ssion
on me--will not God forgive? He, this man, made in God's image, does
not think my case hopeless. Well, then, in the larger love of God it
is not hopeless." Thus, and only thus, can we understand the
_ecclesiastical_ act. Absolution, the prerogative of our humanity, is
represented by a formal act of the Church.

Much controversy and angry bitterness has been spent on the absolution
put by the Church of England into the lips of her ministers--I cannot
think with justice--if we try to get at the root of these words of
Christ. The priest proclaims forgiveness authoritatively as the organ
of the congregation--as the voice of the Church, in the name of Man
and God. For human nature represents God. The Church represents what
human nature is and ought to be. The minister represents the Church.
He speaks therefore, in the name of our godlike, human nature. He
declares a divine fact, he does not create it. There is no magic in
his absolution: he can no more forgive whom God has not forgiven, by
the formula of absolution, or reverse the pardon of him whom God has
absolved by the formula of excommunication, than he can transfer a
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 repr