The sweet sense of true forgiveness is balm to the troubled thought. It is joy to experience the calm that is inevitably felt when erroneous beliefs are utterly destroyed, hence forgiven. The victory over false mortal concepts—the healing of resentment, personal sense, and hate through their elimination from one's thinking—restores to human consciousness normal gladness. The humble willingness to let go of error, awake from mental darkness, and lift thought to the omnipresent light of Love brings release from suffering and establishes joy. The healing benediction of Love, cherished in individual consciousness, leaves nothing that needs to be forgiven.

These are days when tenderness and an abiding sense of forgiveness should possess our thoughts and hearts. Christianly scientific thinking blesses all humanity, dispels the shadows of mistakes, and transforms ignorance of God with thoughts which conform to His likeness. Since our Father-Mother God ever knows us as His perfect children, we can conform our thoughts to His likeness through complete forgiveness—destruction—of every argument of personal sense, maintaining in our own thinking the law of perfection. This so outshines the regrets of the past or the fears of the future that error is forestalled, and is not seen as a reality needing to be forgiven. Thus is any suggestion of discord dispelled.

Mary Baker Eddy shows us the true way of forgiveness where she says in her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 (p. 19): "The Christian Scientist cherishes no resentment; he knows that that would harm him more than all the malice of his foes. Brethren, even as Jesus forgave, forgive thou." Our precious Leader's demonstration of Christliness in overcoming attacks of misunderstanding and malice should melt any hardness or resentment in our lives if we are truly grateful for her and her gift of Christian Science. For what is resentment but a belief of hurt personal sense which would give back error for error? Through God's grace we may recognize the foe as malicious suggestion, a mistaken concept, not person. Let us refuse to admit such false argument, and realize that a lie has no intelligence, no reality, no means through which to operate, because it does not emanate from infinite Truth and Love.

Yet, in spite of this realization, how subtle is the suggestion, at times, to feel that we have been wronged or suffered injustice! Let us be a law unto ourselves and turn valiantly away from the whispering of error and affirm the truth which we know. We could not be wronged unless we admitted the argument of error into our thinking. If the conviction is clear that the evidences of evil are never true, we cannot be victims of that which we do not wish to accept or manifest. Humbly turning to God and praying for purification, we receive the comforting assurance that the desire for self-correction has brought the peace of self-forgiveness. We are exalted as we maintain within our thoughts spiritual wisdom, and faithfully resist the allurments of self-pity or self-indulgence.

Though we earnestly strive to be vigilant in righteous thinking, does a regret pursue us that we seem to have lost a rare opportunity, a priceless privilege? Let us transform the sense of disappointment into faith in the protecting care of our Father-Mother Love. Then will be demonstrated more self-abnegation, patience, and humility. Even the memory of suffering and disappointment will be effaced, and radiant spiritual unfoldment manifested.

Through this divinely scientific consciousness we can dispel the illusions of ingratitude, misunderstanding, and malice, should these errors present themselves for acceptance. Even estrangement from loved ones, if such sad experience seems to arise, is healed when we recognize that in reality there has never been anything but the one Mind and its loving ideas, dwelling together in peace. Whatever the foes to our happiness may seem to be—whether they be disappointment, dissatisfaction, unkind criticism, loneliness, impoverishment—these simply array themselves before our thinking to be obliterated through knowing that true selfhood is God's idea, reflecting Love, spiritual, beautiful, harmonious. Thus do we establish the sweet sense of brotherhood, knowing that we have no enemies. Let us be joyously persistent in our declarations and realization that in our real being we are spiritual ideas, not subject to injury, resentment, impoverishment. Let us know that animal magnetism cannot tempt us, through egotism, to believe that we have a selfhood apart from God. Keeping our thinking happily grateful for the truth we know, we are sustained in the fetterless freedom of infinite Mind.

Peter admonishes, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." Herein we may rejoice in ascending spiritual unfoldment, and this happy consciousness will be worthy to offer itself to be used to God's glory.

Paul, in his second letter, instructed Timothy, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." Being "approved unto God" requires sound spiritual thinking, rightly utilizing the Word of Truth to conquer false belief. Included in this is the demand to forgive, destroy, for ourselves and others, belief in the reality of physical suffering or disease. Belief in sentient matter means separation from God, Spirit. False beliefs about persons or things need to be utterly destroyed through the realization that true existence is the embodiment of spiritual ideas. When the radiant light of Truth illumines our thinking, false beliefs are destroyed. Then, instead of discordant physical manifestations, we realize health and harmony, and are conscious only of love and joyous peace.

When the belief called disease is entirely eliminated from one's thinking, it is destroyed. If we desire to exercise our God-given dominion over the evidence of the material senses, we must be ever alert to detect and overcome wrong traits of disposition, latent erroneous tendencies, selfishness, which work against the attainment of spirituality. If our thinking is filled with the abiding truth that Love is All, and is rejecting everything unlike Love, we shall maintain the true sense of health. We should realize that truly to forgive is not merely to excuse, but to wipe out the false claims of error, so far as they appear to our consciousness. Thus we obey the injunction, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God."

Our great Master taught us to pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," and Mrs. Eddy interprets this petition in the Lord's Prayer as, "And Love is reflected in love" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 17). Spiritual love knows no debt. As we love, we forgive and destroy that which is unlike Love. Righteous prayer balances all accounts and unfolds the riches of His grace through the receiving of spiritual ideas. Thus is our thought imbued with gratitude to God and also to our fellow men for what they have demonstrated of the great facts of eternal law and divine reality. A burdened sense of indebtedness is removed as spiritual activity opens one's thinking to ways of utilizing Spirit's ever-present bounty, which flows impartially to all, and is not dependent upon material outlining. Love reveals its affluence to each one who turns with confidence to God, who is omnipresent.

As Jesus expressed forgiveness and blessing to all, so let us maintain that Christlike love which can say in every instance, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Lifting our hearts to our Father-Mother God, we shall then know the spontaneous gladness which results from an abiding sense of forgiveness and joy.