The Teaching of Jesus Part 8

(3) Christ prayed for the children: "Then were there brought unto Him little children that He should lay His hands on them, and pray.... And He took them in His arms, and blessed them, laying His hands upon them."

It is surely needless to dwell on this. What man is there who, if he have a child, will not speak to G.o.d in his behalf? "And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy G.o.d that we die not.... And Samuel said unto the people, G.o.d forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you." G.o.d have mercy on him who has little children who bear his name, but who never cries to heaven in their behalf! "He blessed them," _i.e._ He invoked a blessing, G.o.d's blessing, upon them. And we are sure the prayer was heard, and the little ones were blessed. And will not G.o.d hear our prayers for our children? When Monica, the saintly mother of Augustine, besought an African bishop once and again to help her with her wilful, profligate son, the good man answered her, "Woman, go in peace; it cannot be that the child of such tears should be lost." "G.o.d's seed," wrote Samuel Rutherford to Marion M'Naught about her daughter Grizel, "shall come to G.o.d's harvest." It shall, for the promise holds, and what we have sown we shall also reap.

(4) And, lastly, Christ prayed for individuals: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you,--all of you," that is; the p.r.o.noun is plural-- "that he might sift you as wheat; but I made supplication for thee"-- "thee, Peter"; now the singular p.r.o.noun is used--"that thy faith fail not." The words point to a definite crisis in the experience of Peter, when the onset of the Tempter was met by the intercession of the Saviour. To me Gethsemane itself is not more wonderful than this picture of Christ on His knees before G.o.d, naming His loved disciple by name, and praying that, in this supreme hour of his life, his faith should not utterly break down. "Making mention of thee in my prayers"--does this not bring us near to the secret of prevailing prayer? We are afraid to be individual and particular; we lose ourselves in large generalities, until our prayers die of very vagueness. There is surely a more excellent way. "My G.o.d," Paul wrote to the Philippians, "shall fulfil"--not merely "all your need," as the Authorized Version has it, but--"every need of yours." There is a fine discrimination in the Divine love which sifts and sorts men's needs, and applies itself to them one by one, just as the need may be. And when in prayer we speak to G.o.d, let it be not only of "all our need," flung in one great, careless heap before Him, but of "every need of ours," each one named by its name, and all spread out in order before Him.

IV

And as Christ teaches us to pray for others, so also does He teach us to pray for ourselves. Two points only in this connection can be noted.

(1) Let us pray when we enter into our Gethsemane; for every life has its Gethsemane. Some there are who have not yet entered it; they are young, and their way thus far has teen among the roses and lilies of life. But for them, too, the path leads to Gethsemane, and some day they also will lie prostrate in an agony, under the darkening olive trees.

And some there are to whom life seems but one long Gethsemane. In that dread agony G.o.d help us to pray! Nay, what else then can a man do but, as Browning says, catch at G.o.d's skirts and pray? But that he can do.

Death may build its dividing walls great and high, such as our feet can never scale; it cannot roof them over and shut us out from G.o.d. We remember how it was with Enoch Arden, stranded on an isle, "the loneliest in a lonely sea":--

"Had not his poor heart Spoken with That, which being everywhere Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone, Surely the man had died of solitude."

Were it not for the doors opened in heaven what should man that is born of a woman do? But when in our Gethsemane we offer up "prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears," it is after Christ's manner that we must pray. I said just now that there are some to whom life seems one long Gethsemane. Can it be because hitherto they have only prayed, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pa.s.s away from me"? Not until with Christ we bow our heads and say, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt," will the iron gates unfold and the shadows of the Garden lie behind us.

(2) "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." And if there be some to whom my last word had little or no meaning, here, at least, Christ speaks to all. And this time I have nothing of my own to add by way of comment; but I copy out this pa.s.sage from Charles Kingsley's _Yeast_, for every young man who reads these words to lay to heart: "I am no saint," says Colonel Bracebridge, "and G.o.d only knows how much less of one I may become; but mark my words--if you are ever tempted by pa.s.sion, and vanity, and fine ladies, to form liaisons, as the Jezebels call them, snares, and nets and labyrinths of blind ditches, to keep you down through life, stumbling and grovelling, hating yourself and hating the chain to which you cling--in that hour pray--pray as if the devil had you by the throat--to Almighty G.o.d, to help you out of that cursed slough! There is nothing else for it!--pray, I tell you!"

