it. But whilst this consciousness of transgression and cry for pardon
are inseparable and permanent accompaniments of a devout life all along
its course, they are the roots and beginning of all true godliness. And
as a rule, the first step which a man takes to knit himself consciously
to God is through the gate of recognised and repeated and confessed sin
and imploring the divine mercy.

I. Notice, first, here the cry for pardon.

'I believe in the forgiveness of sins' hundreds of thousands of
Englishmen have said twice to-day. Most of us, when we pray at all, push
in somewhere or other the petition, 'Forgive us our sins.' And how many
of us understand what we mean when we ask for that? And how many of us
feel that we need the thing which we seem to be requesting? Let me dwell
for a moment or two upon the Scriptural idea of forgiveness. Of course
we may say that when we ask forgiveness from God we are transferring
ideas and images drawn from human relations to the divine. Be it so.
That does not show that there is not a basis of reality and of truth in
the ideas thus transferred. But there are two elements in forgiveness as
we know it, both of which it seems to me to be very important that we
should carry in our minds in interpreting the Scriptural doctrine. There
is the forgiveness known to law and practised by the lawgiver. There is
the forgiveness known to love and practised by the friend, or parent, or
lover. The one consists in the remission of external penalties. A
criminal is forgiven, or, as we say (with an unconscious restriction of
the word _forgiven_ to the deeper thing), _pardoned_, when, the
remainder of his sentence being remitted, he is let out of gaol, and
allowed to go about his business without any legal penalties. But there
is a forgiveness deeper than that legal pardon. A parent and a child
both of them know that parental pardon does not consist in the waiving