We must remind ourselves, however, that it is of spiritual nature in ourselves to _choose_. The activity of love is chosen and determined by the good man, with its forgiveness and its punishment. And although the perfection of God must preclude choice between alternatives, although for perfect wisdom there can never be more than one course open, yet there is no automatism, there cannot be automatism of the mechanical kind, in God who, as the Christian maintains, _is_ love. His love is willed though not chosen. It is of the vital, intelligent, voluntary activity of a spiritual being. And so both punishment and forgiveness are willed, in God or in man; and as the man approaches full union with God so does his choice approach that inevitable wisdom for which there is no longer consciousness of choice. This is the manner of spirit and life; that which is personally real in any man, all that is in God, is not merely consented to or assented to but is always actively willed, never compulsorily or mechanically apportioned. So it is right and reasonable to say that God or the man of God punishes and forgives. It is not right to say that the punishment and forgiveness of either, though it is wholly natural, is in any kind of way automatic with the automatism of a machine, or even with that relative automatism of material things which we speak of as natural law. Without the activity of love there can be no true punishment and no true forgiveness; there is only vindictiveness or condonation.
The treatment we have given our wrong-doers in the past is not fitted to throw clear light on Christian atonement and the ways of God with man. On the contrary, it has obscured both. But we are learning. Truth, experience, and the _Gesta Christi_ work for our learning. Or, as the Christian says, the divine spirit works for it and 'strives' with us, that is, works with us that we may work out our own salvation.
We have begun to say to the children we are training—'Come now, this is _wrong_; let's see how we' [_we_, mark you] 'can set it right.' We have discovered that unless the child works with us our punishment fails, and our forgiveness fails, of any real effect for goodness. But Christians knew this from their beginning, though many of them forget they did. In the last resort it is why Christ died.