3.  ’I give also My holy law and testament, and all that therein is contained, for their everlasting comfort and consolation.’  This is not the manner of men, O my God.  Kind-hearted men comfort and console those who have suffered injuries and wrongs at our hands, but the kindest-hearted of men harden their hearts and set their faces like a flint against us who have done the wrong.  All Syria sympathised with Esau for the loss of his birthright, but I do not read that any one came to whisper one kind word to Jacob on his hard pillow.  All the army mourned over Uriah, but all the time David’s moisture was dried up like the drought of summer, and not even Nathan came to the King till he could not help coming.  All Jericho cried, Avenge us of our adversary!  But it was Jesus who looked up and saw Zaccheus and said:  Zaccheus, come down; make haste and come down, for to-day I must abide at thy house.  ’The injuries they have done themselves also,’ so runs the very first head of our forgiveness covenant.  Ah! yes; O my Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest my heart.  Thou knowest that irremediably as I have injured other men, yet in injuring them I have injured myself much more.  And much as other men need restitution, reparation, and consolation on my account, my God, Thou knowest that I need all that much more—­ten thousand times more.  Oh, how my broken heart within me leaps up and thanks Thee for that Covenant.  Let me repeat it again to Thy praise:  ’Full, free, and everlasting forgiveness of all wrongs, injuries, and offences done by him against his neighbours and against himself.’  Who, who is a God, O my God, who is a God like unto Thee!

4.  ’I do also give them a portion of the self-same grace and goodness that dwells in My Father’s heart and Mine.’  The self-same grace and goodness, that is, that My Father and I have shown to them.  That is to say, we shall be made both willing and able to grant to all those men who have wronged us the very same charter of forgiveness that we have had granted to us of God.  So that at all those times when we stand praying for forgiveness we shall suspend that prayer till we have first forgiven all our enemies, and all who have at any time and in any way wronged or injured us.  Even when we had the Communion cup at our lips to-day, you would have seen us setting it down till we had first gone and been reconciled to our brother.  Yes, my brethren, you are His witnesses that He has done it.  He has taken you into His covenant till He has made you both able and willing, both willing and able, to grant and to bequeath to others, all that free, full, and everlasting forgiveness and love that He has bequeathed to you.  Till under the very last and supreme wrong that your worst enemy can do to you and to yours, you are able and forward to say:  Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he has done.  Forgive me my debts, you will say, as I forgive my debtors.  And always, as you again say and do that, you will on the spot be made a partaker of the Divine Nature, according to the heavenly Charter, ’I do also give them a portion of the self-same grace and goodness that dwells in My Father’s heart and in Mine.’