This experience, if at all intense, has a profound effect on character; he that knows he has been forgiven much will love much, and his gratitude towards the Giver of all mercy will spontaneously show itself in mercy towards other men. Others will wrong him and disappoint him often, but, remembering his own imperfections, he will want to judge them gently and never to despair of helping them; to him it seems as if “they know not what they do.” But this is the very disposition required of us in the prayer “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” and the question must surely be rising in the reader’s mind, What relation can possibly be discovered between these high thoughts and the Jewish proverbs? This surprisingly intimate relation--that whilst the manifestation of perfect forgiveness in Christ’s own Person made His Prayer a new power in the world, the thought in this petition was not new; it goes back to these words of Ben Sirach, _He that taketh vengeance on his neighbour will meet vengeance from the Lord, and his sins will surely be confirmed. Forgive thy neighbour the hurt that he hath done thee, and then shall thy sins be pardoned when thou prayest_ (E. 28^{1, 2})! Who dares withhold his approval from the condition in the abstract? If we are Christians at all, our conscience must welcome its eternal justice, recognising that we can ask no greater mercy to be extended us by God. And so we are wont to repeat the Prayer willingly without reservations or misgivings ... just until the day come when “our neighbour” has gotten him a name and we lie dazed and bleeding from the hurt that he hath dealt us. _That_ is the moment for which these words were spoken--_Let not mercy and truth forsake thee, bind them upon thy neck_ (Pr. 3^{3}). Know that--_By mercy and truth iniquity is purged away, and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil_ (Pr. 16^{6}). By the time a man has schooled himself to put those exhortations into practice, he will be in no danger of treating forgiveness lightly: true forgiveness is conditioned by the Moral Law, is no futile shutting-of-the-eyes to uneradicated sin, and may therefore call for faithfulness unto death and necessitate the greatest sacrifice earth knows, even the Cross of Christ.