CONCERNING THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES

"She, who kept a tender Christian hope, Haunting a holy text, and still to that Returning, as the bird returns, at night, 'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,'

Said, 'Love, forgive him:' but he did not speak; And silenced by that silence lay the wife, Remembering her dear Lord who died for all, And musing on the little lives of men, And how they mar this little by their feuds."

TENNYSON.

XI

CONCERNING THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES

"_Then came Peter, and said to Him, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?

Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times; but, until seventy times seven._"--MATT, xviii. 21, 22.

This would seem to be plain enough, even though we had nothing more from the lips of Jesus concerning the duty of forgiveness. In point of fact, however, the lesson of these words is repeated a full half-dozen times throughout the Gospels. It may be well, therefore, to begin by bringing together our Lord's sayings on the subject.

I

We turn first to the Sermon on the Mount: "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you."

Then, in the Lord's Prayer we have the familiar pet.i.tion, "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us." And it is surely a fact full of significance that at the close of the prayer our Lord should single out this one pet.i.tion from the rest with this emphatic comment: "For if ye forgive men their trespa.s.ses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespa.s.ses, neither will your Father forgive your trespa.s.ses." The words quoted thus far are taken from the first Gospel. Similar teaching is found in the second and third. Thus, in Mark, we read: "And whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one; that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespa.s.ses;" and in Luke: "If thy brother sin, rebuke him, and if he repent, forgive him.

And if he sin against thee seven times in the day, and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him." Again, we have the teaching recorded by Matthew, out of which Peter's question sprang--"If thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault between thee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother"--followed by the parable of the Unforgiving Servant, with its solemn warning of inimitable doom: "So shall also My heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts."

And, finally, all these words are made fast for ever in the minds and consciences of men, by the great act on the Cross when the dying Redeemer prayed for the men who slew Him: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

The meaning of all this is unmistakable. No child could miss the point of the solemn parable to which I have referred. At the same time, it may not be out of place to point out that there are not a few instances in which people may feel themselves wronged, which, nevertheless, do not come within the scope of Christ's teaching about forgiveness. An ill.u.s.tration will best explain my meaning. It sometimes happens, both in business life and in the Church, that two men, equally honourable and true, but with almost nothing else in common, are often thrown into each other's company. They have to deal with the same facts, but they look upon them with wholly different eyes, they approach them from wholly different points of view. The results are obvious. There are not only widely differing opinions, but occasional misunderstandings, and sometimes sharper words than ought ever to pa.s.s between Christian men.

Now, to say broadly that one is right and the other wrong, that the one owes confession and the other forgiveness, is simply not true; what is true is that the men are different, different in temperament, different in training, different in their whole habits of thought and life. And what is needed is that each should learn frankly to recognize the fact.

This is not a case for rebuking, and repenting, and forgiving, but for mutual forbearance. There are mult.i.tudes of good people, people whose goodness no one who knows them would ever question, whom yet we cannot take to our bosoms, and treat as intimate personal friends. Even religion does not all at once straighten out all the twists in human nature, nor rub down all its hard angularities. And, as I say, it is our simple, common-sense duty to recognize the fact; and if sometimes we find even our fellow--Christians "very trying," well, we must learn to bear and forbear, always remembering that others probably find us no less trying than we sometimes find them. But where grave and undeniable injury has been done, immediately Christ's teaching comes into operation. The injured one must banish all thought of revenge. Never must we say, "I will do so to him as he hath done to me; I will render to the man according to his work." Rather must we strive to overcome evil by good, and by the manifestation of a forgiving spirit to win the wrong-doer to repentance and amendment.

II

When, now, we take these precepts of Jesus and lay them side by side with the life of the world, or even with the life of the Church, as day by day it pa.s.ses before our eyes, our first thought must be, how little yet do men heed the words of Jesus, how much mightier is the pagan spirit of revenge than the Christian spirit of forgiveness. Indeed, of all the virtues which Christ inculcated, this, perhaps, is the most difficult. True forgiveness--I do not speak of the poor, bloodless phantom which sometimes pa.s.ses by the name:

"Forgive! How many will say 'forgive,' and find A sort of absolution in the sound To hate a little longer,"

--not of such do I speak, but of true forgiveness, and this, I say, can never for us men be an easy thing. Perhaps a frank consideration of some of the difficulties may contribute to their removal.

