vii Jeremiah on Forgiveness. 129 



eternal world, but we cannot doubt that they ha,ve an 

 eternal significance. The holy place made with 

 hands was a type of the true, " the greater and more 

 perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to 

 say, not of this creation." l The foregoing quotations 

 from Ezekiel are from prophecies of the restoration 

 of Israel from the exile in Babylon, and that restora- 

 tion has always, I believe, been regarded by both 

 Jews and Christians as a type of the ultimate 

 salvation of the people of God in final bliss. 



God has elsewhere said : " I will put My law in 

 their inward parts, and in their heart will I write 

 it : ... for I will forgive their iniquity, and their 

 sin will I remember no more." 2 And we are taught, 

 not in the Prophecies of Jeremiah only, but through- 

 out the Holy Scriptures, that when the sinner is 

 truly converted through the law of God being 

 written on his heart, God's forgiveness is absolute, so 

 that He no longer remembers or accounts the sin 

 against the sinner. Nothing less than this is meant 

 by the saying in the earliest of the Christian Creeds : 

 " I believe in the forgiveness of sins." 3 But a sinner 

 who believes that he is forgiven by God cannot 

 always forgive himself: and though the Divine 



1 Heb. ix. 11. 2 Jer. xxxi. 33-34. 



3 The Creeds (for the so-called Athanasian Creed is not a 

 credo) contain no assertion of belief in the punishment of sins. 

 This was taken for granted just as they contain no assertion 

 of belief in death, but do assert belief in the Resurrection. 

 Punishment appeared as certain as death : Forgiveness and 

 Resurrection needed an effort of faith to believe in them, 

 K 



