or the Church, not only as a man may suffer for man by being
involved in evils through the fault of another, and by his example
awakening in others a spirit of like patience and self-devotion, but in
a higher and more complete sense, as suffering for them, the just for
the unjust, that they, for his sake, should be regarded by God as
innocent. In a deep sense of moral evil, more, perhaps, than in anything
else, a saving knowledge of God abides. Sin must not be lightly
considered. Christ's death shows it to be an exceeding evil; and the
actions of whole days and weeks, passed as they are by too many in utter
carelessness, are nothing but one mass of sin; and no one thing in them
has been sanctified by the thought of God or of Christ.

The penalty of sin, according to Arnold, is one of the revelations of
Scripture which men are least inclined to hear. It will be true of every
one of us, that, unless we turn to Christ, it had been better that we
were never born. If we fail of the grace of God there is reserved for us
an indescribable misery. Conversion is the development of Christian
life. It is growth. We must be changed during the three score and ten
years of our life, not in the twinkling of an eye, but through a long
period of prayer and watchfulness, laboring slowly and with difficulty
to get rid of our evil nature.[215] By constant repentance and faith we
ripen for heaven. Justification by faith is a reliance on what God has
done for us; faith in Christ is not only faith in his having died for
us, but in him as our present Saviour by his life. It is throwing
ourselves upon him in all things, as our Redeemer, Saviour, Head, of
whom we are members, and desire our life only for Him. Our dependence in
Christ is not once only, but perpetual.

Arnold attached paramount importance to a proper understanding of the
Church and its relations to the State. He held that the work of a
Christian Church and State is absolutely one and the same, and that the
full development of the former in its perfect form as the Kingdom of
God, will be an effectual means for the removal of all evil and the
promotion of good. There can be no perfect Church or State without their
blending into one.[216] The Church, during her imperfect state, is
deficient in power; the State, in the like condition is deficient in
knowledge; one judges amiss of man's highest happiness, the other
discerns it truly, but has not the power on a large scale to attain it.