of the word of those who "forgive" unrighteously, yet must we maintain that clear insight of spirit into truth can only be won by refusing to let such caricature of forgiveness colour our central conception of what real forgiveness is.

But if, on such grounds, we pass beyond the thought of forgiveness as not-punishing,-does it mend matters to try and increase (as it were) the content of the word, and say that it means a complete ignoring of guilt; a sort of make-believe that those who are guilty are not guilty? Such a view will have, no doubt, its relation to truth. To treat those who have done wrong as they would have been treated if they had not done wrong, is often a real element in the restorative character of forgiveness. But it will not do as an account of what forgiveness means. On the one side, it too does not yet say enough. On the other, it too depends for its moral justifiableness, on something as yet unexpressed. Forgiveness that is at all completely realized is something much deeper in character,-something altogether unlike, a mere treating as if. To treat a culprit as if he were better than he is, however important it may be experimentally, is in any case a means to an end. And its provisional character is enough to show that it is at best incomplete as an account of what forgiveness means. Moreover, even as a provisional experiment it needs to be justified. To treat a culprit as if he were innocent may sometimes be an intolerable wrong. To treat a culprit as if he were innocent, may sometimes be as an inspiration of the wisdom-the surpassing wisdomof love like the love of God. What makes the difference between the one case and the other? Is it not plain that the righteousness of such treatment has relation to something in the personality of the culprit himself. It may not depend on the magnitude of his past fault; but it

certainly depends upon something in his personal character now; something in him (whether we say of present fact or of future possibility) which makes it what it is. Such treatment in him has an eye to his restoration to righteousness, and whatever restoration to righteousness in him would mean. It is relative to that in him which may be described as his possibility, or the reasonable hope of his possibility, of a real restoration. Such a hope may be remote. But however remote it may be, its reality is an absolutely essential ingredient in the meaning of treating him as guiltless, if such treatment is to deserve, for an instant, the name of forgiveness. Apart from this it would be not forgiveness but sin.

This becomes, I think, plainer still, if we carry our thoughts of the contents of forgiveness one step further; and say that in its fulness it would mean not only that we treated the culprit as if he were innocent in our outward behaviour, but that we really thought and felt towards him with all that undimmed fulness of reverent love which would have belonged to him as righteous and loving. For such a conception of forgiveness, while it does, for the first time, get rid of the sense of inadequacy which attached to all that was suggested before; does also bring out into sharp relief that moral confusedness which must inhere in every attempted definition of forgiveness-must inhere in it even in proportion to its adequacy-as long as we attempt to explain forgiveness abstractly or externally; to explain it, that is, by the action or the sentiment of the forgiver, otherwise than in direct relation to that, in the personality of the forgiven, which gives to the act of the forgiver all its character and meaning. Forgiveness is not a transaction which can be taken by itself and stated as it were in terms of arithmetic. It is an attitude of a person to a person. It can only be understood in terms of personality. I cannot forgive a river or a tree. I cannot forgive

an animal except just so far as I do (whether rightly or wrongly) recognise in it the attributes of a rational soul; if I forgive a man, it is in relation to the meaning of that man's personality-its complex present, its immense possible future-that all which I do in the act of forgiving finds at once its justification and its explanation.

But the more we deepen the content of the word forgiveness; the more we realize that forgiveness, however otherwise guarded or conditioned, is going to contain, on any terms at all, such elements as personal reverence or love; the more does the question begin to press upon us, whether we can, or dare, at all largely forgive. If a man treats me and mine with outrageous wickedness: it is possible perhaps to imagine that I may be right in not trying to bring punishment upon him, but on what possible warrant can I look on him with reverence or love? If I pronounce such actions and character good, nay if I do not unfalteringly condemn them as with the eternal sentence of God against evil: I do but, in wanton self-identification with his sin, make myself a renegade to righteousness.

