h is the reaction of the individual against unprovoked
wrong. Personal resentment we are bidden to relentlessly crush out--"to
turn the other cheek" is the command of Christ. But the Christian man
will recognise that the interests of the social order are not to be
disregarded. These interests, and those of the offender himself, will
sometimes demand that the wrong, even if it primarily affects ourselves,
shall not go unpunished. Again, no one can be in the full sense a
Christian, that is, a fully developed man, or a man on the way to the
full development of his nature, who is without the capacity of moral
indignation, in whom no flame is kindled by the oppression of the weak.

What the Christian moral law does demand of us, is the complete
suppression of the merely personal anger which sometimes burns so
fiercely in us when we receive unmerited insult or injury. That kind of
anger belongs to "the flesh," is part of the defensive equipment of the
animal nature. Before we can in any sense be Christ-like, the spirit
must win many hard-won victories over its ancient foe.

To say "I will forgive, but I can never forget," is only to conceal from
ourselves the defeat of the spiritual man, the Christ in us.

3. But carefully note the reason appended to the prayer: "they know not
what they do." That is true, with every variety of degrees and shades of
truth, of every sinner. It was true, clearly, of the soldiers then
performing their duty: it was less true, but still in a real sense it was
true, of the Pharisees, of the High Priests, of the Roman judge. It is
true, but to a far less degree, even of us, that when we sin, we "know
not what we do."

Sins are, in the language of St. Paul, works of darkness. That is the
element in which alone they can exist. Sin is a huge deception. The
very condition of its existence is the concealment of its true character.
All this is summed up in that experience which we call "temptation." We
are so familiar with sin, the atmosphere we breathe is so infected with
it, we have given way so many times in the past, that it needs the
objective revelation of the Cross to bring home to us the real horror and
malignity of sin. It has been finely said, "Sin first drugs its victims
before it consumes them." We, too, or some of us, have known the strange
petrifying, hardening effect of sin on the conscience.

Great, then, is our need that we should pray that the revelation of the
Cross m