Forgiveness

SOPHIE R. WEINERT

The successful effort to overcome anger or resentment for wrongs experienced, though an important and necessary step toward the solution of a problem, is not all there is to forgiveness. On page 497 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy sounds the key-note of the whole matter when she says, "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal." The terms of this forgiveness, so plainly stated in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors;" leave no loophole for misunderstanding or mistaking the way. We can forgive our debtors only as God forgives, that is, by "the destruction of sin." Science is very definite in its statement that "evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power;" that it "has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense" (Science and Health, pp. 330, 71). Then where can sin be destroyed save in a supposititious mortal consciousness, in the believer's belief of sin?

We are all familiar with the expression, "I can forgive but cannot forget." Could we picture God as forgiving our sins and yet holding in thought the remembrance of them? On this point the Word saith, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." Can we in any sense claim to have forgiven a debt that has not been canceled? Is it not this very forgetting of evil because we remember the allness of good, which constitutes forgiveness?

A recent experience brought this lesson home quite forcibly to the writer. Suffering one day from a peculiar sense of fatigue and depression for which she could not account, a search in memory for its incipience brought to remembrance a conversation from which a deep sense of injury had arisen. As the probe sunk deeper in the process of analysis, of a sudden the error lay uncovered, and she was enabled to see clearly that the cause of her suffering was not the act of another, as she had imagined, but her own magnified impression of it. Who was the real sinner? Had she not believed in the reality of error, trusted sense-testimony, and identified evil with a brother man? As the light of Truth illumined this occurrence, all sense of fatigue and depression vanished and the incident was put out of mind. The following day, when business relations again brought the person to her, she was surprised and delighted by the cordial greeting of her fellow worker, and it was thus proved to her that "God's forgiveness of sin" had been made manifest "in the destruction of sin."

It is clear that if we do not feel hurt we are not hurt, and furthermore, when malice finds that its shots are fired in vain it soon gets tired of aiming at a mark it cannot hit. Some of us, however, may have been in the habit of thinking ourselves very superior when in spite of an injury we can greet a supposed enemy without resentment, even doing him a good turn as occasion offers; and yet in the next moment, perhaps, we meet a friend and relate to him the entire circumstance, mentally patting ourselves on the back for our generosity and forbearance. The truth of the matter is, as Mrs. Eddy has pointed out, that we have never anything real to forgive, and only a material sense of existence to reform, that false sense which thinks it can be injured.

Why does anything ever hurt us? Is it not because the love of self, of the mortal selfhood, is too prominent in our affection, engrossing it to the exclusion of God, good? If we loved good supremely, we could not see anything but good, for God, good, and His creations are everywhere. The disposition to resent injury is not far removed from the disposition to inflict injury. Both have their roots in self-love, and occasion alone determines which of the two will be manifest in us. Paul rightly discerned the nature of self-love when he classed it among the list of errors which war against spirituality and is "the law of sin and death."

In its truest sense, forgiveness is dependent upon that broad charity which covers a multitude of sins. As Paul has said: "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth." It is charity that solves the whole problem of forgiveness; charity which can be attained only by complete self-abnegation, the denial of that false sense which would relate everything to a personal I.

It is only by looking away from material unrealities that we are enabled to raise our eyes to the heights, those spiritual realities which reveal the ceaseless activity of the one perfect and divine Mind. Here, in that steadfast abiding which is sure augury of spiritual attainment, we will find that loving desire to forgive which gives happy assurance of being forgiven.

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A Practical Beginning

January 15, 1916

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