assimilation to the character of the Infinite, but practically all men
will approve the philosophy taught in Christ's touching parable of the
Prodigal Son. The beauty, the force, the propriety of its principles
strike the human understanding, whether of the sage or of the savage,
like a flash of sunlight, and no human heart can fail to be touched by
its lessons. Yet where in all the wide waste of heathen faiths or
philosophies is there anything which even remotely resembles the story
of the Prodigal? Where is the system in which such an incident and such
a lesson would not be wholly out of place?

In that ancient book of the Egyptian religion known as "The Book of the
Dead," the souls of the departed when arraigned before the throne of
Osiris are represented as all joining in one refrain of
self-exculpation, uttering such pleas as these: "I have not offended or
caused others to offend." "I have not snared ducks illegally on the
Nile." "I have not used false weights or measures." "I have not
defrauded my neighbor by unjustly opening the sluices upon my own land!"
Any sense of the inward character of sin or any conception of wrong
attitudes of mind or heart toward God is utterly wanting. It is simply
the plea of "not guilty," which even the most hardened culprit may make
in court. In one of the Vedic hymns to Varuna there is something which
looks like confession of sin, but it really ends in palliation. "It was
not our doing, O Varuna, it was necessity; an intoxicating draught,
passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young.
Even sleep brings unrighteousness." And the remission sought for is not
one involving a change of character but only release from an external
bond. "Absolve us from the sins of our fathers and from those which we
committed with our own bodies. Release Vasishtha, O King, like a thief
who has feasted on stolen oxen. Release him like a calf from the
rope."[222]

In the Penitential Psalms of the ancient Akkadians, who inhabited
Northern Assyria in the times of Abraham, and who may have retained
something of that true faith from which Abraham's father had declined,
we find a nearer approach to true penitence, but that also lacks the
inner sense of sin and seeks merely an exemption from punishments.

Only in the Old and New Testaments is sin recognized as of the nature of
personal guilt. Accordingly, Christianity alone recognizes the fact that
right thoughts and motives and a worthy