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 The Power of the Keys. 
 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 .fk Presiched FeWuary 7th, 1892, in Trinity Church, Quebec City, 
 
 by the Rector, 
 
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 V The Rev. W. T. Noble. B.A., L.Th. 
 
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 PRICE FIVE CEKTS. 
 
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 :The J. E. ISRYANT COMPANY (Limited). S8 Bay street. 
 
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 THE POWER OF THE KEYS. 
 
 " WAose Sffever sins ye remiti, thfy an remitted unto them; and whose 
 soever sins ye retain^ they are retained."— ]o\iii XX, i^. 
 
 THESE words — like most words of transcendent importance to man- 
 kind, and perhaps on that account— ^have become the subject of 
 bitter controversy ; gnd if their intrinsic value is to be measured by the 
 extent arid intensity of this controversy, then it is grel&t indeed, if not in- 
 calculable. But here the same law prevails as in all matters subject to the 
 control of fallible free agents; namely, the greater the power for good 
 when rightly directed, the greater the power for evil wheiH wrongly directed^ 
 Therefore the duration and unabated fierceness of thi^ controversy indicate 
 the importance of the issues at stal^e, and prove that the truth has not yet 
 lieen discovered; for wlien Truth in her native majesty and dazzling splen- 
 dour takes the field darkness will vanish and error will disappear, like 
 phantoms of the night when the sun has risen in his strength. But the 
 pernicious deductions and sophistical quibbling with which these words 
 are still surrounded amply prcive the magnitude of the unsolved problem 
 which now demands our consideration. If these words are correctly trans- 
 lated and mean all they say, they are lalden with boundles& blessings for 
 all mankind ; but if they do not mean what they seem to say, then they 
 are a sublime mockery and a cniel sham, calculated, to deceive and damn 
 the souls of men. T\\ti are surrounded by every circumstance that can 
 add solemnity and importance to the message they ppntain. For God 
 incarnate, after His resurrection from the dead, breathed on His apostles 
 and said : " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," John xx. 22. This is neither 
 a prayer nor the profane acting of a sinful mortal, but the sober language 
 of Christ commanding them to receive what He, and He alone,.had power 
 to give. It is the gift of One in whose wise and economical administra- 
 tion nothing is wasted. For what great and graf:ious purposiet |hen, was 
 such a special blessing vouchsafed? Our text supplies the answer: "Whos^ 
 soever sins ye remit, th^y are remitted ; and whose soever sins ye rietain, 
 they are retailed." This commission, thus translated, conveys to the 
 apostles authority to remit or retain, to save or to damn, all mankind in 
 every subsequent i^e or nation ; for there is 1^0 limitation placed on the 
 exercis^.of this authority, and there are no conditions imposed. It con^ 
 ttiins a judicial as well as a dispensing power, for they are called upon 
 
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 ' tind left free to determine whose >in> they will remit, and whose they will' 
 retain; that is,« whomsoever they will they may save, and whomsoever |hey 
 will they may damn. Who is sufficient for these things? God alone. 
 And yet Christ appears to surrender these divine prerogatives of justice and 
 mercy to the apostles, and these He leaves them free to exercise according 
 to their own good pleasure, without regard to the 'quantity or quality of any 
 man's sins. Thus, having procured the world's redemption by His incar* 
 nation, life, death, and resurrection. He places the world's salvation in the 
 hands of sinful men, to be disposed of by them according to the ru|ing 
 whims and fancies of such beings ; and henceforth every appeal for justice V 
 or mercy must be to the apostles, Christ having thus divorced Himself 
 from the Church, "which he purchased with his own blood," and placed its 
 eternal destinies in the hands of sinful mortals. A]l access to God through 
 Christ is thus cut off or superseded, and we are left to the tender mercies 
 of men. 
 
 This is no exaggerated dream, but the sober interpretation which has been 
 placed on these words, and, if our Lord's language will' bear this interpre- 
 tation,' many will have to reconsider their present position ; but the very 
 possibility of such an interpretation suggests something wrong somewhere. 
 
