SERMON II.

ON FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES.

LUKE, vi. 37.

Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.

As I always wish to make my Sermons practical and useful, I mean to preach to-day upon the forgiveness of injuries; for I know no better way of making men Christians, than by taking those vices in detail, which are opposed to the Christian character, examining the causes from which they proceed, and suggesting the means by which they may be opposed. A real Christian is he who has established in his mind many good qualities and got rid of many bad ones; and this can only be done, sin by sin- and fault by fault and excellence by excellence; slowly, cautiously, and carefully -and therefore you must not think it singular that I often take up very narrow points of conduct, and descant upon single virtues, for I think it the best and surest way of building up the Christian character.

It is not bad counsel to give to a Christian congregation, to request, before they indulge in any scheme of resentment, and put on that horrid character of implacability which is so foreign to our religion; it is not, I say, bad advice to exhort them seriously to consider, and most anxiously to weigh, whether they have really suf fered the injury upon which their anger and resentment are founded, or whether self-love, and furious passions, may not have rendered them mistaken in the fact, and mistaken in the author of the fact. Perhaps they may have suffered no injury - perhaps the person whom

they considered to be the author of an injury which is real, may not be the author of it;-and in treating the subject of forgiveness of injuries which I purpose to do this day, it may be as well to begin here, to make it sure that there is that there is even that frail and faulty basis for revenge, which even human tribunals, and the opinions of the world, would require to be sure that you are not left even without the shadow of an excuse for a fault so abhorrent to every principle of our faith.

You have suffered an injury. Are you sure it is an injury? Have you laid it before good, and just, and wise men, and are they satisfied as well as you are, that you have been really injured? Are you not the cause of what you are pleased to term an injury? Have you not brought it upon yourself by your own violence and injustice? and inflicted much greater injury than you have received? Look abroad and see how often others are deceived, how often the sufferer appears to have suf fered justly, how often the complainant has given birth to the complaint; and if these errors exist in others, why may they not exist in any one of us? Why may not we justify our revenge upon a base as instable, deceive ourselves with conclusions as hasty, rush into dangerous passions upon principles as foolish and as false? And then think what the error is! not an error in calculations which make us more or less rich, or more or less powerful, but an error in the work of salvation; a blindness which darkens the view of heaven, a false step in the road to God; for remember what says our great Christian prayer-" Forgive us as we forgive those who have trespassed against us:"- what then is our chance of forgiveness if we forgive not them who have never trespassed against us? If we rage with implacable revenge against the innocent, and offer up a miserable error as an atonement for an unpardonable sin, which sin it could not expiate if it were no error at all,

but as true, as we (deceived by our miserable passions) believe it to be.

But what matters whether it be a real injury or not? if it is, you must forgive it, at least you must forgive it wish to be forgiven.

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The precept may appear hard, but obedience to it brings many immediate rewards; and it is the best plan of life for your immediate happiness, as the precepts of the Gospel are ever found to be. You will find the pain of forgiving to be of short duration, the pleasure of forgiving to be for ever recurring; causing a man to love and respect himself; breathing a satisfaction over the whole of life; remembered the hour before dissolution; offered to God as an atonement for sin; rising up to you in sickness and pain, and in all the miseries of the flesh, when power is forgotten, and glory is despised.

And don't be tempted to the unchristian sin of not forgiving by the pleasure of revenge: there is a pleasure in revenge, but it is a short-lived pleasure, and always followed by bitter remorse. When you have humbled all you wish to humble, and destroyed all you wished to destroy, when you cease to be supported by strong passions, when you cannot retract, and cannot repair, you will then begin to repent! You will then be conscious, that you have lived in opposition to one of the most sacred rules of the Gospel; that in a religion of peace, your life has been a life of hatred; that under a law of forgiveness, you have indulged in malicious rancour; that, expecting to be forgiven only as you forgive, you have lost all right to implore the mercy of God, because you have spurned the condition on which that right is founded. And will it never come? Are you rash and foolish enough to suppose that the violation of this condition will never flash across your mind; that when you lose your children by sudden disease; when you are in the agonies of pain, or the depression of sickness, or the bitterness of

death, that you will not be driven to ask help from God, and mercy for a bad life, and forbearance for the many sins of your soul? Believe me, the stoutest, and the bravest, and the youngest amongst you, will all come to this! And then the dreadful answer! the man within the breast! the dreadful dialogue with your own soul! Were you merciful? Did tears soften you? Did entreaties bend you? Was your heart an heart of flesh? Remember the man in the prison! - the debtor seized, the goods confiscated, the bitterness of speech, the destruction of fame, and the long work of wrath and strife! Think of this in your losses, think of it in your pain, think of it at your death; but above all, think of it now, that you may turn aside those losses, when you may lessen that pain by pleasing remembrances, that you may feel in that death the piercing hope of everlasting life.

Again, common observation on human character shows us, that great schemes of resentment commonly give way. No man can hate for a whole life: the passion which seemed to be immortal is at length swept off by the current of impressions, and at the close of life when little time remains for affection, the dictates of reason resume their empire, and the feelings of reason return. Year after year has past away in silent indignation. Every emotion of affection stifled, every office of kindness lost; all the sweet consolations of existence lavished away; and then when the grave admonishes enemies to forgive, they mourn over the kindness they have lost, to renew it for a moment, and to lose it again for ever! Therefore, as the Apostle says, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," I say, Forgive, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! forgive, while forgiveness is worth having; forgive, while there remains enough of life for the reward of kindness; forgive, while you have something else to bestow on repentance than lingering looks and faltering words. And what

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does this solemn Christian injunction of forgiving do, but eradicate from the mind the most painful and unquiet of all human passions. What wretchedness to sacrifice all the quietness of life, to sicken on the bosom of joy, still after the lapse of years to feel and to suffer with the freshness of yesterday, and in the midst of blessings to exclaim, "All this availeth me nothing, while Mordecai the Jew sitteth at the king's gate."

Some men are so far from being ashamed of not forgiving injuries, that they often glory in revenge; they believe it to be united with courage, and dignified pride; belonging to a nature jealous of insult, firm above others in what it purposes, vivid above others in what it feels; yet after all, what virtue or what great quality can an unforgiving disposition possibly imply? Who is most likely longest to retain the sense of injured dignity? The man who has given no pledge to his fellow-creatures of excellence, the man who feels himself vulnerable, who is least fortified by a long tenour of just intentions and wise actions. If there be virtue and merit in these feelings of revenge, let us at least draw our virtues. from a source where the weakest and worst of mankind cannot draw in common with us. Let them darken the sunshine of life with the inquietude of resentment, and hover year after year over expiring injuries! If such be the creed of the world, this is the creed of the Gospel. If there be any who have sinned against me, and I have not forgiven him, if the shadows be long and the sun going down, and I am stirred up against any one of my brethren-if there be any man on the earth, the latchet of whose shoe, the hair of whose head, I would injure— if that man come to me, and hold out his hand, and say, "It repenteth me sore that I have sinned against thee;' if I turn that man away in the bitterness of his heart, if I run not forward to meet him, may God turn away from me in the bitterness of my heart; and while mine