Righteous Forgiveness

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.—1 John 1:8-9.

1. These words sum up the great characteristic aim which distinguishes Christianity from every other system and institution on earth. The object of education is to get rid of ignorance. The object of medicine is to get rid of disease. The object of Socialism (at least, according to many of its advocates) is to get rid of poverty. But the object of Christianity is to get rid of sin. The Gospel lays its finger on moral evil as the real mischief and misery of the world. Compared with the supreme curse of human selfishness, nothing else seriously matters. And accordingly the Gospel proposes to cure this inward malady of the soul. Herein, it stands apart from other religions. As Amiel said, “The prayer of the Buddhist is, ‘Deliver us from existence’; the prayer of the Christian is, ‘Deliver us from evil.’ ”

I

Contradicting God

1. If we say that we have no sin, we not only deceive ourselves, but we make God a liar. St. John warns us against three false views which a man is tempted to take of his condition: He may deny the reality of sin, or his responsibility for sin, or the fact of sin in his own case.

For the history of Christian faith shows how Christian enthusiasts have been found to maintain, in a strange and perverse way, that Divine communion had lifted them above the common distinctions of right and wrong. And in our own day, when people are persuading themselves, in the name of religion, that pain and disease are illusions, we need not wonder if they persuade themselves that duty is an illusion too. The Apostle confronts such men with a strong, blunt declaration. They lie: they are false to their own knowledge of right and wrong.

And experience of our own hearts, and of our own friends, explains how religious men can yet excuse themselves for wrongdoing by saying, “We have no sin”—that is to say, we are not responsible, we cannot be blamed. But to argue thus is to deceive ourselves, to confuse and corrupt our own consciences, to pervert our moral sense.

Again, it is still possible for men who recognize the reality and the ruin of moral evil to deny that they themselves are personally guilty. The Apostle confutes these men by appealing to God’s estimate of their condition, as shown in His redemption: to deny that we need to be redeemed is to make God a liar.

When asked whether he “had made his peace with God,” Thoreau quietly replied that “he had never quarrelled with him.” He was invited by another acquaintance to enter into a religious conversation concerning the next world. “One world at a time,” was the prompt retort.1 [Note: H. S. Salt, Henry David Thoreau, 210.]

Mr. D. L. Moody says that once he visited a prison in New York to hold a service with the prisoners. Afterwards he spoke to each of the prisoners privately. He said, “I never found such an innocent lot of men in my life as in that place. Each man explained that somebody else was to blame.”2 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks about the Tempter, 127.]

2. Already in the days of John there were Christians for whom the word “sin” was beginning to lose its meaning.

(1) It would seem that some thought it must be unworthy of God to vex Himself about the right or wrong doings of men. They pictured Him as so great and comprehensive that He contained within Himself darkness as well as light, and looked with equal complacency on the evil and on the good, so that what men call wrong-doing was not sin against Him, and therefore on a large view of creation deserved no condemnation. St. John knew that such a being had nothing in common with the Father of his Lord Jesus Christ, who had suffered and died to put away the sins of the world. On the strength of his fellowship with the very life of God, which had made itself known in his own spirit through the Person of Jesus, he declares that God is light without any mixture of darkness, and that men can be partakers of His life only by refusing to do the works of darkness.

(2) It was said by others that fellowship between men and God is impossible till men are sinless, for there is always darkness mixed with their light. Not so, the Apostle says; these spots of darkness on the human spirit are not indelible; the blood of God’s own Son has power to wash them out. In the virtue of that sacrifice lies the only possible abolition of sin. But do not imagine, he adds, that you have yet got clear of sin. That were self-deception. We must not only refuse to say that we have no sin, we must press forward to confess our sins, to carry them with shame before God for Him to abolish. And that He will surely do, both towards Himself and towards us. As sins in the proper sense of the word, offences against a loving Father and Maker, He will send them away, forgive them, allow them to make no breach between Him and us. As unrighteousness, as stains and injuries to our own natures, which He created for righteousness, He will cleanse them away and enable us to go forth in newness of life. Let us have no fears about His will to do this; it rests upon His very faithfulness and righteousness; in doing it He is not indulgently breaking in upon the strict law of His nature, but is acting as His external nature requires Him to act; He is but perfecting what He began, refusing to despise the work of His own hands, carrying out the purpose for which He sent His Son to die. And if, after all, in spite of the revelation of God as the destroyer of sin, we say that for our part we have committed no sin, we do more than deceive ourselves, more than refuse to receive the truth within us; we set ourselves directly against God in person, making Him a liar, smothering His voice within us.

