orgiveness of sins prevalent
in our own day, we find that the believer in it does not mean that the
forgiven sinner is to escape from the consequences of his sin in this
world; the drunkard, whose sins are forgiven on his repentance, is still
seen to suffer from shaken nerves, impaired digestion, and the lack of
confidence shown towards him by his fellow-men. The statements made as
to forgiveness, when they are examined, are ultimately found to refer to
the relations between the repentant sinner and God, and to the
_post-mortem_ penalties attached to unforgiven sin in the creed of the
speaker, and not to any escape from the mundane consequences of sin. The
loss of belief in reincarnation, and of a sane view as to the continuity
of life, whether it were spent in this or in the next two worlds,[318]
brought with it various incongruities and indefensible assertions, among
them the blasphemous and terrible idea of the eternal torture of the
human soul for sins committed during the brief span of one life spent on
earth. In order to escape from this nightmare, theologians posited a
forgiveness which should release the sinner from this dread imprisonment
in an eternal hell. It did not, and was never supposed to, set him free
in this world from the natural consequences of his ill-doings,
nor--except in modern Protestant communities--was it held to deliver
him from prolonged purgatorial sufferings, the direct results of sin,
after the death of the physical body. The law had its course, both in
this world and in purgatory, and in each world sorrow followed on the
heels of sin, even as the wheels follow the ox. It was but eternal
torture--which existed only in the clouded imagination of the
believer--that was escaped by the forgiveness of sins; and we may
perhaps go so far as to suggest that the dogmatist, having postulated an
eternal hell as the monstrous result of transient errors, felt compelled
to provide a way of escape from an incredible and unjust fate, and
therefore further postulated an incredible and unjust forgiveness.
Schemes that are elaborated by human speculation, without regard to the
facts of life, are apt to land the speculator in thought-morasses,
whence he can only extricate himself by blundering through the mire in
an opposite direction. A superfluous eternal hell was balanced by a
superfluous forgiveness, and thus the uneven scales of justice were
again rendered level. Leaving these aberrations of the unenlight