demon into an angel by the formula of baptism. He declares what every
one has a right to declare, and ought to declare by his lips and by
his conduct: but being a minister, he declares it authoritatively in
the name of every Christian who by his Christianity is a priest to
God; he specializes what is universal; as in baptism, he seals the
universal Sonship on the individual by name, saying, "The Sonship with
which Christ has redeemed all men, I hereby proclaim for this child;"
so by absolution he specializes the universal fact of the love of God
to those who are listening then and there, saying, "The Love of God
the Absolver, I authoritatively proclaim to be _yours_."

In the Service for the Visitation of the Sick, the Church of England
puts into the lips of her ministers words quite unconditional: "I
absolve thee from all thy sins." You know that passage is constantly
objected to as Romish and superstitious. I would not give up that
precious passage. I love the Church of England, because she has dared
to claim her inheritance--because she has courage to assert herself as
what she ought to be--God's representative on earth. She says to her
minister, Stand there before a darkened spirit, on whom the shadows of
death have begun to fall: in human flesh and blood representing the
Invisible,--with words of human love making credible the Love Eternal.
Say boldly, I am here to declare not a perhaps, _but a fact_. I
forgive thee in the name of Humanity. And so far as Humanity
represents Deity, that forgiveness is a type of God's. She does not
put into her ministers' lips words of incantation. He cannot bless
whom God has not blessed--he cannot curse whom God has not cursed. If
the Son of absolution be there, his absolution will rest. If you have
ever tried the slow and apparently hopeless task of ministering to a
heart diseased, and binding up the wound that _will_ bleed afresh, to
which no assurances can give comfort, because they are not