In our text, we are called upon to forgive one another, as God has forgiven us.  In examining this point, we are to be guided by what he has revealed.  The question here arises, how many does God command us to forgive?  He commands us to forgive all, even our enemies.  This then must be forgiving them as he does.  He therefore forgives all.  He commands us to bless them that curse us, and to pray for them that despitefully use us, and persecute us, that we may be the children of our Father in heaven.  Does God command us to do more than he is willing to do himself?  No, he lives up to his own command.  If God requires us to forgive, even as he does, and then commands us to love and forgive all, then he loves, and forgives all, otherwise he would violate his own command; and then there would be no resemblance between his forgiveness and ours.  Even as God, for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you, so ought ye also to forgive one another.

Would you forgive all, and bring them home to glory?  Yes.  Will God?  No, says the objector, he will not forgive his enemies, but his friends only.  Then you must not forgive all.  Do you ask why not?  Because you are to forgive, even as God.  He is the standard you are to imitate.  If you forgive more than God, you are better than he.  He cannot command you to do different from himself.  If God requires you to love and forgive all, while he himself will forgive only a part, then God acts contrary to his own command.  We are exhorted in the text to be kind, tender-hearted and forgiving even as he is.  Do your kindness, tenderness, and forgiveness extend to all, and desire the happiness of the universe?  Yes.  Then also does that of God, or else you are, in every sense of the word, better than he.  You differ from, instead of imitating God.  If so, you are doing wrong, because you are violating the text.  He commands you to be kind, tender, and forgiving only as he is;—­and you contend that his kindness, tenderness and forgiveness, extend to a part only, and that all the rest he will torture world without end.

But, says the objector, God is now kind, tender, forgiving, and merciful to all; but he will not be so, when they enter eternity, for “the doors of mercy will then be shut.”  How do you know that—­who told you so?  Will God change in some future day?  If he change, he will not be the same being, he is now.  I thought, he was the same yesterday, today, and forever, without variableness or even the shadow of turning.  I thought he was the same Jehovah in all worlds.  Do you intend to make him kind, tender, and forgiving here, but unkind, unforgiving, and hard-hearted to a part of his offspring hereafter?  If you intend to change both the nature and character of the Almighty in the future world, then you and myself are done arguing.  That doctrine is, certainly in a pitiful condition, which drives its advocate to the necessity of changing the Almighty wholly into