 This commission, thus interpreted, places an awful responsibility on the 
 apostles; and if they recognized and realized it, tUPl^lives would hence- 
 forth have been spent in pardoning sinners. Now, when we turn to the 
 apostolic history, to learn what interpretation they put upon their Lord's 
 commission, we are struck with the riemarkable fact that Ihey never once 
 presume to forgive the sins which men have committed against the God of 
 ■heaven. If our Lord's words had conveyed this meaning, it seems impos- 
 sible that they could have remained all their lives ignorant of it; and if they 
 consciously possessed the power, it is equally unaccountable why they did 
 not exercise it. Shall we charge them with culpable iaaorance, or criminal 
 malpractice ? Neither, at present, until we have examined the correctness 
 of pur English translation. Here we are met by the strange facts that the 
 Greek word aphtemi, here translated remits occurs orte hundred and thirty- 
 four times in the Greek New Testament, and is never so translated except 
 in this verse; and the Greek word krateo^ here translated retain, occurs 
 forty-five times in the Greek New Testament, ahd is never so translated 
 except in this verse. What motive could have i^oduced this unparalleled 
 rendering of these words? . Now there is something unaccountably siis^__ 
 ptcious about this translation, derived-^as it manifestly is— from the Latin, " 
 when read in the light of the history of tile middle ages, with its isale of 
 indulgences, for which some iiuthority wis required. Thus we have an 
 unusual translation coming to us through the Latin or Roman Church, and 
 we find that this Church had a sUffiCient/motive for adopting this trarisla- 
 
 
 ..':. .(/ 
 
tion, and^that this Church did actually avail herself uf all the authority 
 which it ostensibly conveys; and, as if to emphasize and utilize this author- 
 ity, this commission, thus translated, was imported into the ordination 
 service in the thirteenth century ; hence the sale of indulgences, that woke 
 the lion-hearted Luther, in the early part of the sixteenth century. And 
 Rome has even gone beyond what this commission authorizes, and imposed 
 conditions not contained in it ; for she has classified tins into venial and 
 mortal, and imposed penances on the living and purgatorial torments on 
 the dead, remission from which, directly or indirectly, may be purchased 
 for money. And it is a notorious fact that an enormous revenue has l>een 
 derived from this source in the past. Thus the Church of Rome, having 
 put the most literal interpretation on this mistranslation, and regarding the 
 commission therein contained as a hereditary l)equest, claims a dispensing 
 power over the living and the dead ; and as this dispensing power has a 
 market value, she has a vested interest in the sins of mankind ; and the 
 assumption of thfCf disp^nsmg powet, thus regulated, is the chief source of 
 wealth and power in the Cht^rch of Rome. And what a source of wea^h 
 and power it may become, in the^hands of an aviricious and ambitious 
 priesthood, the page of history unf<|ij^ But this translation, with its obvious 
 interpretation thus elaborated, is^WMdishonouri^ig and immoral, and has 
 resulted in mortals assuming divine prerogatives and making merchandise 
 of sin, o 
 
 And hence we are driven to seek for another translation, more consistent 
 with the teaching of Christ and the practicej^f His apostles, — Is^ suel^ a 
 rendering of the original Greek possible ? , Yes ; upon the authority of 
 Liddell & Scott's Greek lexicon, it may b^ thus translated : " Whose soever 
 sins ye let alone, they are permitted unto them ; and whose soever sins ye 
 prevail against, they are vanquished." What a transformation this creates ! 
 It sweeps away at once all apparent sanction of the above blasphemous as- 
 sumptions, and imposes such rational and practical duties as may be per- 
 formed by men. The obvious duties here imposed on the apostles are to 
 identify sin^and brand it as such, and, with all the intellectual and moral 
 forces at their command, to fight against it until it is vanquished. '^This is 
 a great and important worl^ thoroughly consistent with the relative positions 
 of God and man, gloriously possible, land highly desirable. And it was to 
 qualify them for this- work that Christ breathed on them and commanded 
 them to receivje the Holy Ghost, whose peculiar office it was to "reprove 
 the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment," John xvi. 8. The 
 necessity for this work Christ points out in the following words : "Of sin," 
 because they believe not on me; of righteousness, l)€cause I go to my 
 Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, l)ccause the prince of this 
 world is judged," John xvi, 9 , iq, n. N ow Christ, the only perfect man 
 
 
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 who ever rendered a perfect obedience, in the letter and in the ipirit, to the 
 riKhteou* law of God, wa« about to return to Hii Father; and with the gift 
 of the Holy Gho^t He delegates to the apoatlet the reaponiibte duty of up- 
 holdinx the standard of righteousnesi which He had exemplified in Hii 
 own life on eai^h. To realize the importance of thii work, we must remem- 
 ber that the jews had made void the law of God by their traditions, and 
 that the heathen by their philosophy— falsely so called— had obscured, the 
 iight of nature and bluntec^the moral conscience ; and hence the whole 
 world lay in darkness and the shadow of death. 
 
