ABSTRACT
It is very remarkable to notice the importance which Christ attached to the forgiveness of personal injury and insult. He was quite explicit in declaring that unless we forgive our persecutors and ill-users, God will not forgive us. He embodied this principle in the prayer which He bade us use ; so that whenever we ask for Divine forgiveness we, by the words we employ, commit ourselves to the forgiveness, the repeated forgiveness, the seventy times seven repeated forgiveness, of those who trespass against us. We do not always realise how new this conception was, and is. The law recognised the principle “ an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, a principle which transformed the old exactness of retributive justice. Lady Glenconner records the remark of her little child on this subject, which must never be forgotten. She was telling him of the punishment dealt out before Christ came, and of the adage just mentioned, and he broke in and said : “ Oh yes, I know the old religion said a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye, but the new religion said ‘ a kiss for a tooth and a hug for an eye.’ ” The child understood ; but in the corrupted currents of the world the clear, sweet law of Christ is often lost or blurred. It was that saying of His on the Cross, so amazing in its pity and love : “ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” that led to the complete conversion of the Japanese criminal, Tokichi Ishii. His autobiography, written in prison, has been given to the world by Caroline Macdonald, the lady who visited him and left him the Gospel which produced the result. This man had spent his whole life in crime, and yet he had the chivalry to give 157himself up to justice when another man was being sentenced for the murder which he had committed. He lay in the prison at Tokyo condemned. His first and only contact with Christianity was the visit of the two ladies who left that little Gospel behind them. In sheer ennui he read it : coming to the account of the crucifixion, he was arrested ; but those words of Jesus, “ Father, forgive them,” stirred him to the depth of his soul. He seemed to recognise at once who it was who said this. He found Christ there in the prison, and he wrote this very wonderful narrative of what Christ meant to him before he died. 1
