One comes to know, for instance, of an act of his neighbor's which is
really one of treachery and betrayal of trust. Circumstances arise in
which he could put his finger upon the evidential chain revealing this
lapse from integrity. Shall he do it? Perhaps in the spiritual vista
three ways open to him. The one would be to reveal the affair publicly;
but this is crude if not cruel, and to touch the spring that
precipitates discord and controversy is hardly less disastrous than to
precipitate war. Discord only engenders evil, and it never produces good
results. Evil things must, of course, be resisted, and combat inevitably
results,--but discord for the sake of revealing some one's inadvertences
is invariably disastrous as well as morally wrong. Then there is the
method of seeking the person directly, and laying before him his error,
thus giving him the opportunity of any extenuating explanation, and
protecting his reputation in the genuineness of true friendship, from
the world. And this course is often the wisest as well as the noblest,
and really requires more heroism than the former one. Yet, after these
there is still another, and it is absolutely the most potent, the most
successful in its results, the most truly uplifting for all concerned.
Has one been wronged, or misrepresented, or in any way injured? Let him
commit it all, unreservedly, to the very immediate, the very real, the
infinitely potent power of the divine world. Let him, as his own form of
personal renunciation, absolutely forgive whatever annoyance or injury
he has received, and let him pray, not for any vengeance against the
wrong-doer, but that the Divine Love and Light would so envelop and
direct the one who has erred as to enable him to free his own spirit
from whatever fault he had been led into, and to rise into such regions
of spiritual life that never again would he repeat it. How beautiful is
the counsel given by Whittier:--
"My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong.
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level, and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrong-doer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling
I forgave!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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