all we more say, save only to mention those whose early
death as well as life was vicarious? What an enigma seems the career
of those cut off while yet they stand upon life's threshold! How proud
they made our hearts, standing forth all clothed with beauty, health
and splendid promise! What a waste of power, what a robbery of love,
seemed their early death! But slowly it has dawned upon us that the
footsteps that have vanished walk with us more frequently than do our
nearest friends. And the sound of the voice that is still instructs us
in our dreams as no living voice ever can. The invisible children and
friends are the real children. Their memory is a golden cord binding
us to God's throne, and drawing us upward into the kingdom of light.
Absent, they enrich us as those present cannot. And so the child who
smiled upon us and then went away, the son and the daughter whose
talents blossomed here to bear fruit above, the sweet mother's face,
the father's gentle spirit--their going it was that set open the door
of heaven and made on earth a new world. These all lived vicariously
for us, and vicariously they died!

No deeply reflective nature, therefore, will be surprised that the
vicarious principle is manifest in the Savior of the soul. Rejecting
all commercial theories, all judicial exchanges, all imputations of
characters, let us recognize the universality of this principle. God
is not at warfare with himself. If he uses the vicarious principle in
the realm of matter he will use it in the realm of mind and heart. It
is given unto parents to bear not only the weakness of the child, but
also his ignorance, his sins--perhaps, at last, his very crimes. But
nature counts it unsafe to permit any wrong to go unpunished. Nature
finds it dangerous to allow the youth to sin against brain or nerve or
digestion without visiting sharp penalties upon the offender. Fire
burns, acids eat, rocks crush, steam scalds--always, always.
Governments also find it unsafe to blot out all distinctions between
the honest citizen and the vicious criminal. The taking no notice of
sin keeps iniquity in good spirits, belittles the sanctity of law and
blurs the conscience.

With God also penalties are warnings. His punishments are thorn
hedges, safeguarding man from the thorns and thickets where serpents
brood, and forcing his feet back into the ways of wisdom and peace.
For man's integrity and happiness, therefore, conscience smite