II

Confessing Sin

1. What is confession? To confess sins is to own up to them before God, to say to ourselves and to Him that, however dark the way has been and however stiff the fight, however heavy the handicap has been, nevertheless, in the inner secret of our being, we know that at the last resort and the final analysis those sins would never have darkened the face of God’s heaven had we not chosen so to live.

That is confession in its first aspect—“These deeds are mine.” But there is a deeper aspect. We have to remember that these sins of ours, these separate and individual acts, come from a fountain which John calls “sin.” These sins, transgressions, are all of them the result of that in us which is a root and a source of evil. They are the result of that sin which is part of our character, part of our “make-up.” They have not come uncaused; they have not come out of nothing, but out of our own being; and because of the strain of bad blood, because of the strain of evil, because of the open source of wrong that there is in us, in our own choice and will, they have come forth to poison earth’s atmosphere. They are ours. That is confession.

(1) It is not confessing sin to admit the fact that you are a sinner; it is not confessing sin to admit the fact that it is an evil state; it is not confessing sin to admit that it is a base thing; it is not confessing sin to admit, when you contrast a holy state with an evil state, that the holy state is the better state. To confess sin is to come to the conclusion in your heart, and freely, with your lips, to make this admission, that your breach of God’s law, and your not loving God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your not loving every human being as yourself, is an awful thing, justly charged against you as your guilt, and in respect of which, neither the force of example, nor the influence of education, nor circumstances, nor a corrupted nature, furnish any apology whatever. The Bible says expressly, “The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world”; and everywhere God is at great pains to separate between Himself and man’s sin, and to exonerate Himself from all responsibility for man’s sins. To confess sin is to take God’s word in the matter; it is to stand upon God’s side in the question; it is joining God against myself; and it is to feel that the fact that this sin is my sin, that this corruption is my corruption, does in no respect interfere with the sternness with which I recognize that this sin is a thing in which the guilty person is righteously held guilty.

I wish to call to remembrance my past vileness, and the corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God! I do this for the love of Thy love, calling to mind my most evil ways, that when I feel the bitterness of my own sin, then I may also feel how sweet Thou art.1 [Note: Augustine, Confessions.]

(2) What St. John insists on is that we be candid: that we be willing to be reproved and convicted, to have the cancer of evil excised by that Word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword. If we will not submit to this, is it not evident that the cancer will spread? If, however, there is candour, there will be confession to God. There will be confession also to man. St. John would not be unmindful of his Master’s teaching on confession, and his words here, “If we confess,” are wide enough to include confession to man as well as to God. Let there, then, be confession to the fellow-man we have wronged, if our sin has specially wronged any. No other confession to man is enjoined in Scripture. But this is enjoined, and is too seldom practised. When we have sinned against our fellow-man, let us measure the reality of our confession to God by our confession to man. If pride keeps us from this latter, of what worth is the former? “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” Such confession to man has its place as a means of deliverance from sin.

Suppose any one ill in body, in pain and distress, lying awake at night, refusing his nourishment or finding that it does him no good, his spirits low, his heart full of anguish, feeling as if all his good days were gone, and not knowing what to do, what medicine to take, how to live in order to obtain health and strength again. What are men used to do when such trouble as this comes upon them? Finding they cannot cure themselves, they go to some one whom they think more likely to cure them. They go to the physician: and having come to him, do they leave him to find out what is the matter by merely looking at them, or do they tell him their case themselves, and answer all his questions? Of course they tell him: it is their only chance to be cured; for how else is he to know what is the matter with them? And if he does not know, how can he prescribe for them? As, then, the way of bodily cure is to tell one’s ease fully to the physician, so the way of spiritual cure is to confess our sins to the physician of our souls: that is, to Almighty God, for He alone can heal the soul.1 [Note: J. Keble.]

