Is it any wonder, if taught on every side distrust of man, the heart
should by a violent reaction, and by an extravagant confidence in a
priest, proclaim that its normal, natural state is not distrust, but
trust?

What is forgiveness?--It is God reconciled to us. What is
absolution?--It is the authoritative declaration that God is
reconciled. Authoritative: that is a real power of conveying a sense
and feeling of forgiveness. It is the power of the Son of Man _on
earth_ to forgive sins. It is man, God's image, representing, by his
forgiveness on earth, God's forgiveness in heaven.

Now distinguish God's forgiveness of sin from an arresting of the
consequences of sin. When God forgives a sin, it does not follow that
He stops its consequences: for example, when He forgives the
intemperate man whose health is ruined, forgiveness does not restore
his health. Divine pardon does not interfere with the laws of the
universe, for it is itself one of those laws. It is a law that penalty
follows transgression. Forgiveness will not save from penalty; but it
alters the feelings with which the penalty is accepted. Pain inflicted
with a surgeon's knife for a man's good, is as keen as that which
results from the knife of the torturer; but in the one case it is
calmly borne, because remedial--in the other it exasperates, because
it is felt to be intended by malevolence. So with the difference
between suffering which comes from a sin which we hope God has
forgiven, and suffering which seems to fall hot from the hand of an
angry God. It is a fearful truth, that so far as we know at least, the
consequences of an act are connected with it indissolubly. Forgiveness
does not arrest them; but by producing softness and grateful