(1) One chief reason why Christ's command remains so largely a dead letter is to be found in our unwillingness to acknowledge that we have committed an injury. That another should have wronged us we find no difficulty in believing; that we have wronged another is very hard to believe. Look at the very form of Peter's question: "How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" "My brother" the wrong-doer, myself the wronged--that is what we are all ready to a.s.sume. But what if it is I who have need to be forgiven? But this is what our pride will not suffer us to believe. That "bold villain" Shame, who plucked Faithful by the elbow in the Valley of Humiliation, and sought to persuade him that it is a shame to ask one's neighbour forgiveness for petty faults, or to make rest.i.tution where we have taken from any, is always quick to seize his opportunity. And he is especially quick when acknowledgement is due to one who is socially our inferior. If an employee be guilty of some gross discourtesy towards his master, or a servant towards her mistress, the master or mistress may demand a prompt apology on pain of instant dismissal. But when it is the servant or employee who is the injured person he has no such remedy; yet surely, in Christ's eyes, his very dependence makes the duty of confession doubly imperative. "If," Christ said, "thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee"--note exactly Christ's words; He did not say, "If thou rememberest that thou hast aught against thy brother"; alas, it is very easy for most of us to do that; what He said was, "If thou rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee." Whom did I overreach in business yesterday? Whose good name did I drag through the mire? What heart did I stab with my cruel words? "If thou rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."

(2) If the difficulties are great when we have committed the wrong, they are hardly less when we have suffered it. Thomas Fuller tells how once he saw a mother threatening to beat her little child for not rightly p.r.o.nouncing the pet.i.tion in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses, as we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us." The child tried its best, but could get no nearer than "tepa.s.ses," and "trepa.s.ses." "Alas!" says Fuller, it is a s.h.i.+bboleth to a child's tongue wherein there is a confluence of hard consonants together; and then he continues, "What the child could not p.r.o.nounce the parents do not practise. O how lispingly and imperfectly do we perform the close of this pet.i.tion: As we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us." In the old Greek and Roman world, we have been told, people not only did not forgive their enemies, but did not wish to do so, nor think better of themselves for having done so. That man considered himself fortunate who, on his deathbed, could say, on reviewing his past life, that no one had done more good to his friends or more mischief to his enemies. And though we profess and call ourselves Christians, how strong in many of us still is the old heathen desire to be "even with" one who has wronged us, and to make him smart for it. Many of us, as Dr. Dale says,[44] have given a new turn to an old text. In our own private Revised Version of the New Testament we read: "Whosoever speaketh a word or committeth a wrong against G.o.d, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh a word or committeth a wrong against me, it shall not be forgiven him; certainly not in this world, even if it is forgiven in the world to come." Resentment against moral evil every good man must feel; but when with the clear, bright flame of a holy wrath there mingle the dark fumes of personal vindictiveness, we do wrong, we sin against G.o.d.

Nowhere in Scripture, perhaps, have we such a lesson on the difficulty of forgiveness as in the reference to Alexander the coppersmith, in St.

Paul's last letter to Timothy. Even if we read his words in the modified and undoubtedly accurate form in which they are found in the Revised Version, we still feel how far short they come of the standard of Christ. "Paul," says Dr. Whyte, "was put by Alexander to the last trial and sorest temptation of an apostolic and a sanctified heart."[45] And with all the greatness of our regard for the great apostle, we dare not say that he came out of the trial wholly unscathed. Did ever any man come out of such a fire unhurt--any save One? Yet it is not for me to sit in judgment on St. Paul; only let us remember we have no warrant from G.o.d to hate any man and to hand him over to eternal judgment even though, like Alexander, he heap insult and injury, not only upon ourselves, but upon the cause and Church of Christ.

(3) And then to this native, inborn unwillingness to forgive there comes in to strengthen it our knowledge of the fact that forgiveness is sometimes mistaken for, and does, in fact, sometimes degenerate into, the moral weakness which slurs over a fault, and refuses to strike only because it dare not. Nevertheless, though there be counterfeits current, there is a reality; there is a forgiving spirit which has no kins.h.i.+p with cowardice or weakness or mere mus.h.i.+ness of character, but which is the offspring of strength and goodness and mercy, in short, of all in man that is likest G.o.d. And it is _this_ not that which G.o.d bids us make our own; and not the less so because in the rough ways of the world that so often pa.s.ses for this.