2. Confession implies the reconstruction of the principles of our life. A good deal of so-called repentance is only sorrow at being punished. That is not repentance at all. And in such a state of mind no man can partake of Christ’s atonement. We cannot share in our Lord’s atonement until we copy His penitential character. Christ felt sin for all humanity. Christ confessed sin for all humanity. We, like Him, have to realize that the worst thing in sin is not its punishment, physical, mental, moral, but the alienation from God which it brings. It was that which broke the heart of the Sinless upon the cross. Christ has made atonement by His sinless life of obedience, leading, just because it was sinless, to the cross. But that atonement is of no use to us, we cannot subjectively participate in it, till we repent of sin and hate it, as the accursed thing which nailed the Sinless to the Holy Rood.

Among the hard-working Labrador fishermen was a rich man who had oppressed them, but whom they believed to be strong enough to defy them. Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, the medical missionary, who is also a magistrate, went to the offender and told him that he must confess his sin and pay back to the fishermen a thousand dollars. He cursed the missionary. At the next church service the doctor announced that a sinful man would confess his sin that night. They couldn’t believe that the rich sinner would yield. At the evening service, Dr. Grenfell asked them to keep their seats while he went after the sinner. He found the man at a brother’s house on his knees in prayer, with all the family.

“Prayer,” said Grenfell, “is a good thing in its place, but it doesn’t ‘go’ here. Come with me.”

He meekly went, and was led up the aisle, where all could see him, and, after the doctor had described the great sin of which he was guilty, he asked, “Did you do this thing?” “I did.” “You are an evil man of whom the people should beware?” “I am.” “You deserve the punishment of man and God.” “I do.”

At the end of it all the doctor told the man that the good God would forgive him if he should ask in true faith and repentance, but that the people, being human, could not. For a whole year, he charged the people, they must not speak to that man; but if, at the end of that time, he had shown an honest disposition to mend his ways, they might take him to their hearts.

In the inland territories of Arabia there are orchards and fruit trees, green tablelands and springing fountains of water; it is indeed one of the richest and most beautiful countries in the world. But it is difficult to believe that, as we watch its sterile, forbidding coasts. The port of Aden, touched at by most travellers to the East, gives an idea of what Tartarus itself must be like. The normal temperature is torment, even to those inured to the great heat of the tropics. Not a blade of grass is to be seen upon the hillsides, rain falls perhaps once in three or four years, verdureless rocks tower towards the molten heavens like pitiless rivals. And yet these sterile, forbidding, fire-scathed rocks are the gateway into a country fair as Eden and flowing with milk and honey. So is it with this hard, inexorable, repugnant duty of confession. It is the grim gateway leading on to green pastures and still waters, to sabbatic rest and abounding blessedness. The more specific and outspoken our confession the better for our health of soul and for the rapidity and completeness of our spiritual restoration.1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The God of the Frail, 102.]

3. Why should we confess, if God already knows our sin? The answer is that confession is not meant to inform God, but to train us into a personal relation with Him. Think of any human relationship, the relation of a father or a mother to their children. Supposing the child, the son we will say, has done something wrong, has outraged and done violence to his home. He has set out upon a bad career. The father or mother would wish for, pray for, seek for, his amendment; but yet we know that, they could not, ought not to be satisfied by any mere amendment in the outward routine of life. It would be felt by all right-minded people to be superficial. We shall say if his heart is changed then there must be sorrow too, there must be regret, and the expression of regret and sorrow and penitence for the hearts he has wounded, for the lives that he has outraged, for the love so freely lavished upon him that he has scouted.

It is recorded of Leonardo da Vinci that while painting his famous picture representing the “Last Supper,” he quarrelled violently with a former friend. In order to injure this man in a lasting manner he painted for the face of Judas the face of his old friend with whom he had quarrelled. But when endeavouring to portray the face of the Saviour, Da Vinci utterly failed to do justice to the ideal face, and arose from every attempt with feelings of despair. When some time had passed by, Da Vinci relented in his harsh treatment of his friend and wiped out the face of Judas. And it is recorded that on the night following the day on which he did this outward act of forgiveness, he saw in vision Christ standing before him. Da Vinci saw the face of Christ more vividly than he ever saw it in his supreme moments of exalted inspiration, and so lasting was the impression that he was able on the next day to transfer to the picture that face of Christ which we see in the picture to-day.

