capable of committing atrocious wrong must be incapable of repenting of it, and such a person's professions are accordingly contemptuously disregarded. When therefore people deliberately consider it mean to forgive extreme injuries they are really setting a limit not to the duty of forgiveness but to the possibility of genuine repentance. The words, I shall be a villain on the day that I shake that man's hand,' do not mean that the wrong done has been too great to be forgiven with honour, but that it implies a criminality inconsistent with penitence. The words, "There are some injuries that no one ought to forgive,' mean really, There are some injuries of which it is impossible to repent. In the same way, the contempt with which we often regard those who forgive injuries does not really imply any dislike of the principle of forgiveness itself, but only a suspicion that in the particular case the forgiveness was not genuine. For forgiveness is a thing not less liable to be counterfeited than repentance. When we were considering the virtue of Mercy we remarked that the acts which it dictates are often precisely those which would be suggested by mere laxity or indifference to wrong. Just so forgiveness acts in the same way as mere servility. The bystander therefore may easily have a difficulty in distinguishing them, and, as forgiveness, like all high virtues, is rare, and servility, like all low vices, common, the chances are in any given case that the act which might have been dictated by either was actually dictated by the latter. When the wrong forgiven is exceptionally heinous this probability becomes still greater, and so men form a habit of regarding the forgiveness of extreme injuries as a contemptible thing except in those cases where their previous knowledge of the person who forgives makes it impossible

to suspect him of servility. In such cases they betray their genuine approbation of the principle of unlimited forgiveness by enthusiastic admiration.

A few cases of forgiveness will yet remain which we can scarcely help regarding with repugnance even though we have no antecedent reason to suspect servility. Othello is certainly not wanting in manly spirit, yet we should despise and almost detest him if he forgave Iago. But this, again, does not prove that forgiveness itself is in any circumstances shocking to us. What it proves is that circumstances may be imagined of injury so extreme and malignant that the difficulty of forgiveness becomes incalculable, and that any other way of accounting for the injured man's abstinence from revenge, however improbable and almost impossible in itself, becomes easier to conceive than that he could be capable of sincere forgiveness. But every virtue, and not forgiveness only, becomes in certain cases impossible to human infirmity. Every virtue in the extreme limit becomes confounded with some vice, and the only peculiarity in the case of this virtue is that the vice which counterfeits it is peculiarly contemptible.

To sum up the forgiveness of injuries, which was regarded in the ancient world as a virtue indeed but an almost impossible one, appears to the moderns in ordinary cases a plain duty; and whereas the ancients regarded with admiration the man who practised it, the moderns regard with dislike the man who does not. Where the injury forgiven is extreme the moderns regard the man who forgives as the ancients regarded the man who forgave an ordinary injury, that is, with extreme admiration, provided they are convinced of the genuineness of the

forgiveness. On the whole, therefore, it appears that a new virtue has been introduced into human life. Not only has it been inculcated, but it has passed so completely into the number of recognised and indispensable virtues, that every one in some degree practises it, and that by not practising it men incur odium and loss of character. To the other great changes wrought in men's minds by Christ this is now to be added, the most signal and beneficent, if not the greatest, of all. It is here especially that Christianity coincides with civilization. Revenge is the badge of barbarism; civil society imposes conditions and limitations upon it, demands that not more than an eye shall be exacted for an eye, not more than a tooth for a tooth, then takes revenge out of the hand of the injured party and gives it to authorized public avengers, called kings or judges. A gentler spirit springs up, and the perpetual bandying of insult and wrong, the web of murderous feuds at which the barbarian sits all his life weaving and which he bequeaths to his children, gives place to more tranquil pursuits. Revenge begins to be only one out of many occupations of life, not its main business. In this stage it becomes for the first time conceivable that there may be a certain dignity and beauty in refraining from revenge. So far could ordinary influences advance men. They were carried forward another long stage by a sudden divine impulse followed by a powerful word. Not the Enthusiasm of Humanity alone, not the great sentences of the Sermon on the Mount alone, but both together, the creative meeting of

*

οὐδ ̓ ἡμῖν ἀνάσσεμεν, οἶσιν ἄρα Ζεὺς

ἐκ νεότητος ἔδωκε καὶ εἰς γῆρας τολυπεύειν
ἀργαλέους πολέμους.

the Spirit and the Word, brought to life the new virtue of forgiveness. To paraphrase the ancient Hebrew language, the Spirit of Christ brooded upon the face of the waters, and Christ said, Let there be forgiveness and there was forgiveness.

301

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS-continued.

BUT up to this point in considering Christ's principle of forgiveness we have disregarded entirely the words in which he proclaims it. That we should be prepared to forgive all injuries upon condition of repentance is involved in those words, but they contain much more. It has been remarked that the two texts which refer to the subject of injuries coincide to this extent, but that from this point they differ irreconcilably. Having considered that in which they agree, it is time for us to discuss that in which they differ.

The one text commands the Christian, if a brother trespass against him, to rebuke the offender. The other gives a directly contrary precept, If a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also.' This apparent contradiction will be removed if it can be shown that Christ was not contemplating the same class of injurers in the two cases. Now if we examine the first passage we immediately discover that the injurer referred to is a Christian. In the first place, he is called a brother, which we know to have been the term adopted by the first Christians in speaking of each other. In the second place, the text goes on to direct that if the offender do not listen to the rebuke, the matter be brought before the Church, and that