Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/77

Rh the text to cultivate the temper and spirit of mutual forbearance and forgiveness. "Forbearing one another and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." This exhortation, you perceive, is addressed to professing Christians. It supposes that the spirit of resentment may be carried to a criminal extent even among them, thus giving occasion among themselves for the exercise of the conciliatory temper recommended in the text.

To injure a person, is unlawfully to take or withhold from him that to which he has a just claim. To deprive one of life, liberty, or his personal or real estate, which he has not forfeited by crime, is the grossest violation of this principle. No one, we presume, can consistently bear the Christian's name, who is guilty in either of these respects. But there are other respects in which we may injure