Trespasses done wittingly.
These were acts of lying, fraud, deceit, violence, or any social wrong involving conscious trespass on the rights of our neighbour.
I. SOCIAL MORALITY RESTS UPON RELIGION. Offenses against neighbours, offenses against God. No true support of society apart from faith. Follies of the modern skeptical school. Enthusiasm of humanity, atheism, development of morality out of a physical basis,—mere dreams of the intellect. Facts of history show that corrupt religion is corrupt morals; that an atheistic society is mere organized selfishness.
II. THE TRUE HEALING PRINCIPLE OF SOCIETY. The preservation of individual rights in the spirit of a common allegiance to God. We are all brethren. If one offend, let his offense be both readily acknowledged and atoned for, and readily forgiven. So long as we simply pay back, we do not heal the hurt; we must more than pay back. His restitution was of the principal and the fifth part more thereto. Such a regulation was founded on the Divine love, as the essence of the Divine Law. We must remedy wrongs in the spirit of benevolence.
II. AS TYPICAL OF THE CROSS OF CHRIST, THE DIVINE FULNESS OF REDEMPTION is set forth. The offenses of men are more than made up for. Their redeemed state is an advance upon their state of innocence. The new Law is better than the old. Christ in us is not only the crucifixion of sin and the world, but "the hope of glory." The believer will find in the blood of the atonement both a cleansing away of guilt, and a washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.—R.