having been forgiven a debt almost incalculable in amount, refused to
forgive a small debt due to him. Even when in agony upon the cross the
thought of forgiveness was uppermost in the Saviour's heart and He
prayed: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!"

He was not thinking of relief to wrong-doers when He made forgiveness a
cardinal principle in the moral code that He promulgated. It was not,
I am persuaded, to shield from just punishment one who does injury to
another, but to save the injured from the paralyzing influence of the
thirst for revenge. It is only rarely that one has an opportunity to
retaliate, but the desire for retaliation is a soul-destroying disease.
Christ would purge the heart of hatred and make love the law of life.

Christianity has been called "The Gospel of the Second Chance"; it is
more than that. There is no limit to the chances that it offers to the
repentant. When Christ was asked whether one should forgive a brother
seven times He answered, "Seventy times seven." Christianity is the only
hope of the discouraged and the despondent. Walter Malone has put into a
poem entitled "Opportunity" the exhaustless mercy that Christ holds out
to men. I quote the concluding stanzas:

Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep:
I lend my arm to all who say "I can";
No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep
But he might rise and be again a man!

Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous retribution's blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past,
And find the future's pages white as snow.