They did what they wanted to do at the moment.  So far as we know, there were only two men who did what they would have wished they had done in twenty years:  there was the thief on the other cross, who showed The Man he knew who He was; and there was the disciple John, who kept as close as he could.  John perhaps was thinking of the past—­of all the things that Christ had said to him; and the man on the other cross was thinking what was going to happen next.  The other people who had to do with the crucifixion were all thinking about the thing they were doing at the moment and the way they felt about it.  But the Man was Thinking, not of His suffering, but of the men in front of Him, and of what they could be thinking about, and what they would be thinking about afterward—­in ten minutes, in twenty minutes, in twenty days, or in twenty years; and suddenly His heart was flooded with pity at what they would be thinking about afterward, and in the midst of the pain in His arms and the pain in His feet He made that great cry to Heaven:  “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!”

It is because Christians have never quite believed that The Man really meant this when He said it that they have persecuted the Jews for two thousand years.  It is because they do not believe it now that they blame Mr. Rockefeller for doing what most of them twenty years ago would have done themselves.  It was one of the hardest things to do and say that any one ever said in the world, and it was said at the hardest possible time to say it.  It was strange that one almost swooning with pain should have said the gentlest-hearted and truest thing about human nature that has ever been said since the world began.  It has seemed to me the most literal, and perhaps the most practical, truth that has been said since the world began.

It goes straight to the point about people.  It gives one one’s definition of goodness both for one’s self and for others.  It gives one a program for action.

Except in our more joyous and free moments, we assume that when people do us a wrong, they know what they are about.  They look at the right thing to do and they look at the wrong one, and they choose the wrong one because they like it better.  Nine people out of ten one meets in the streets coming out of church on Sunday morning, if one asked them the question plainly, “Do you ever do wrong when you know it is wrong?” would say that they did.  If you ask them what a sin is, they will tell you that it is something you do when you know you ought not to do it.

But The Man Himself, in speaking of the most colossal sin that has ever been committed, seemed to think that when men committed a sin, it was because they did not really see what it was that they were doing.  They did what they wanted to do at the moment.  They did not do what they would have wished they had done in twenty years.

I would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in twenty years—­twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, or twenty seconds, according to the time the action takes to get ripe.