FORGIVENESS by V. M.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 12, 1878

FORGIVENESS

By V. M.

There is something divinely beautiful in the thought of possessing a mind that can immediately cancel every thought of resentment, and from its utmost depths forgive an injury, without even a lurking desire to “pay back.”

We are most wonderfully given to selfishness, and to be called upon to lay aside all malice and remember injustice and insult no longer, where to do so requires a humiliation of our own dear selves, is a call to which few of us can respond without many inward struggles. The literal plucking out of the “right-eye” would not be much more fearful to some, yet this is the spirit shown by our great Pattern.

“Forgive as ye would be forgiven” is the command, and we dare not disregard it; for who of us does not need each day of our life a loving Father’s forgiveness for our wayward course? Yet, notwithstanding this, how many of us can say from the heart that we have forgiven in every case?

When, as we think, we have been deeply wronged, it is no trivial matter to erase the memory of it from our minds, and take the perpetrator of this injury to our hearts and let it “be as though it had not been.” How natural to cautiously refer to it occasionally to impress upon him the fact that it is not forgotten, showing, at the same time, a want of that thorough forgiveness which we had flattered ourselves we had exercised. Nothing but a putting away of self, and a disregarding of that selfish pride that would overrule all our better feelings of humanity, will enable us to reach that point, and oh how many bitter struggles must be passed through before we reach it! Perseverance, however, will conquer in the end, and ours will be the victory. V. M.