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 passes 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 passes 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 assume. 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 restitution 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 h