CHAPTER VI.02

If there is some one who has aught against you, go at once, and be reconciled. If you have aught against any one, write to them a letter, telling them that you forgive them, and so have this thing off your conscience. I remember being in the inquiry-room some years ago; I was in one corner of the room, talking to a young lady. There seemed to be something in the way, but I could not find out what it was. At last I said, “Is there not some one you do not forgive?” She looked up at me, and said, “What made you ask that? Has anyone told you about me?” “No,” I said; “but I thought perhaps that might be the case, as you have not received forgiveness yourself.” “Well,” she said, pointing to another corner of the room, where there was a young lady sitting, “I have had trouble with that young lady; we have not spoken to each other for a long time.” “Oh,” I said, “it is all plain to me now; you cannot be forgiven until you are willing to forgive her.” It was a great struggle. But then you know, the greater the cross the greater the blessing. It is human to err, but it is Christ-like to forgive and be forgiven. At last this young lady said: “I will go and forgive her.” Strange to say, the same conflict was going on in the mind of the lady in the other part of the room. They both came to their right mind about the same time. They met each other in the middle of the floor. The one tried to say that she forgave the other, but they could not finish; so they rushed into each other’s arms. Then the four of us—the two seekers and the two workers—got down on our knees together, and we had a grand meeting. These two went away rejoicing.

Dear friend, is this the reason why your prayers are not answered? Is there some friend, some member of your family, some one in the church, you have not forgiven? We sometimes hear of members of the same church who have not spoken to each other for years. How can we expect God to forgive when this is the case?

I remember one town that Mr. Sankey and myself visited. For a week it seemed as if we were beating the air; there was no power in the meetings. At last I said one day that perhaps there was some one cultivating this unforgiving spirit. The Chairman of our committee, who was sitting next to me, got up and left the meeting right in view of the audience. The arrow had hit the mark, and gone home to the heart of the Chairman of the committee. He had had trouble with some one for about six months. He at once hunted up this man and asked him to forgive him. He came to me with tears in his eyes, and said: “I thank God you ever came here.” That night the inquiry-room was thronged. The Chairman became one of the best workers I have ever known, and he has been active in Christian service ever since.

Several years ago the Church of England sent a devoted missionary to New Zealand. After a few years of toil and success, he was one Sabbath holding a communion service in a district where the converts had not long since been savages. As the missionary was conducting the service, he observed one of the men, just as he was about to kneel at the rail, suddenly start to his feet and hastily go the opposite end of the church. By and by he returned, and calmly took his place. After service the clergyman took him on one side, and asked the reason for his strange behavior. He replied: “As I was about to kneel I recognized in the man next to me the chief of a neighboring tribe, who had murdered my father, and drunk his blood; and I had sworn by all the gods that I would slay that man at the first opportunity. The impulse to have my revenge, at the first almost overpowered me, and I rushed away, as you saw me, to escape the power of it. As I stood at the other end of the room and considered the object of our meeting, I thought of Him who prayed for His own murderers: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And I felt that I could forgive the murderer of my father, and came and knelt down at his side.”

As one has said: “There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in the world—a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blow-pipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fists, then they forgive him.”

The father of Frederick the Great, on his death-bed, was warned by M. Roloff, his spiritual adviser, that he was bound to forgive his enemies. He was quite troubled, and after a moment’s pause said to the Queen: “You, Feekin, may write to your brother (the King of England) after I am dead, and tell him that I forgave him, and died at peace with him.” “It would be better,” M. Roloff mildly suggested, “that your majesty should write at once.” “No,” was the stern reply. “Write after I am dead. That will be safer.”

Another story tells of a man who, supposing he was about to die, expressed his forgiveness to one who had injured him, but added: “Now you mind, if I get well, the old grudge holds good.”

My friends, that is not forgiveness at all. I believe true forgiveness includes forgetting the offence—putting it entirely away out of our hearts and memories.

As Matthew Henry says: “We do not forgive our offending brother aright nor acceptably, if we do not forgive him from the heart, for it is that God looks at. No malice must be harbored there, nor ill-will to any; no projects of revenge must be hatched there, nor desires of it, as there are in many who outwardly appear peaceful and reconciled. We must from the heart desire and seek the welfare of those who have offended us.”