universe no constraining force like that combination of forgiveness and
trust.

I am sure we cannot make our standard too high. I am sure we need to
guard against all compromise in thought with its august demands. But I
am equally sure we need to learn to forgive generously if we are ever
to help those who have stumbled. Forgiving sinners does not mean
condoning sin, else could there never be any divine forgiveness. What
it does mean is loving the persons concerned. Till we learn to exercise
that divine art, we do but shut the doors of hope against sinners and
push them farther down.

Of course this means that for a pagan society there is no choice
between a sternly cold and cruel morality on the one hand, and license
on the other. For pagans cannot forgive. They alternate between a moral
indifference in which there is no hope for anybody, and a cold and
callous condemnation of sinners which is both hypocritical and cruel.
We have all seen both policies in action and know how hopeless they
both are. But in exact proportion as we learn to think and feel with
Christ we shall learn to forgive, and so doing shall begin to have
mastery over the evils in sex life that spring from ignorance,
waywardness, want of discipline, and the misunderstanding of love.
History is one long record of how by the force of law and by alternate
severity and carelessness the human race has tried to find for itself
the right path through this special country. But the record is largely
one of failure. There is no way of success for a society that depends
upon such forces. Here as in a dozen other connections the only way to
life is that Christian way which the world has so largely repudiated.
Mankind want to make a success of their life in this world--want to
make the most possible of it--but they want it apart from the