties; of _thinking_ upon
their sins. They possess the wonderful faculties of self-inspection and
memory, and therefore they are capable of bringing their actions into