“Most emphatically I do,” he exclaimed. “When a man longs for it in his soul with heartfelt repentance. You know what I mean; not a sham repentance or asking for forgiveness when he is at the end of his tether and is too weak and impotent to sin again. But suppose that full pardon is given, what then? Does it restore the sinner and reinstate him in his former innocent state or place him where he might have been had he not sinned? Not at all, for I say it with loyalty and reverence to God that there are things He cannot do. He cannot do away with the results of the cyclone of last year. He cannot blot out the occurrences of the past and make the history of the world a blank. He cannot violate His own laws which His own omniscience and wisdom have established. This is inconceivable. “There are so many who misinterpret the forgiveness and mercy of God that they transform Him from a being of infinite perfectness into a thing of whims and caprices. “To illustrate my meaning. Suppose a young man, well educated and trained, a model young man in every respect, leaves home like the prodigal son and goes to some city and yields to temptation and vice, as so many do where they think they are unknown and have a chance to see life. His money all spent, his strength all gone so that he can dissipate no more, he goes home. The father and mother receive him with tears of gladness; not a word of reproach is uttered. He sits at the family table, kneels again at the family altar and apparently all is as if nothing had happened. He is fully forgiven but does that forgiveness restore to him the innocence he lost? Never! That is lost forever. He may never sin again, but he cannot obliterate the wounds and scars he made upon his own soul by his sinning. Neither the forgiveness of his father nor the prayers of his loving mother can ever make him what he would have been had he not sinned. Nor can God do away with the violation of His laws. A man’s deeds become a part or all of himself. Destroy the remembrance of those deeds and so far you annihilate the man himself. The only thing for a sinner to do is to sin no more and make the most of the rest of his life.