To be near unto God - pagina 225

Does this begin with you, so that you love and that afterwards God loves you? Far from it. Love never begins with you. Back of first,

the

first

stirrings

of love

that ever

moved

the

was God who put it there. Neither can you ever forgive from yourself. You can forgive in a way which makes your forgiveness itself to be new sin to j^ou, but never in the way which can release the soul. Frequently we hear of a soul,

it

man

of the world

who

forgives. Indeed, as such, yourself from a sense of superiority, in order to show that your enemy was of too little consequence than that he could ofifend you; or to make a show of your own virtue in not carrying a grudge, and so to rid yourself of him and to be at peace with yourself. Such forgiveness, however, has nothing in common with real forgiveness, except appearance and name. What the Our Father means on the other hand is forgiveness from love, which is so warm, honest and real as to make you feel: if God will so forgive me I am saved. For then it is God himself who has quickened this love in my heart, who from his own love has made this love to forgive flow into my soul, and who in my forgiving of my enemy makes me to know his eternal, compassionate and unfathomable love for

you have done

this

me, who was once myself his enemy, but now his child.

At J;he sound of the Apostolic word: "He that loveth not knoweth not God," the conscience as a rule falls asleep with self-satisfaction. What man is there who loves nothing and no one. Even robbers have been known to love an animal, a child or wife at great sacrifice of self. But what 221

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