It is useless to try to meet such reasoning and prove it false, as long as we leave unchallenged the basis from which it proceeds. There is where the work has to be done. There is where there is a call for a new evangel today, to reveal to men that same simple message that Jesus proclaimed so long ago, that this is God's world and that we can bring to development the good that lies everywhere about us in men. When we have done that we can discuss these problems in terms of understanding. Until we have done it, we are merely beating the air.
We in the modern world need, above many things, a new understanding of forgiveness. In spite of much that has been written by our really great Christian thinkers who have been blessed with the child-like heart, and in spite of the experience of the many who have tried it out, forgiveness is still regarded by the great multitude as a somewhat difficult Christian duty. It is the response which we have to make when one who has wronged us comes repentant. Instead of exacting our rights, we must generously call the debt off, although as we have heard lately, these are some things which it would really be un-Christian to forgive.
But as Dr. Nash reminds us: "If man sinned against, draws back into his innocence and waits until the offender comes to himself, he abandons his little world to the devil. * * * Forgiveness alone makes a full repentance possible." And Herbert Gray carries the thought still farther when he says: "The secret of Christ's demand is in the fact that forgiveness is the only ultimately successful way of overcoming evil. * * * It ends evil because it wins the evildoer. It gets at the root of evil and undermines the spirit which produces strife. It saves the sinner because it makes its appeal to the good that is in him and calls it into life."
Those who say that we must forgive our enemies, but that of course it would be immoral to do so while they are still unrepentant, are as far from understanding Christ's principle as a certain churchman, whom I once heard say that he had no hope of our ever achieving Christian unity, but that he was still praying for it. So far from being the dutiful response to an attitude of repentance, it is rather the creative power which brings out the latent possibilities which have been obscured by sin and evil.
It is the basis of what might be called the divine process of getting even. A group of boys were playing ball one time, and one of the number in a spirit of exasperation threw the ball into a swamp, where it was lost. The owner of the ball came in to his uncle fuming and declaring that he was going to get even. "What are you going to do about it?" asked his uncle. "How are you going to get even?"
"Oh, I'll fix him. We won't let him play on the team," said the boy.
"It was a rather dirty trick, wasn't it? Sort of a low-down thing to do?" continued the uncle.
"It certainly was, but I'll get even."
"You might say, then," said the uncle, "that he was like the swampy mire that he threw the ball into, compared with the firm, high ground where you were playing?"
"Yes."