ke the charitable--which is generally the
truer--construction of acts and motives. That is a very threadbare
thought, brother, but the way to invest commonplace with startling power
is to bring it into immediate connection with our own life and conduct.
And if you will try to walk by this threadbare commonplace for a week,
I am mistaken if you do not find out that it has teeth to bite and a
firm grip to lay upon you. Threadbare truth is not effete until it is
obeyed, and when we try to obey it, it ceases to be commonplace.

Again, I may remind you that this mercifulness, which is primarily an
inward emotion, and a way, as I said, of thinking of, and of looking at,
unworthy people, must necessarily, of course, find its manifestation in
our outward conduct. And there will be, what I need not dilate upon, a
readiness to help, to give, to forgive not only offences against society
and morality, but offences against ourselves.

I need not dwell longer upon this first part of my subject. I wished
mainly to emphasise that to begin with action, in our understanding of
mercifulness, is a mistake; and that we must clear our hearts of
antipathies, and antagonisms, and cynical suspicions, if we would
inherit the blessings of our text.

Before I go further, I would point out the connection between this
incumbent duty of mercifulness and the preceding virtue of meekness. It
is hard enough to bear 'the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy
takes,' without one spot of red in the cheek, one perturbation or flush
of anger in the heart; and to do that might task us all to the utmost.
But that is not all that Christ's ethics require of us. It is not
sufficient to exercise the passive virtue of meekness; there must be the
active one of mercifulness. And to call for that is to lay an additional
weight upon our consciences, and to strain and stretch still further the
obligation under which we come. We have not done what the worst men and
our most malicious enemies have a right to receive from us when we say,
with the cowardly insincerity of the world, 'I can forgive but I cannot
forget.' That is no forgiveness, and that is no mercifulness It is not
enough to stand still, unresisting. There must be a hand of helpfulness
stretched out, and a gush of pity and mercifulness in the heart, if we
are to do what our Master has done for us all, and what our Master
requires us to do for one another. Mercifulness is the active side of
the passive me