Excerpt from Great PenitentsChristianity is a religion of hope. It was one of the bitter reproaches against Jesus Christ by some of His Pharisaic contemporaries that He received sinners and even ate with them. They affected to be scandalized at the teaching that it was possible for one who had sinned to be redeemed. The parable of the prodigal son, of the lost sheep, and other stories, told for the purpose of bringing home to men the knowledge of the mercy of God, were lost upon them. To them there could be but one treatment for fallen women, for instance, - stone them to death.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.