penitence, it transforms them into blessings. This is God's
forgiveness; and absolution is the conveyance to the conscience of the
conviction of forgiveness: to absolve is to free--to comfort by
strengthening--to afford repose from fear.

Now it was the way of the Redeemer to emancipate from sin by the
freeness of absolution. The dying thief, an hour before a blasphemer,
was unconditionally assured; the moment the sinner's feelings changed
towards God, He proclaimed that God was reconciled to him: "This day
thou shalt be with me in Paradise." And hence, speaking humanly,
hence, from this absolving tone and spirit, came His wondrous and
unparalleled power with sinful, erring hearts; hence the life and
fresh impulse which He imparted to the being and experience to those
with whom He dealt. Hence the maniac, freed from the legion, sat at
His feet, clothed, and in his right mind. Hence the outcast woman,
whom human scorn would have hardened into brazen effrontery, hearing
an unwonted voice of human sympathy, "washed His feet with her tears,
and wiped them with the hairs of her head."

And this is what we have forgotten: we have not yet learned to trust
the power of redeeming love; we do not believe in the omnipotence of
grace, and the might of an appeal to the better parts, and not the
slavish parts of human nature. Settle it in your minds, the absolving
power is the central secret of the Gospel. Salvation is unconditional;
not an offer, but _a Gift_; not clogged with conditions, but free as
the air we breathe. God welcomes back the prodigal. God loves without
money and without price. To this men reply gravely, It is dangerous to
speak thus; it is perilous to dispense with the safeguards of
restriction. Law! law! there is nothing like law--a salutary fear--for
making men holy. O blind Pharisee! had you ever known the spring, the