Page:Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.djvu/89

 Lord never acts arbitrarily: he never says, "I will," and "I won't," without there being a principle of truth, a law of Divine order, on which the "will" or "will not" is founded. And why can he not forgive our trespasses, unless we forgive the trespasses of others? If we recur to the true meaning of forgiveness, as before explained, the answer will be clear. It was shown that the forgiveness or remission of sins, means, in fact, the removal of evils. Now, evils cannot be removed by the Lord, so long as man clings to them, cherishes them, and will not give them up. When we indulge feelings of anger, revenge, ill-will towards those who we think have injured us, or who we consider have been guilty of trespasses against us, we are cherishing evils in our hearts, deep and horrid evils—for there are few evils deeper or more infernal than a spirit of retaliation and revenge. And while we so cherish these evils, they cannot be removed: in fact, we do not wish them removed, we are not willing to have them removed: we fondle and caress this viper, and hug it to our bosoms, till it stings us to death: we cherish and brood over our wrongs, real or imagined, and form plans of revenge, little thinking that, in so doing, we are gathering around us infernals of the deepest dye, and letting ourselves down amongst the societies of hell. But truly we are so doing. Every evil thought or passion indulged, connects man with infernal spirits, and the longer it is indulged the more closely is he conjoined with them, till at length it becomes difficult to extricate himself from their grasp; and if he does not by a violent effort tear