Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/321

Letter 27] The typical revelation of this kind, which sums up all others, is the revelation made by the atonement oof [sic] Jesus Christ; but that revelation has been a silence for the myriads who have died in ignorance of the very name of Jesus: is there no other way then in which the Word of God has taught them, redeemed them, forgiven them, made atonement for them? Yes, assuredly the Word of God has been mediating between God and men since men first existed—long before the time when the children of Israel "drank of that Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ"—and the chief vehicle of His mediation has been the influence of the righteous on the unrighteous, especially of parents on children. In this influence, the bright and central point has been the power which each man has, in some poor degree, of forgiving, and making atonement for, the sins of others—a power so weak and small, compared with the same power in Christ, that it may be easily ignored by superficial observers; and some may think to do God honour by ignoring it. But in reality whoso ignores it is ignoring the best gift of God to man. This undeveloped power of forgiving has been that uneffaced likeness of God in which He created us; and every act of forgiveness, from Adam down to John the Baptist, has been inspired by the Word of God to be a type and prophecy of that great and unique act which sums up and explains all forgiveness, the Atonement made by the Word's own sacrifice. I said above that the mother's tear might for the first time reveal to a child the meaning and power of forgiveness. What the tear of a mother may be to her child, that the Cross of Christ has been to mankind; the expression as it were, of the Father's pitifulness for His sinful children, revealing to them the meaning, and the pain, of forgiveness.

St. Paul (you will find) in all his epistles recognizes the analogy between the human race and the individual; and