When John Wesley was in Georgia, he was dining one day with Gov. Oglethorpe. A negro waiter at the table committing a careless blunder, the governor said to his guest: "See this good-for-nothing servant; he is always doing wrong, though he knows that I never forgive." "Does your Excellency never forgive?" replied Mr. Wesley; "then it is to be hoped that your Excellency never does wrong." A beautiful reproof; and the more effectual, no doubt, from its gentleness. Those who need forgiveness for their own faults, certainly ought to forgive the faults of others. "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven;" but "he shall have judgment without mercy, who hath showed no mercy." This is the lesson taught us in the gospel for the day,[2] which I shall endeavor to unfold and apply. For moral elevation, the passage is very remarkable. Found in some old Greek or Roman volume--in some parchment dug up from Herculaneum or Pompeii--on some tablet or cylinder discovered amidst the _débris_ of Nineveh or Babylon--it would have awakened the wonder of the world, and men would never have been weary of praising its transcendent charity. The Jewish rabbis taught that a man might forgive an injury a second or even a third time, but never a fourth. When St. Peter asked--"How oft shall my brother trespass against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?" he doubled the rabbinical measure of mercy, doubtless imagining that he had reached the ultimate limit, and that his Divine Master even could require no more. How must he and his brethren have been astonished when Jesus answered: "I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, until seventy times seven!" What! four hundred and ninety times? But Jesus puts a definite number for an indefinite. "Count not your acts of clemency," he seems to say; "be your forgiveness of a brother as free as the air you breathe or the light you enjoy--your love as unlimited as the illimitable heaven above you." Then he puts the matter strongly before them in a parable: