But if you have ever by the sweet spirit of Christ so mastered your natural impulse as to return good for evil lovingly and whole-heartedly, and if you have seen the regenerating effect in the beautiful subjugation of your foe and his transformation into a friend, it is not necessary to say much of the reward which God has in store for you. Do you not already possess it? Yet the reward is certainly greater than you are able at once to apprehend. For what a secret is this which you possess, the secret of turning even the malignity of foes into the sweetest affection, the secret which lay in the heart of God as the spring and the means of man's redemption.[603] The highest reward that God can give to His creatures is to make them partakers of His nature as He has made them in His own image. When we share in a Divine attribute we enter so far into the Divine bliss; and in proportion as this attribute seems removed from our common human nature, our spirit must exult to find that it has been really appropriated. What further reward, then, can he who avenges not himself desire? The pulse of the Divine heart beats in him; the tides of the Divine life flow through him. He is like God--God who opposes to man's ingratitude the ocean of His pardoning love; he is conscious of that which is the fountain of joy in the Divine Being; surely a man must be satisfied when he awakes in God's likeness! And that satisfaction comes to every one who has heaped coals of fire on his enemy's head by feeding him in his hunger, and giving him water when athirst. Say not, "I will do so to him as he has done to me, I will render to the man according to his work." Love your enemies; pray for them which despitefully use you. FOOTNOTES: [596] Psalm cxl. 9, 10. [597] Jer. xviii. 23. [598] Prov. xvii. 5_b_. [599] _Paradise Lost_, ix., 171. [600] Burke said of Pitt after his fall, that the manner in which he made his own justification, without impeaching the conduct of his colleagues or taking any measure that might seem to arise from disgust or opposition, set a seal upon his character. (Lecky, "England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. iii., 61.) [601] See Rom. xii. 20. [602] Matt. xviii. 35. [603] _Cf._ the proverb, "When a man's ways please the Lord He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him" (Prov. xvi. 7). XXV. _THE KING._ "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the glory of _kings_ is to search out a matter. The heaven for height and the earth for depth, and the heart of _kings_ is unsearchable. Take away the dross from the silver, and there cometh forth a vessel for the finer; Take away the wicked from before the _king_, and his throne shall be established in righteousness. Put not thyself forward in the presence of the _king_, and stand not in the presence of great men: