st 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 God, the joy of Him of
whom it is written that He delighteth in mercy. Just as when a sea-worm
perforates the shell 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 God. Have we forgotten the part which Ananias played
in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus? St. Augustine used to say that the