4. Confession of sins, as distinct from the vague acknowledgment of sin, is a partial security against the further spreading of sin within the soul. There are some poisonous fungi which grow only in the dark, and sin is such a growth. The contagion, to use another illustration, is lessened the moment you open the windows of the soul and let in the fresh air of heaven. If you shut the soul up within itself, you will only harbour fresh seeds of transgression within the heart. No one can have gone to God in penitent confession and prayer without being conscious that the act of confession has made it harder, and not easier, to sin again.

In all literature there can hardly be a nobler instance of confession, and the glorious results which follow, than that which Dante made of his own sinfulness, by the terrific condemnation which he puts into the mouth of Beatrice when she comes to him on the top of the mountain of Purgatory. It seems as though in the “Convivio” he tried to explain away the moral confusion and delinquency into which he fell after the death of Beatrice. But he found it could not be done. No skill in allegorizing, no subtlety of philosophy, would make it any other than moral failure. So Dante decided on a nobler course. He left the “Convivio” unfinished, and took the way of open confession, by making Beatrice condemn him in the most scathing language when he meets her on the mount, and by admitting that to her stinging reproofs he had no reply. Overwhelmed with shame he swooned away; but in that moment of uttermost exposure and disgrace he was set free. When he awoke he had been washed in Lethe, with the remembrance of the sin gone for ever. Then, and only then, was he ready for the blessed companionship of Beatrice and the ascent to heaven. There in the heart of his immortal Comedy he has set his own confession, telling all who read it that there is but one way to get free from sin—the humiliating way of confession; telling us also that without confession there can be no fellowship with the pure and good, or any heaven in the presence of God.

III

Commanding Forgiveness

1. Forgiveness is a free gift.—That is, it affords the same revelation of love as we find in a child’s or a friend’s or a lover’s pardon, and indeed in all self-sacrifice. It does not spring from any merit, anything done. Like all the beauties and graces of life, it is not based on necessity or justice but is an unbought gift of that heart of the Eternal which is “most wonderfully kind.” For the world of spirits lives on the rich generosity of God. And of all its instances none is comparable to that of pardon; none so dear and wonderful as that grace of forgiveness for which His Son once died upon the Cross, that men, the worst and the weakest, might live unto Him for ever.

Guizot once wrote in an album, “I have learned in my long life two rules of prudence: the first is to forgive much, and the second is never to forget.” Under this Thiers wrote, “A little forgetting would not detract from the sincerity of the forgiveness.” Then Bismarck added the words, “As for me, I have learned to forget much, and to ask to be forgiven much.”1 [Note: J. R. Miller, Devotional Hours with the Bible.]

It is said that only once in his career did Napoleon give way to pity. It was in October 1806. Three weeks before, in the battle of Jena, he had laid Prussia submissive at his feet. He was now busy with the spoliation of Berlin. But the Prince of Hatzfeld had proved a traitor to him. He was arrested. The death warrant had been signed. For two days he had languished in prison, awaiting the execution of the decree. His wife believed him innocent. For five hours she had stood without in the street, waiting for an audience with the Emperor. At last he came. With tears and entreaties she pleaded that her husband might be spared, for “she knew that he was innocent.” Napoleon gazed with those terrible grey-blue eyes upon her tear-stained face—and said nothing. The suspense was awful. At last he turned to Talleyrand and held out his hand. Talleyrand placed in his hand a letter. He handed it to the kneeling princess. “Whose writing is that, Madame?” The princess eagerly scanned the lines, and as her eyes recognized the signature, she let the paper fall with a pitiful cry. “Is that your husband’s writing, Madame?” But sobs were the only answer. Then for once Napoleon softened into pity as he said, “Talleyrand.” “Sire.” “What other evidence have we of the Prince of Hatzfeld’s treachery?” “None other, sire.” “Princess,” said Napoleon tenderly, “put that letter in the fire yonder, and then we shall have none.” The tell-tale sheet fluttered into the fire, and the last bit of evidence against the prince had perished for ever.

