Those, therefore, who have sustained injuries from others, should be prepared and prompt to pardon, urged to it as they are, by this form of prayer, and also by the command of God: "If thy brother sin against thee, reprove him; and if he sin against thee seven times in a day, and seven times a day be converted unto thee, saying, I repent, forgive him." [1] The Apostle, too, and before him Solomon, said, "If thine enemy be hungry, give him to eat; if he thirst, give him to drink;" [2] and we read in St. Mark: " When thou standest to pray, for give, if thou hast ought against any man; that also your Father who is in heaven may forgive you your sins." [3]
But as, owing to the corruption of our nature, there is nothing to which man yields a more reluctant assent than to the pardon of injuries, the pastor will exert all the powers and all the resources of his mind to bend the obstinacy of the faithful to this exercise of mildness and mercy, so necessary to a Christian. He will dwell on those passages of the divine oracles, in which we hear God himself commanding us to pardon our enemies; and will proclaim, and it is strictly true, that a disposition to forgive injuries, and to love their enemies from the heart, is the strongest evidence of their being the children of God. By loving our enemies we image forth, in some sort, the loving forbearance of God, our Father, who, by the death of his Son, ransomed from everlasting perdition, and reconciled to himself the human race, who before were his avowed enemies. To close this instruction the pastor will urge the command of Christ our Lord, to which the Christian cannot refuse obedience without degrading himself to the lowest degree, and bringing confusion on his guilty head: " Pray for them that persecute and calumniate you, that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven." [4]
This, however, is a subject which demands consummate prudence on the part of the pastor, lest, disheartened by the difficulty, and yet knowing the necessity, of observing this precept, any of his hearers should yield to despondency. There are some who, aware of the obligation of burying in voluntary oblivion the injuries which they may have sustained, and of loving those by whom they have been inflicted, desire to comply with these duties, and do comply with them as far as they are able, and yet find that they cannot entirely obliterate from their minds the recollection of the injuries which they have suffered. There still lurks in the mind some lingering grudge, which harrows up conscience, and fills the mind with alarming apprehensions, lest, not having simply and sincerely forgiven, they may be guilty of disobedience to the command of God. The pastor, therefore, will here explain the opposite desires of the flesh and of the spirit; the one prone to revenge, the other prepared to pardon; from which contrariety arise continued strug-
