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The good man who suffers for his goodness does indeed have to bear the burden of an awful mystery, a doubt whether God is indeed on the side of the righteous; but he is not crushed beneath the additional burden of self-contempt, he has not the humiliating sense of folly and weakness which the transgressor has to bear; and thus it so often happens that the well-meaning transgressor is slow to learn the lesson of patience, because he takes refuge in a vague sort of metaphysics, and attributes to heredity and environment what is really the outcome of his own wilfulness and perversity.
Nasmyth once more burned with anger against the transgressor. "No," he replied in a strained tone; "Clarence escaped." She flashed a sharp glance at him, and he felt glad that it was too dark for her to see his face. "You must tell me the whole story to-night," she requested. Her companion made no answer.
But he gives to the world an abominable example of a disobedient and perfidious servant; he denies the truth of the six articles, not in words, but in deeds. You have ordered that the priests of the Church remain single. Now, then, the Archbishop of Canterbury is married!" "Married!" cried the king, his visage glowing with rage. "Ah, I will chastise him, this transgressor of my holy laws!
We do not need any special revelation, to inform us that God is a just Being, and that His anger is kindled against wickedness, and that He will punish the transgressor. This class of truths, the Apostle informs us, are written in the human constitution, and we have already seen that they were known and dreaded in the pagan world. That which God must do, He certainly will do.
As, for instance, that some impartial arbitrator should be demanded from the Swabian League to define the boundary; and that next Rogation- tide the two knights should ride or climb it in company, while meantime the serfs should be strictly charged not to trespass, and any transgressor should be immediately escorted to his own lord.
He feels responsible; in fact, he is responsible. If his scholars are disorderly, or negligent, or idle, or quarrelsome, he feels condemned himself almost as if he were himself the actual transgressor. This difficulty is, in a great degree, peculiar to a teacher. A physician is called upon to prescribe for a patient; he examines the case, and writes his prescription.
The general solution of this problem, if not the almost universal one, was, that men had offended the gods and incurred their anger and illwill; and for this reason the gods continually afflicted them thru life and ultimately destroyed them. Thus death was the final penalty for sin. The gods could be finally satisfied only with the life, the blood, of the transgressor. "For the blood is the life."
You see, according to this theory, it does not apparently make much difference who it is that suffers, whether it is the person who has committed the sin or not; but somebody must pay an adequate penalty, and Jesus volunteered to do this, to be the victim, and so to deliver man from the righteous deserts which he had incurred as a transgressor of the law of God.
If we must be liable to fears, and the transgressor always must be, it is best that they should all be concentrated in one single overmastering sentiment. Unity is ever desirable; and even if the human soul were to be visited by none but the servile forms of fear, it would be better that this should be the "terror of the Lord."
Captain Sedley was deeply moved, and they all realized that "the way of the transgressor is hard." The sufferer was kindly conveyed to his home by Captain Sedley, and his father and mother were too glad at his return to reproach him for his conduct.
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