Forgiveness and Faith...

It is noticeable that these declarations of forgiveness are constantly coupled with the statement that the sufferer showed "faith", and that without this nothing could be done; i.e., the real agent in the ending of this karma is the sinner himself. In the case of the "woman that was a sinner", the two declarations are coupled: "Thy sins are forgiven . . . Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace". [S. Luke, vii, 48, 50. ] This "faith" is the up-welling in man of his own divine essence, seeking the divine ocean of like essence, and when this breaks through the lower nature that holds it in — as the water-spring breaks through the encumbering earth-clods — the power thus liberated works on the whole nature, bringing it into harmony with itself. The man only becomes conscious of this as the karmic crust of evil is broken up by its force, and that glad consciousness of a power within himself, hitherto unknown, asserting itself as soon as the evil karma is exhausted, is a large factor in the joy, relief, and new strength that follow on the feeling that sin is "forgiven", that its results are past.And this brings us to the heart of the subject — the changes that go on in a man's inner nature, unrecognised by that part of his consciousness which works within the limits of his brain, until they suddenly assert themselves within those limits, coming apparently from nowhere, bursting forth "from the blue", pouring from an unknown source. What wonder that a man, bewildered by their downrush — knowing nothing of the mysteries of his own nature, nothing of "the inner God" that is verily himself — imagines that to be from without which is really from within, and, unconscious of his own Divinity, thinks only of Divinities in the world external to himself. And this misconception is the more easy, because the final touch, the vibration that breaks the imprisoning shell, is often the answer from the Divinity within another man, or within some superhuman being, responding to the insistent cry from the imprisoned Divinity within himself; he oft-times recognises the brotherly aid, while not recognising that he himself, the cry from his inner nature, called it forth. As an explanation from a wiser than ourselves may make an intellectual difficulty clear to our mind, though it is our own mind that, thus aided, grasps the solution; as an encouraging word from one purer than ourselves may nerve us to a moral effort that we should have thought beyond our power, though it is our own strength that makes it; so may a loftier Spirit than our own, one more conscious of its Divinity, aid us to put forth our own divine energy, though it is that very putting forth that lifts us to a higher plane. We are all bound by ties of brotherly help to those above us as to those below us, and why should we, who so constantly find ourselves able to help in their development souls less advanced than ourselves, hesitate to admit that we can receive similar help from Those far above us, and that our progress may be rendered much swifter by Their aid ?