WHEN Peter asked whether one should forgive a brother seven times, Jesus said, "I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven." The Master voiced the great truth that the human sense of forgiveness must pattern the divine forgiveness, which is unlimited because God, good, is infinite, recognizing no place where sin can be found. According to the eighteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, he illustrated his point with the parable about a certain king who took account of his servants. And in his own prayer, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do," Christ Jesus emphasized the great importance of forgiveness.
Unwillingness to forgive arises from the fact that mortal mind, so called, does not know how to be better: it always has been a liar and the father of lies. Our deliverance from belief in discord comes not by contemplating mortal errors, but by lifting thought above the sense of sin, sickness, and self to the consciousness that reflects the immortal Mind, God, to whom all is good, needing no forgiveness.
Christ Jesus not only showed us the way, but also walked in it, in order that all might follow his footsteps from sense to Soul. During the ages since his ascension the way has been overgrown with the weeds of personal sense, the thorns of pride of place, and the underwood of pride of power, which have concealed the serpents of fear, jealousy, revenge, anger, hate, condemnation, domination. But as in Jesus' days, so in ours, when the need was great there came one who was divinely inspired to rediscover the trail from sense to Soul blazed by the Nazarene, a Discoverer who was brave enough to toil alone and untiringly, during many years clearing away the obstructions of material belief that all might again see the way the Master trod and safely walk therein. This Discoverer, Mary Baker Eddy, not only found the footsteps of our Master, but also charted the way, so that the weeds, the thorns, and the underwood should never again obliterate or hide the path; for her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," will always enable every earnest student of Christian Science to find that way.
