A note it is which is not only fundamental but most musical,
harmonious and gladdening. In the ancient Psalms we hear it
oft--"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his
holy name, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy
diseases." It recurs in the prophets: "I, the Lord, am he that
blotteth out thy sins; yea, tho they be as a thick cloud, I will blot
them out." It is the highest note reached by the singers of the Old
Testament; but it comes to us with greater resonance and sweetness
from the lips of the men who have stood in the presence of Jesus
Christ, and who are able to say, as they look into the faces of their
fellows: "Be it known unto you that through this man is preached unto
you the forgiveness of sins from which you could not have been freed
by the law of Moses." With emphasis, with, strength, with fulness of
conviction, with gladdening rapture, these men proclaimed their faith
in the forgiveness of sins, and tho the Creed of the churches travels
slowly after the faith of the early Church, its last note sounds out
a note of triumph: "I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the
resurrection of the body, and life everlasting."

It is the crown of the whole Creed. It is the flowering of the truths
that are contained in the Creed. Let a man understand God, and let him
have such a vision of the Eternal as Job had, and he is constrained to
say, "I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." He desires first
and chiefly to know that the true relation between the human spirit
and God which has been broken by sin has at length been rearranged,
and that sin is no longer an obstacle to the soul's converse with a
holy God, but that the ideal relation of the human spirit with the
divine spirit is reestablished by the proclamation of forgiveness.
For, as you know, pardon is not the extinguishing of a man's past;
that cannot be done. What has been done by us of good or evil abides,