 In such a world there was no well-defined and commonly recognized line 
 of demarcation between right and wrong ; and hence there could be no un- 
 conquerable love of right and irreconcilable haired of wrong. And yet 
 these two principles, love and hatred, are essential to the destruction of 
 wrong and the triumph of right. But wrongdoing is the offspring of error, 
 and error can only appear as such in the light of truth. John says : " The 
 Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of Jhe devil,*' 
 I. John iii. 8. What are they ? The propagation of error, for -Christ calls 
 him " the father of lies," John viii. 44. Now as Christ came to destroy the 
 works of the devil, and as you can only destroy falsehood by the truth, how 
 did Chiist regard the accomplishment of this work ? He says : " To this 
 end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should 
 bear witness unto the truth," John xviii. 37. Thus Christ regarded the 
 truth as the ordained instrument wherewith to destroy the works bf the 
 devil. And to His disciples He said : " Ye shall be witnesses unto ine," 
 Acts i. 8 ; that is, witnesses to the Divine witness to the truth, for the de- 
 struction of the works of the devil. And to qualify these human witnesses 
 for so important a work He gave them the Holy Ghost to guide them into 
 all truth, and to make them strong and fearless in proclaiming and defend- 
 ing the truth. The utility of all this is manifest from the fact that it is 
 only in i>ruportion as you clearly see, deeply love, and firmly srasp the 
 truth that you can hate error. And you must hate it, with an intense 
 Mnd well-sustained hatred, to prevail against it and vanquish it. Now the 
 commission for the carrying out of which they received the Holy Ghost 
 not only authorizps*this kind of warfare, but is calculated to impress them 
 with the importance of carrying it on with all the energy and resources at 
 .their command. For the sins they let alone were permitted to the people, 
 with all their damning consequences ; but the sins they prevailed against 
 were vanquished, to the benefit of mankind and the glory of <3od. ' Thus 
 the apostles were to carry out the work of the incarnate Christ on the, 
 very same lines and with the very same weapons which Christ employed; 
 restoring the standard of right by th? manifestation of thie trutji, and putting 
 a n end t o wrongd o ing by the de s truction of error, and thu s d e stroying th e 
 
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 works 6f the devil. It ia worthy of careful observation that the practice of 
 the apostles is in perfect accord with this translation and interpretation. 
 For example: A meml)er of the Corinthian Church marries his father's wife 
 (I. Cor. V. i), and if Paul had let him alone this practice would have lieen 
 permitted, with all its pernicious consequences, as there was no other 
 standard by which it could have been condemned and stamped out. But 
 the apostle, mindful of the Divine commission, and sustained by the Holy 
 (jhost^pirevailed against this sin and van(|ui8hed it. This obvious interpre- 
 tation of Christ's commission has been, and must remain, the practice of 
 Chritt's Church until the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms 
 of our Ix>rd and of His Christ ; for to maintain the Divine standard of 
 right and wrong and to drive wrongdoing out of the Church must ever be 
 the work of the Church militant. We must not let drunkenness, gambling, 
 and Sabbath-breaking alone ; but, guided by the Holy Ghost, and armed 
 with the truth, prevail against them till they are vanquished. So, in like 
 manner, lying, slandering, fraud, and robbery must be vfinquished. For if 
 we let these things alone, they will be permitted, to the present and ever- 
 lasting destruction of human happiness. The work thus indicated in our 
 Lord's commission, and recognized by His apostles, is still the supreme 
 difficulty of our missionaries in heathen lands, where no true standard of 
 righ't and wrong exists. Hence the question of polygamy in Africa, 
 baffled the united wisdom of our bishops at the Lambeth Confer- 
 ence in 1 888. Not,^therefore, the pardoning of sin, but the identification 
 and extermination of sin, are the duties imposed by this commission, when 
 rightly translated, and interpreted according to apostolic practice. And this 
 will best promote the happiness of men, in time as well as^in eternity. For 
 it is necessary not only to create a deep love of truth, producing an intense 
 hatred of error, but you must keep these alive in the soul, if men are to be 
 saved from the evil that is in the world. Look, for a moment, at the con- 
 trast between the apostolic practice and the system of modern priestcraft. 
 Priestcraft encourages sin by remitting the penal consequences thereof, and 
 thereby weakening man's sense of its enormity ; but the af^ostles go to th6^'^ 
 root of all evil-doing— error, and destroy it with the sword of the«Sipirit, 
 which is the Word of God. "Priestcraft, usurping the place of God, comes 
 between God and the sinner; but the apostles sought to present every man 
 perfect m Christ, by whom we all have access to the Father. Priestcraft 
 offers salvation for money and merits, while the apostles said: "Whosoever 
 will, Iet> him take of the water of life freely." Priestcraft puts a specific 
 price on all sins, which the sinner must pay ; while the apostles teach that 
 Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree, and that His blood 
 cleanseth us from all sin. This apostolic interpretation of Chrisi's commis- 
 gjon was too much lost sight of in the subsequent ages, while an amh^yinim ' 
 