III

It would be easy to go on enumerating difficulties, but long as the enumeration might be, Christ's command would still remain in all its explicitness, the Divine obligation would be in no way weakened. We must forgive; we must forgive from our hearts; and there must be no limit to our forgiveness. Nor is this all. The whole law of forgiveness is not fulfilled when one who has done us an injury has come humbly making confession, and we have accepted the confession and agreed to let bygones be bygones. We should be heartless wretches indeed, if, under such circ.u.mstances, we were not willing to do as much as that. But we must do more: "If thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault between thee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." We, we who have been wronged, must take the first step. We must not wait for the wrong-doer to come to us; we must go to him. We must lay aside our vindictiveness, and earnestly, patiently, making our appeal to his better self, by every art and device which love can suggest, we must help him to take sides against the wrong which he has done, until at last forgiving love has led him captive, and our brother is won. This is the teaching of Jesus. Let me suggest, in conclusion, a three-fold reason why we should give heed to it.

Let us forgive _for our own sake_. A man of an unforgiving spirit is always his own worst enemy. He "that studieth revenge," says Bacon, "keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well."

"If thou hast not mercy for others," says Sir Thomas Browne, "yet be not cruel unto thyself; to ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies." There is no misery worse than that of a mind which broods continually over its own wrongs, be they real or only fancied. There is no gloom so deep and dark as that which settles on a hard and unrelenting soul. And, on the other hand, there is no joy so pure, there is none so rewarding, as that of one who, from his heart, has learned to say, "I forgive." He has tasted the very joy of G.o.d, the joy of Him of whom it is written that He delighteth in mercy. Just as when a sea-worm perforates the sh.e.l.l of an oyster, the oyster straightway closes the wound with a pearl, so does a forgiving spirit heal the hidden hurt of the heart, and win for itself a boon even at the hands of its foe.

Let us forgive _for our brother's sake_. "What," asks George MacDonald, "am I brother for, but to forgive?" And how much for my brother my forgiveness may do! All love, not Christ's love only, has within it a strange redemptive power. We often profess ourselves puzzled by that hard saying of Jesus concerning the binding and loosing of men's sins.

Yet this is just what human love, or the want of it, is doing every day.

When we forgive men their sins, we so far loose them from them; we help them to believe in the power and reality of the Divine forgiveness. When we refuse to forgive, we bind their sins to them, we make them doubt the love and mercy of G.o.d. Have we forgotten the part which Ananias played in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus? St. Augustine used to say that the Church owed Paul to the prayers of Stephen. Might he not have said, with equal truth, that the Church owed Paul to the forgiveness of Ananias?

For three days, without sight, and without food or drink, Saul waited in Damascus, pondering the meaning of the heavenly vision. Then came unto him, sent by G.o.d, the man whose life he had meant to take: "Ananias entered into the house; and, laying his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way which thou earnest, hath sent me." "_Brother_ Saul"--how his heart must have leapt within him at the sound of the word! It was a voice from without confirming the voice within; it was the love and forgiveness of man sealing and making sure the love and forgiveness of G.o.d. Wherefore, let us take heed lest, by our sullen refusal to forgive, we be thrusting some penitent soul back into the miry depths, whence, slowly and painfully, it is winning its way into the light and love of G.o.d.

Let us forgive _for Christ's sake_, because of that which G.o.d through Him has done for us. When, day by day, we pray, "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us," what we are asking is, that G.o.d will deal with us as we are dealing with others. Do we mean what we say? Are we showing a mercy as large as we need?

Chrysostom tells us that many people in his day used to omit the words, "As we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us." They did not dare to ask G.o.d to deal with their sins as they were dealing with the sins of those who had wronged them, lest they brought upon themselves not a blessing but a curse. And would it not go hardly with some of us, if, with the measure we mete, G.o.d should measure to us again? Yet there is no mistaking Christ's words: "If ye forgive not men their trespa.s.ses, neither will your Father forgive your trespa.s.ses." Therefore, let me think of myself, of my own sin, of the forgiveness even unto seventy times seven which I need; and then let me ask, can I, whose need is so great, dole out my forgiveness with a grudging hand, counting till a poor "seven times" be reached, and then staying my hand? Rather, let me pray, Lord,

"Make my forgiveness downright--such as I Should perish if I did not have from Thee."

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as G.o.d also in Christ forgave you."