ATONEMENT 115 



And children gather as their own 

 The harvest that the dead have sown, 

 The dead, forgotten and unknown. 



How terrible then is the sinfulness of sin ! What 

 a coward is the sinner ! 



When a boy at school breaks the laws of the estab- 

 lishment and bravely bears his whipping, we are all 

 inclined to look leniently at his misdeeds. There is in 

 them something of the heroic. But supposing that boy 

 allows the punishment to fall on others, what then ? 

 The heroic element at once disappears and we call that 

 boy a coward. When I was at school, we should have 

 called him a *' cad/' And this is a true picture of the 

 man who breaks the laws of God in that larger school, 

 the University of Experience, in which we are all of us 

 undergraduates. Again I say. How terrible is the 

 sinfulness of sin ! What a coward is the sinner I 



It is not always easy to see the atoning efficacy of 

 vicarious suffering. Sometimes the suffering is borne 

 actively and voluntarily as in the examples that I have 

 given you, and its atoning efficacy is not far to seek. 

 But oftener still, it is borne passively and involuntarily, 

 and its atoning efficacy is then far more difficult to 

 recognise, K is not always easy to see that suffering 

 tends to draw men, by bonds of mutual sympathy, 

 nearer one to another, and to their God and Father, 

 But I have faith to believe that no suffering is 

 purposeless, 



That not a worm is cloven in vain, 

 That not a moth with vain desire 

 Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, _ 

 But that subserves another's gain. 



But however that may be, it remains a fact of experi- 

 ence that men do not atone for their own sins. Even 

 if they would do so, they cannot. Atonement is always 

 made in large measure by others. The wise have to 