The more we think over it, the more we realize that when we talk of human forgiveness as a duty, or Divine forgiveness as our faith and hope; the forgiveness which we mean is so intimately bound up with, so essentially dependent upon, those grounds within the personality of the forgiven which justify it; that we cannot, apart from them, even apprehend aright what the nature of the thing itself is. Forgiveness is, in part, a remitting of punishment. It is in part a treating, nay even a recognising, of the person forgiven as good and yet it is no one of these things simpliciter, by itself. It is no one of them apart from that justifying cause, within the personality of the forgiven, which makes this treatment, and recognition, not unrighteous but righteous. God does not, in fact, remit penalty: He does not in fact justify, or pronounce righteous, except in relation

to something, on the part of the forgiven, which both vindicates the righteousness of His act, and explains the meaning of it. God's forgiveness is never simply unconditional.

And as God's is not, so we recognise after all that man's is not to be. In one direction it is true that it is to be infinite "I say not unto thee until seven times but until seventy times seven." 1 Yet even this must be read in the light of that proviso which our Lord's words no less explicitly contain; "If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sin against thee seven times in the day, and seven times turn again to thee saying I repent; thou shalt forgive him."2 Forgiveness, then, if it is to be the truth and not the imitation of forgiveness (for even the imitation of forgiveness has its place in the complexities of human life) but if it is to be not the imitation but the truth; if it is to be that real forgiveness which is the spontaneous action of righteousness, and not that indifference to sin which is itself a new sin; is strictly and absolutely correlative to what may be called the "forgiveableness" of the person forgiven.

Now whatever forgiveableness in him may turn out to mean there are one or two conclusions which will follow at once from the proposition that forgiveness is correlative to forgiveableness. Thus: true forgiveness is never capricious it is never arbitrary: we may even say it is never properly optional. True forgiveness is an act or rather an attitude—not more of love than it is of righteousness and of truth. Truth and righteousness are not in contradiction against love. They are love. God who is Love, is Righteousness and Truth. God who is Righteousness and Truth, is Love. Truth, Righteousness, Love, cannot be capricious or arbitrary.

There is no arbitrary variation in the forgiveness of God Whether He forgives a man or not, depends wholly and only upon whether the man is or is not forgiveable. He 1 Mat. xviii. 22. 2 Luke xvii. 4.

who can be forgiven by Love and Truth, is forgiven by Love and Truth-instantly, absolutely, without failure or doubt. And as, in God, forgiveness, upon the necessary conditions, so acts as if it were self-acting; so would it also in me, in proportion to my perfectness of knowledge and character; for Righteousness, Truth and Love, are not capricious. I indeed may fall short of them, retaining my anger after they have forgiven: or I may run too fast for them, forgiving (as I call it) while they still are displeased; but they are sure and exact and unfailing and immutable; for they are Righteousness and Love and Truth. Again, I may often be puzzled as to how far I ought, or ought not, to forgive. But this is only because I do not know. I am not able, in my ignorance, to discern whether such an one is rightly forgiveable, or no. But if my knowledge were adequate, there would be no residuum of mere option. Either he is forgiveable, or he is not. So far as he is not I ought not to forgive. But so far as he is, I ought. There is no stage really in which, at my option, he both may, and yet may not, be forgiven. If I may forgive, I must. A man does me terrible wrong. Suppose for one moment, that he is absolutely perfect in penitence. Yet I will not forgive. Then the sin, which was on his side, has gone over to mine. So far as I was identified with righteousness and truth, I should-not perhaps but inevitably-have forgiven. My non-forgiveness is my deflection from righteousness and truth. Or, on the other hand, one for whom I am responsible, defies all right, and exults in his defiance. And I, refusing to punish, receive him with open arms as righteous and good. Then, in still more directness of sense, the sin, without ceasing to be on his side, has come over to mine. I have but identified myself with his wickedness. In proportion as he is identified with wickedness, truth and righteousness pronounce him wicked; and my acceptance of the wicked as righteous is my deflection from righteousness and truth. If, then, there is no true forgiveness but