2. Forgiveness is founded on the nature of God: it is the outcome of His justice. “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.”

(1) In forgiving us God is faithful to Himself. The supreme truth about God is that He is our Father, and if God is to be faithful He must be faithful as a Father; and when one who is meant to be His child in likeness and in truth places himself in the position of penitent, and stands in the light of true confession, God would be untrue to His Fatherhood did He not forgive. God’s forgiveness is the ever-present breath of His Fatherhood. God is a living God, Fatherhood His very inner life, and it flames all through this universe. It is no cold and merely stately thing; it is the burning breath of His life; and that breath comes to us first and last on this earth as the play of His Spirit in that pardon which takes us, imperfect as we are, and gives us room to live, in His presence and in His love.

(2) In forgiving our sins God is also righteous. When a man confesses his sins in the genuine sense, he has the right to be forgiven. Confession makes him another man. He is not the man he was before. Before, he was one with his sin, and his sin was the truth about him; but now that he has used that strange power of repentance which God has made part of our being—the repentance which means changing your mind and turning right round—he has put his sin from him, and it is, in the sight of the perfect truth, his no longer. God would not be righteous did He not recognize the truth about that man. “And this is the message which we have heard from him, and announce unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Therefore no one on earth can gauge or recognize the truth about the penitent as God does; and, if we confess our sins, God is righteous to forgive us.

Take the case of some human act of forgiveness. A man does me a wrong. The act being once done is irremediable, and the loss or injury of it must be borne by some one. If he makes me amends, though the evil originally done is not annihilated, yet the sentiment of justice is satisfied. In some cases of wrongdoing, however, he cannot make amends, or he may entirely refuse even to try to make amends. Thereupon I forgive him, that is to say, I virtually take upon myself the penalty which he ought to have suffered. We see clearly that this is what forgiveness means in the case of a money debt: where the creditor forgives the debt, he suffers the loss himself. And so it is with forgiveness of other kinds of injury. By freely forgiving the wrong-doer I do not undo his act, but I consent to suffer the injury and waive my right to compensation. If I go beyond this and refuse all his offers of satisfaction, I voluntarily take upon myself the wrong-doer’s burden, and set him free from every obligation except that of gratitude.

From human forgiveness to Divine forgiveness is a long step, but they both seem to be regarded as on the same footing in the Lord’s Prayer, where we are taught to say, “Forgive us, as we forgive.” May we not therefore believe that up to a certain point the analogy holds, and that Divine like human forgiveness involves vicarious suffering? Man has duties towards God which he has not fulfilled. God forgives him. God thus willingly takes the loss upon Himself. Without this there can be no forgiveness, for even God, so far as our finite intelligence is able to conceive the matter, cannot annihilate the past. God has been despised and rejected by His creatures. How can they be forgiven? Only by God’s consenting to be despised and rejected. That they may escape—sooner than that they should suffer—God foregoes His right. Men deny His existence: He consents to be denied, in order that He may forgive. Men do all kinds of evil against Him: He submits to them, not because He must, but of His own will. He endures everything because He forgives. It is only by enduring that He can forgive. His last prayer is for the forgiveness of His murderers.1 [Note: H. G. Woods, At the Temple Church, 226.]

When a few years ago, a Mohammedan convert at Calcutta came to Lal Behouri Sing for baptism, the missionary asked him what was the vital point in which he found Mohammedanism most defective, and which he found that Christianity satisfactorily supplied. His prompt reply was, “Mohammedanism is full of the mercy of God; and while I felt no real consciousness of guilt as the breaker of God’s law this satisfied me; but when I felt my guilt I felt that it was not with God’s mercy, but with His justice, that I had first to do. Now to meet the claims of God’s justice Mohammedanism had made no provision, but this is the very thing that I have found fully accomplished by the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross; and, therefore, Christianity is now the only adequate religion for me, a guilty sinner.”1 [Note: C. Stanford, Symbols of Christ, 301.]

Weigh all my faults and follies righteously,

Omissions and commissions, sin on sin;

Make deep the scale, O Lord, to weigh them in;

Yea, set the Accuser vulture-eyed to see

All loads ingathered which belong to me;

That so in life the judgment may begin,

And Angels learn how hard it is to win

One solitary sinful soul to Thee.

