, but deeds never"--this is the note one hears through all her
books. If we have done wrong, it is in vain we cry for mercy. We are
taken by the throat and delivered over to the tormentors until we have
paid the uttermost farthing.

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

And this is all that writers such as these have to say to us.
Retribution they know, but not Redemption. "There are no arresting
angels in the path"--only the Angel of Justice with the drawn sword.

But this is not the teaching of Jesus concerning sin. He is not blind,
and if we give ear to Him He will not suffer us to be blind, either to
its character or its consequences; but He says that sin can be forgiven,
and its iron bondage broken. Jesus believed in the recoverability of man
at his worst. It is a fact significant of much that the first mention of
sin in the New Testament is in a prophecy of its destruction: "Thou
shalt call His name Jesus; for it is He that shall save His people from
their sins." And throughout the first three Gospels sin is named almost
exclusively in connection with its forgiveness.[36] What Christ hath
joined together let no man put asunder. Herein is the very gospel of
God, that Christ came not to condemn the world, but that the world,
through Him, might be saved. "Do you know what Christ would say to you,
my girl?" said a missionary to a poor girl dying. "He would say, 'Thy
sins are forgiven thee.'" "Would He, though, would He?" she cried,
starting up; "take me to Him, take me to Him." Yes, thank God, we know
what to do with our sin; we know what we must do to be saved.

Let us go back again for a moment over the ground we have already
travelled. We are in debt, with nothing to pay; but Christ has taken the
long account, and has crossed it through and through. We are in bondage,
with no power to set ourselves free; but Christ has come to rend the
iron chain and proclaim deliverance to the captives. We are wrong, wrong
within, wrong at the core; but again He is equal to our need, for
concerning Him it is written that He shall take away not only the "sins"
but the "sin" of the world. Is anything too hard for Him? Just as a
lover of pictures will sometimes discover a portrait, the work of an old
master, marred and disfigured by the dirt and neglect of years, and will
patiently cl