And then, presently, my friend does understand that he has wronged me;
that the gossip he repeated or the construction he put upon my actions
was not fair or true. And immediately that I become aware of this, from
him or from another, my resentment goes, if I have any natural virtue at
all; it goes because my wounded pride is healed. I forgive him easily
and naturally because he knows now what he has done.

II. How entirely different from this easy, self-loving, human
forgiveness is the Divine Forgiveness of Christ! Now it is true that in
the conscience of Pilate, the unjust representative of justice, and in
that thing that called itself conscience in Herod, and in the hearts of
the priests who denounced their God, and of the soldiers who executed
their overlord, and of Judas who betrayed his friend, in all these there
was surely a certain uneasiness--such an uneasiness is actually recorded
of the first and the last of the list--a certain faint shadow of
perception and knowledge of what it was that they had done and were
doing. And, for the natural man, it would have been comparatively easy
to forgive such injuries on that account. "I forgive them," such a man
might have said from his cross, "because there is just a glimmer of
knowledge left; there is just one spark in their hearts that still does
me justice, and for the sake of that I can try, at least, to put away my
resentment and ask God to forgive them."

But Jesus Christ cries, "Forgive them because they do _not_ know what
they do! Forgive them because they need it so terribly, since they do
not even know that they need it! Forgive in them that which is
unforgivable!"

III. Two obvious points present themselves in conclusion.