It represents what God intended man to be--what man is in God's sight
as beheld in Christ by Him; and the minister of the Church speaks as
the representative of that ideal Humanity. Church absolution is an
eternal protest, in the name of God the Absolver, against the false
judgments of society.

One thing more. Beware of making this a dead formula. If absolution be
not a living truth, it becomes a monstrous falsehood; if you take
absolution as a mystical gift conveyed to an individual man called a
priest, and mysteriously efficacious in _his_ lips, and his _alone_,
you petrify a truth into death and unreality. I have been striving to
show that absolution is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft,
but a living, blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and
to me, and just so far as we exercise it lovingly and wisely, in our
lives, and with our lips, we help men away from sin: just so far as we
do not exercise it, or exercise it falsely, we drive men to Rome. For
if the heart cannot have a truth it will take a counterfeit of truth.
By every magnanimous act, by every free forgiveness with which a pure
man forgives, or pleads for mercy, or assures the penitent, he
proclaims this truth, that "the Son of man hath power on earth to
forgive sins"--he exhibits the priestly power of humanity--_he does_
absolve; let theology say what it will of absolution, he gives peace
to the conscience--he is a type and assurance of what God is--he
breaks the chains and lets the captive go free.




VI.