, Hester promised to keep his real identity. This makes her not only guilty, but also crisis-ridden.
Hester Prynnes term of confinement ends, but not so as her sufferings. She comes out of the prison-door and comes forth into the sunshine, whichfalling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if ment for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. (P68)She knows that a more real torture, when she begins the daily custom, comes. For the guilt she has committed, she is shut out from the sphere of human charities. Hester earns her living by her excellent needlework, which is rather popular among people in the following years. However, it is never used to embroider the white veil which is used to cover the pure face of a bride,. This exception indicates the ever vigor with which society frowned upon her sin. In all her intercourse with society, however, there is nothing that makes Hester Prynne feels as if she belongs to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she comes in contact, inplies and often expresses, that she is banished. The token---the sacrlet A never grows callous; it seems, on the contray, to grow even more sensitive with daily torture.
All these sufferings intend to remind Hester that, as a sinner, a betrayer of God, she must be tortured until she receives forgiveness from God. All that she can do is bear and bear, and atone for her sin.
Sin is unpleasant and painful. No one in the world wants 英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】to suffer. All of us hope that we can stop every kind of suffering some day. That is not just a wish that is far away and can’t be achieved. God’s love is universal and lenient. God has a soft heart, which doesn’t want to see people who are tortured. “Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits--
who forgives all your sins…”(Plasm103,2,3)
Sinners can receive salvation from their sufferings definitely. “The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.”(Numbers 14:18) The assurance of salvation is born of confidence in Christ. He has said: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” God save people out of His love --- His universal love. To doubt salvation is not modest or commendable: it is the sin of distrusting God, or making Him untrue. “But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the offences he has committed will be remembered against him. Because of the righteous things he has done, he will live. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” (Ezekiel 18:21-23) However, salvation is not offered to those who want to be good or religious, nor is it guaranteed to those who hope God will Himself be lenient and gracious in the end. If salvation depends in any degree on personal goodness, there could
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