“It is not possible.”
There was a long pause, and then the old man said, sighing:—
“Well, I will urge no more. Your sin, whatever it be, rests between you and the Judge of sinners. You say the law has no hold over you?”
“I said I was not afraid of the law.”
“Therefore, it must have been a moral, rather than a legal crime, if crime it was.” And again I had to bear that searching look, so dreadful because it was so eager and kind. “On my soul, Doctor Urquhart, I believe you to be entirely innocent.”
“Sir,” I cried out, and stopped; then asked him “if he did not believe it possible for a man to have sinned and yet repented?”
Mr. Thorley started back—so greatly shocked that I perceived at once what an implication I had made. But it was too late now; nor, perhaps, would I have had it otherwise.
“As a clergyman—I—I—” He paused. “If a man sin a sin which is not unto death,—You know the rest. And there is a sin which is unto death; I do not say that he shall pray for it? But never that we shall not pray for it.”
And falling down on his knees beside me, the old chaplain repeated in a broken voice:—“Remember not the sins of my youth nor my transgressions; according to thy mercy, think thou upon me, O Lord, for thy goodness.' Not ours, which is but filthy rags; for Thy goodness, through Jesus Christ, O Lord.”
“Amen.”