Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) eBook

Alexander Whyte
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 302 pages of information about Bunyan Characters (3rd Series).

Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) eBook

Alexander Whyte
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 302 pages of information about Bunyan Characters (3rd Series).

2.  ’Free, full, and everlasting forgiveness of all the wrongs, the injuries, and the offences you have done against My Father, Me, your neighbours, and yourselves.’  Now, out of all that let us fix upon this—­the wrongs and the injuries we have done to our neighbours.  For, as Calvin says somewhere, though our sins against the first table of the law are our worst sins, yet our sins against the second table, that is, against our neighbours, are far better for beginning a scrutiny with.  So they are.  For our wrongs against our neighbours, when they awaken within us at all, awaken with a terrible fury.  Our wrongs against our neighbours wound, and burden, and exasperate an awakened conscience in a fearful way.  We come afterwards to say, Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned!  But at the first beginning of our repentances it is the wrongs we have done to our neighbours that drive us beside ourselves.  What neighbour of yours, then, have you so wronged?  Name him; name her.  You avoid that name like poison, but it is not poison—­it is life and peace.  More depends on your often recollecting and often pronouncing that hateful name than you would believe.  More depends upon it than your minister has ever told you.  And, then, in what did you so wrong him?  Name the wrong also.  Give it its Bible name, its newspaper name, its brutal, vulgar, ill-mannered name.  Do not be too soft, do not be too courtly with yourself.  Keep your own evil name ever before you.  When you hear any other man outlawed and ostracised by that same name, say to yourself:  Thou, sir, art the man!  Put out a secret and a painful skill upon yourself.  Have times and places and ways that nobody knows anything about—­not even those you have wronged; have times and places and ways they would laugh to be told of, and would not believe it; times, I say, and places and ways for bringing all those old wrongs you once did ever and ever back to mind; as often back and as keen to your mind as they come back to that other mind, which is still so full of the wrong.  Even if your victim has forgiven and forgotten you, never you forget him, and never you forgive yourself when you again think of him.  Welcome back every sudden and sharp recollection of your wrong-doing.  And make haste at every such sudden recollection and fall down on the spot in a deeper compunction than ever before.  Do that as you would be a forgiven and full-chartered soul.  For, free and full and everlasting as God’s forgiveness is, you have no assurance that it is yours if you ever forget your sin, or ever forgive yourself for having done it.  ’Forgive yourself,’ says Augustine, ’and God will condemn you.  But continually arraign and condemn yourself, and God will forgive and acquit and justify you.’

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Project Gutenberg
Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.