THE genuine Christian desires to see men healed of their sins rather than punished for them. This compassionate attitude is the very foundation of true forgiveness. It recalls the merciful spirit of the Founder of Christianity when he rebuked James and John for their angry desire to call down fire to consume the ungracious and inhospitable Samaritans. "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of," he said. "For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." How significant it is of the spiritual progress of the disciples, and how encouraging to Christian students, that the same John should have later written the Gospel which bears his name in so loving a fashion, and that James in his epistle should have regarded the Golden Rule as the "royal law"!
When Christ Jesus placed in his ideal prayer the sentence, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," he was surely thinking of that type of forgiveness which he had himself demonstrated in transforming the character of the Magdalen and in healing the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda. Christian Science has come to this age explaining very lucidly the law of such forgiveness, the law of Love which heals by forgiving. On page 572 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," its author, Mary Baker Eddy, has written: "'Love one another' (I John, iii. 23),is the most simple and profound counsel of the inspired writer. In Science we are children of God; but whatever is of material sense, or mortal, belongs not to His children, for materiality is the inverted image of spirituality."
In these lines we learn that he who reflects divine Love understands or perceives the real man to be spiritual. Hence it follows that a true sense of love and its consequent healing power unfolds as the understanding of man's spiritual selfhood increases. This sense of love implies far more than the usual concept of forgiveness, which agrees to "let bygones be bygones," but continues to believe in evil. When the student of Christian Science is faced by suggestions of injustice and ingratitude in others, he does well to remember that in God there is only good. It is in the spiritual sense of being that he must make his demonstration, freeing himself from the human belief that he is party to, or a believer in, any suggestion of evil. This will not make him indifferent to his erring brother's welfare. Far from it! His ability to discern the sinless reality of existence, always present to spiritual sense, will gauge properly the compassion and generosity of his attitude toward the unreal, human concept.
