p. 790 | FORGIVENESS by Helen A. Hawley

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 50.

FORGIVENESS.

By Helen A. Hawley

LITTLE words have great force sometimes. In the prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," who has not stumbled over that word "as," and found it more than a mouthful? Who has not offered the petition with a mental reservation? For it means vastly more than forgiveness of our enemies. That might be easy; in fact, many of us are not conscious that we have any enemies. But our friends who hurt us, who touch us in the sorest places, who are unjust to us, our friends who pass by on the other side when we are overcome in life's conflicts, they are the ones we find it hardest to forgive.

In the words of the prophetic psalm: "It was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it. . . . But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance."

Our Saviour, entering into all the depths of human needs by his own experience, knew well what power this one petition would have

to bring the hearts of men into harmony with his own loving Spirit.

Only as we are filled with his love, only when like him, we are meek and lowly in heart, unselfish, seeking not our own; only then we dare to pray, "Forgive us as, we forgive."—Helen A. Hawley.