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One is at first sight tempted to amend the psalmist's saying, and for "mercy" to substitute "justice." It seems characteristically just, rather than merciful, to render to men according to their works. But let us emphasize this word "his." Let us reflect that in what a man does there are elements which others have contributed, and for which others are responsible. It then begins to dawn upon us that some discrimination is possible, and that such discrimination is merciful. When we separate from a man's work that which is not strictly "his," but the work of his parents, or his teachers, or of the spirit of his times, even a bad man seems less culpable. Some, but less than all, of the wrong-doing that we see in him was really his. The savage who delights in torturing his prisoners, the persecutor who kindles the fagots for heretics, need the benefit of this discriminating word, "his work." Loss of sleep or dyspepsia may induce one to acts of peevishness or moroseness that are not wholly his work. The overworked pointsman who falls asleep causes a catastrophe not all his work. These discriminations society cannot always make and at the same time sufficiently safeguard public interests. But we may be assured that He who only is competent to unravel the complicated web does discriminate, and allots to each man retribution for no more than is strictly his. That there are such discriminations, however beyond our power to draw them truly, gives us a basis for charity in our estimate of those who excite our intensest reprobation. When we see a Nero or a Borgia, and are taxed to account for such an excess of wickedness, we may reasonably think it represents the accumulated contributions of more lives than one, and a responsibility in which more than one has share. Admitting all this, we must equally insist that no man can escape responsibility for the work which is strictly his. One may say, if he will, that man is nine-tenths environment, but one must not cancel the residual fraction for which the responsibility is his. No ship is started on the voyage of life with rudder lashed. In the most ill-starred, storm-crippled life, after all discrimination of the contributing forces which appear in the result, there is a certain remainder due to the free helm in the responsible hand — a work that is his, and a retribution due to that. What we have now to observe further is, that not only is the Divine discrimination merciful, but the retribution is also merciful. What should mercy seek first but to secure men against wreck and loss? And how can it secure them but by securing the moral order in its established lines of cause and consequence? We can do no more merciful thing for ourselves and our neighbours than to give the law of consequences full sweep, in rendering to each according to his work. To interfere, under however good a name, with the necessary trace of a growing character that is supplied by the law of consequences, is not mercy, but murder. For a man to imagine that he can lie, or steal, or scamp his work to his neighbour's damage or danger, and escape the evil consequence, or any part of it, is to think the most immoral and dangerous thought. And it is merely helping somebody to think such thoughts — taking down the guard-rail on the path along the edge of the precipice — when we allow a weak sympathy to interfere with the hand that is laying on some guilty back the scourge of just consequence. Is there, then, no place for leniency? May not one say with King Arthur in excusing Sir Bedivere —

"A man may fail in duty twice,

And the third time prosper"?Unquestionably; and yet who will gainsay that, as things go, the danger is not of too little leniency, but too much? No doubt it sounds charitable to say, "Let him off; he won't do it again." But mercy demands security for that, not only for society, but for the wrong-doer himself. Nature takes this security of us by enforcing her rule, Pay as you go. profoundly remarks, "That it is better for a man to be punished than to escape. It saves him from a worse punishment in the degradation of his character." So in Mrs. Ward's Marcella, Raeburn says of the homicide Hurd, "I believe that if the murderer saw things as they really are, he would himself claim his own death as his best chance, his only chance, in this mysterious universe of self-recovery." To maintain moral worth, to save manhood from degradation, true mercy prefers the sound way to the soft way, and renders to each according to his work. What, then, becomes of the forgiveness of sins? Certainly, no cancelling of the spiritual law, "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Forgiveness works no cut-off of consequences. It merely shifts the train of consequences from a down-grade to an up-grade, from direction toward the outer darkness to the Father's house. It is the transformation of She consequences which issue from our indestructible past that forgiveness effects. The evil deeds which cannot be annihilated, and whose causative power must abide in our life either for evil or for good, cannot be cancelled by forgiveness, but only converted from a fatal to a vital issue. So the muck-heap, which above ground poisons the air, fertilizes the soil when put underground. The evil that is buried by forgiveness: becomes a source of fruitfulness to the new-sown seeds of better resolution.

(J. M. Whiten, Ph. D.)

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KJV: Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.

WEB: Also to you, Lord, belongs loving kindness, for you reward every man according to his work. A Psalm by David, when he was in the desert of Judah.