Article August 8, 1959 Issue

FORGIVE AND FORGET

ESTELLE B. CRANE MAC GREGOR

"I Am sorry. Forgive me." How the heart softens when forgiveness is requested! Like a bright, penetrating light, forgiveness dispels the darkness of misunderstanding and enmity. Pride and egotism battle to prevent the lips from forming those loving words: "I am sorry. Forgive me." But love must triumph if the individual would regain the spiritual peace so requisite for growth in grace.

Through the teachings of Christian Science we are led into a higher understanding of what true, scientific forgiveness is and what it demands of us. It is not a human sense of forgetting and forgiving, but is a replacement of human justice with divine mercy and the consequent relinquishment of the imperfect concept of man as material and erring for the perfect concept of man as the sinless child of God.

Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes 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. I say it with joy,— no person can commit an offense against me that I cannot forgive. Meekness is the armor of a Christian, his shield and his buckler. He entertains angels who listens to the lispings of repentance seen in a tear —happier than the conqueror of a world."

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