MOST men will agree that human forbearance and loving-kindness find their highest expression in willingness to forgive. But human pardon is sometimes abused, as even faltering worldly experience teaches. The only veritable forgiveness, Mrs. Eddy points out in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 497), consists in "the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal." The disciple Peter was familiar with Jesus' teachings on this point; but, like many to-day, he was slow to acknowledge that true forgiveness must involve such a purification of one's own thinking as will disarm an offense of all its supposed power to harm. "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?" he inquired. The Master's reply clearly indicates that, regardless of even a continually repeated occasion of offense, the refusal to accord reality to it must be persisted in until nothing remains to be forgiven: "I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven."
We may well seek for a better understanding of the nature of this spiritually directed pardon and of the means by which it may be earned. Manifestly, the commonly accepted view which regards forgiveness as merely an act of clemency, a willingness to overlook or condone wrongdoing, may, however compassionate its intent, fail in practice to meet the requirements of justice and to promote an effective reformation. Yet forgiveness and justice are conclusive and coincident manifestations of Godlikeness; and it could never be in accord with the divine purpose that they should conflict, or that either should be productive of harm. Indeed, there can be no true forgiveness which does not satisfy the ends of justice, and no justice which does not include complete forgiveness. Even the legal lore of the past appears to comprise a glimpse of this metaphysical truth; for, according to Blackstone, it is a universal maxim of the common law of England that no one's liberty may be jeopardized a second time on the same charge.
Unless we understand forgiveness as Jesus understood it, we are likely to continue under the temptation to allow evil to boast itself over good, by admitting that there may arise occasion when it should go unpunished and undestroyed. The poet's aphorism, "To err is human, to forgive divine," means much or little, according as we are ready to utilize the privileges inherent in the spiritual man's divine nature, and able to rise above our belief in the reality of the so-called pains and pleasures of erring human existence. Writing in "No and Yes" (p. 31) of Jesus' method of healing and forgiving sin, Mrs. Eddy explains the scientific meaning of true pardon with unescapable logic. She says, "If the evils called sin, sickness, and death had been forgiven in the generally accepted sense, they would have returned, to be again forgiven; but Jesus said to disease: 'Come out of him, and enter no more into him.'"
