Article October 14, 1916 Issue

If we look below the surface of human life, we find that...

The Reformatory Pillar

If we look below the surface of human life, we find that many of its mistakes and tragedies are due to the fact that a sense of injustice is being harbored in thought. This sense tends to produce resentment and a belief of grievance, or even a desire for revenge. Such conditions of thought ultimate in sin and despair, and unless corrected betimes, they are productive of crime and disaster. It therefore behooves humanity to examine carefully its concept of justice, and to maintain a mental attitude wherein the sense of injustice may be destroyed. The question at issue is not so much whether the person aggrieved has a just reason for resentment, whether an insult, injury, or wrong has been received or not; the question to be considered is whether the person in the case can afford to continue to harbor the belief of having been wronged.

Those who are familiar with the results of wrong thinking upon human lives, will recognize immediately the injurious effect of persisting in the belief of a wrong being committed. There is a Scriptural statement about man, that "as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." The habit of maintaining in the mind either an injury or a wrong tends to make the person who does this a wrong-doer himself. Unless the wrong or injury is forgiven, it will continue to harass and wound. For their own protection, therefore, all those who are laboring under the sense of injustice, whether or not this belief has a sufficient basis in human thought, must learn to forgive the offense, that is, to make it unreal.

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