Revenge says, "I will make it worse for you than you have made it for me." Sentimentalism says: "Let the poor victim of circumstances go; send him a rosewater spray and an embroidered text and he won't do it again." But love, she of the clear eye and the steady hold, takes him by the hand in silence, lifts him up, and leads him, perhaps by paths of pain, to his better self. Love puts his sins behind her back and teaches him to face her way. Love lets the wrong teach its own lesson, bear its own fruit. And in her labour for him she forgets her own pain and loss caused by his offense. The best way to forgive a burglar would not be to let him out of jail, but to teach him the laws of property, to train him in the self-respect that would lead to industry, to make him a brother and a fellow worker among men instead of an outcast and a social parasite. The test of any forgiveness is its helpfulness, the manner in which it wipes out the enmity of the victim and turns the guilty into better ways. Many say, I can forgive, but I cannot forget. No one asks you to forget; but you cannot fully forgive unless you will forego the feeling of enmity and the desire for revenge. You cannot make any one forget that which he has once known; but you can substitute helpfulness for hatred and restoration for revenge. True love simply discounts the past as a ground for present action; it refuses to determine its personal bearing and deeds in to-day by the other's ill deeds of yesterday. All we are asked to do is to forgive as we are forgiven. Our hope is that when we have fallen our friends will not lose their faith in us nor entirely forsake us, that they will give us another chance; not that they will shield us from the fruitage of our follies and our falseness, but that they will not shut us off forever from their faces. So far from forgiveness being the weakness of the thoughtless, it is the helpfulness of the strong and the wise. To forgive a man will not mean to escape from the trouble of securing his punishment; it will not mean the weak complaisance of indolent tolerance. It will mean thought for his weakness, taking up his burden, doing the brother's part for him, the endeavour to do for him what we would like to have the Father of us all do for us all. XIV Men and Mammon _Riches and Righteousness_ _Religion and Business_ _The Moral End of Money-Making_ _Better a sweet failure than a sour success._ _An itching palm causes a crook in the fingers._ _Many a moral squint comes from a money monocle._ _The fortunate people are those who believe they are._ _We are always building bridges for things with wings._ _The best way to wipe out a friendship is to sponge on it._ _Many a man thinks he is pious when he is only petrified._ _A little plain honesty is worth untold professional holiness._ _The religion that runs to fever usually evens up with chills._ _Nothing is easier than being benevolent with other people's money._ XIV