The Child at Home, page 79 by John S.C. Abbott
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the morning, you will be watchful over yourself, that you may be pleasant and obliging. You will perhaps go to your brother, and say, "I did wrong in speaking unkindly to you yesterday, and I am sorry for it. I will endeavor never again to do so." At any rate, if you are really penitent, you will pray to God for forgiveness, and most sincerely resolve never willingly to be guilty of the same sin again.
But you must also remember that, by the law of God, sin can never pass unpunished. God has said, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And when you do any thing that is wrong, and afterwards repent of it, God forgives you, because the Savior has borne the punishment which you deserve. This is what is meant by that passage of Scripture, "he was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities." Our Father in heaven loved us so much that he gave his own Son to die in our stead. And now he says that he is ready to forgive, if we will repent, and believe in his Son who has suffered and died to save us. And ought we not to love so kind a Savior?
You cannot expect at present precisely and fully to understand every thing connected with the sufferings and death of Christ, and the moral effect they produce. In fact, it is intimated in the Bible, that even the angels in heaven find this subject one capable of tasking all their powers. You can understand, however, that he suffered and died, that you might be forgiven. It would not be safe in any government to forgive sin merely on the penitence of the sinner. Civil government cannot do this safely; a family government cannot do it safely. It is often the case, when a man is condemned to death for a crime he has committed, that his dearest friends, sometimes his wife and children, make the most affecting appeals to the chief magistrate of the state, to grant him pardon. But it will not do. The governor, if he knows his duty, will be firm, however painful it may be, in allowing the law to take its course; for he has to consider not merely the wishe