I have no merits for a counterpoise:

Oh vanity my work and hastening day,

What can I answer to the accusing voice?

Lord, drop Thou in the counterscale alone

One Drop from Thine own Heart, and overweigh

My guilt, my folly, even my heart of stone.2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]

IV

Ensuring Cleansing

1. God is faithful and just, not merely to forgive us our sins but to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We need something else besides forgiveness. Forgiveness of sins is much, but cleansing from the defilement of sin is more. Yet this spring of evil in the heart may be dried up, and what was once the sepulchre of living death transformed into a sanctuary of Divine life. The essence of the Gospel is not the remittance of condemnation, but the sanctification of the soul.

The germs of disease may lurk in our system and necessitate care, yet be so controlled by a healthy constitution as not to overcome us, just as an enemy who has invaded a country may be practically dispossessed, though he may retain a stronghold here and there, and make destructive sallies into the surrounding districts. So, sin may be in us, though it may not have dominion over us; and though it have no dominion it may yet enfeeble, obstruct, and distract us. In fact, not to struggle against sin is the direct evidence of our being completely under its subjection, as there is no slavery so abject as that which tamely acquiesces in its servitude. To struggle against it, but unsuccessfully, betokens an awakened conscience, but a heart not yet strengthened by the grace of Christ. To struggle against it successfully, though with a certain measure of loss and damage—like an army which conquers though at the cost of many wounded and slain—is the case of the Christian who knows sin is always present with him, to be watched and fought against, and imposing the constant necessity of confession and prayer for forgiveness and cleansing.1 [Note: C. Moinet, The Great Alternative, 172.]

Since succour to the feeblest of the wise

Is charge of nobler weight

Than the security

Of many and many a foolish soul’s estate,

This I affirm,

Though fools will fools more confidently be:

Whom God doth once with heart to heart befriend,

He does so till the end;

And having planted life’s miraculous germ,

One sweet pulsation of responsive love,

He sets him sheer above,

Not sin and bitter shame

And wreck of fame,

But Hell’s insidious and more black attempt,

The envy, malice and pride,

Which men who share so easily condone

That few even list such ills as these to hide.

From these unalterably exempt

Through the remember’d grace

Of that divine embrace,

Of his sad errors none,

Though gross to blame,

Shall cast him lower than the cleansing flame,

Nor make him quite depart

From the small flock named “after God’s own heart,”

And to themselves unknown.

Nor can he quail

In faith, nor flush nor pale

When all the other idiot people spell

How this or that new prophet’s word belies

Their last high oracle;

But constantly his soul

Points to its pole,

Even as the needle points and knows not why

And, under the ever-changing clouds of doubt,

When others cry,

“The stars, if stars there were,

Are quenched and out!”

To him, uplooking t’ward the hills for aid,

Appear, at need display’d,

Gaps in the low-hung gloom, and, bright in air,

Orion or the Bear.1 [Note: Coventry Patmore.]

2. The Divine faithfulness and justice are pledged to “cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The discovery of ineffaceable spots on the soul would be a fatal reflection on the spiritual perception and sanctifying power of the Divine Redeemer. We are told that a New York lapidary submitted a diamond to the grinding machine for the space of three months. At the end of that time the stone was found to be absolutely unaffected by the ordeal, and the lapidary gave up the task in despair. But the revolutions of the wheels of redemption will never fail to polish and perfect the believer’s soul. God can heal, not only the putrifying sores of flagrant vice, but also the unrealized wounds of the deadly bacilli of evil that secrete themselves in the deepest inwardness of our being. The electric beams of His righteousness reveal the hidden blights that taint the motive and pollute the springs of thought. Sin knows no “law of protective colouring” by means of which it can escape the detection of God. God discerns iniquity in its microscopic inception, and cleanses the soul from the faintest stains.

O Foolish Soul! to make thy count

For languid falls and much forgiven,

When like a flame thou mightest mount

To storm and carry heaven.

A life so faint,—is this to live?

A goal so mean,—is this a goal?

Christ love thee, remedy, forgive,

Save thee, O foolish Soul!2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]

Righteous Forgiveness

Literature

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