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 Church Ihit MMNniiliBli on the ptrt of iMn|«M regarded m blMphemy. ^ ' 
 And Christ approved this view of the ceie. tindicatiim His own right to 
 ' ny "Thy liM be forgiven thee" by working a physical miracle, whieh sp* ^ 
 pealed to the eyes of the onldokers, and prived that He was GoiH arnl ^ 
 therefore, according to their own teaching, had the IMvine right and ^wtf |.. 
 io forgive sins, Matt. ix. S-7. Thus Judaiini and Christianity, in tM per-f^ 
 son of Christ, teach that Uod atone can forgive sin, and that it is IflM- ^ 
 phemy on the part of mortal map to presume to do so. I'he translation 4 
 in our Authorised Version, and its common interpretation, coiunidict this \ - 
 teaching ; whereas the translation and interpretation here given are in 
 perfect accord with the teaching of Judaism, Chriit, and His apostles. ' ''' 
 
 It ttkes away all apparent Divine sanction of priestly assumptions, and 
 
 esublishes the right of all mankind to freedom of access to God through 
 Christ, who alone can/orgive sin. Who, for a moment, looking the matter 
 squarely in the face, can imagine that God created and Christ redeemed 
 the race of man, and then placed their eternal salvation in the hands of a. 
 few of their fellow-sinners, liable to all the ignorance, prejudice, and par-^v ' 
 tiality of fallen humanity? Such a preposterous idea, if established, it^ > 
 enough to damn the whole Christian system, and to afford grounds for 
 impugning the character of God Himself. ,, 
 
 This commission, thus translated and interplreted, is in perfect ac6OT<^) * 
 with the teachiiig of Christ and His apostles, and it places simple, practical, . 
 and imporUnt duties before the Church in all lands : to identify sin; not 
 let it alone, but prevail against it until it is vanquished. The weapons to 
 Ije employed in this warfare are the Pentecosul tongues of fire, so powerful 
 in apostolic times, whmi no blasphemous assumptions marred the sim- 
 plicity of the Gospel, or hindered the onward march of the Church; whoM, 
 great work was then, and is now, "To open men's eyes, and to turn them 
 from darkness to tight, and, from the power of SaUn unto God, that they 
 ma| receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among thef» which are 
 sanctified by faith that is in me," Acts xxvi. li. This will indeed be . 
 ''proclaiming liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them /^ 
 that are bound," Isai. |xi. i, and the most practical way of carrying dut the 
 commission of the risen Lord : " Whose soever sins ye let alone, they are 
 pehnitted unto them ; and whose soever sins ye prevail against, they are 
 vanquished." , ,« 
 
 This is humbly submitted to the honest criticism of all lovers of the 
 truth, with the earnest prayer that the Hdk^ Ghost may guide us into all 
 ■truth. ;■■ '-.'i.- .':■. - ]'■■ '-■'^■'■M-' 
 
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