ithin our power.

THE VIRTUE.

+Forgiveness is not inconsistent with justice. It does not do away with
punishment. It spiritualizes punishment; substituting mental for bodily
pains.+--The sense of the evil and shame of wrongdoing, which is the
essence and end of punishment, forgiveness, when it is appreciated,
serves to intensify. Indeed it is impossible to inflict punishment
rightly until you have first forgiven the offender. For punishment
should be inflicted for the offender's good. And not until vengeance has
given way to forgiveness are we able to care for the offender's
well-being.

Forgiveness is a special form of love. It recognizes the humanity of the
offender, and treats him as a brother, even when his deeds are most
unbrotherly. But it cares so much for him that it will not shrink from
inflicting whatever merciful pains may be necessary to deliver him from
his own unbrotherliness. Forgiveness loves not the offense but the man.
It hates the offense chiefly because it injures the man. Its punishment
of the offense is the negative side of its positive devotion to the
person. The command "love your enemies" is not a hard impossibility on
the one hand, nor a soft piece of sentimentalism on the other. It is
possible, because there is a human, loveable side, even to the worst
villain, if we can only bring ourselves to think on that better side,
and the possibilities which it involves. It is practical, because regard
for that better side of his nature demands that we shall make him as
miserable in his wrongdoing as is necessary to lead him to abandon his
wrongdoing, and give the better possibilities of his nature a chance to
develop. The parent who punishes the naughty child loves him not less
but more than the parent who withholds the needed punishment. The state
which suffers crime to go unpunished becomes a nursery of criminals. It
wrongs itself; it wrongs honest citizens; but most of all it wrongs the
criminals themselves whom it encourages in crime by undue lenity. The
object of forgiveness is not to take away punishment, but to make
whatever punishment remains effective for the reformation of the
offender. It is to transfer the seat of suffering from the body, where
its effect is uncertain and indirect, to the mind, where sorrow for
wrongdoing is powerful and efficacious. Every wrong act brings its
penalty with it. In order to induce repentance and reformation that
penalty must in some way be brought home