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Fraudulent workmanship cheats two people, both the person paying good money for poor work, and the workman who is undermining his own character by his bad workmanship. Every one who cheats, cheats himself most, for it all reacts upon his character. Jesus must have thought this ideal of life very important, for he makes it the climax of his Sermon on the Mount:

Why do you call me "Master, Master," and not do what I tell you? Every one who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you whom he is like. He is like a house-builder who digs down deep and lays his foundation on solid rock. And when the flood comes, the torrent bursts against that house, but is not mighty enough to shake it, for it is founded on rock. But he who hears, yet does not practice, is like a man building a house right on the soil with no foundation, against which the torrent bursts and wrecks it immediately, and awful is the destruction of that house.-Luke 6:46-.

An honest piece of work has real moral value. As the tiny polyps in the south seas build their very bodies into the coral reefs, so every workman builds his life into his work and his workmanship into his character. Our manual labor would take on new meaning for us if we could only imagine the Carpenter of Nazareth serving as our daily inspector. If you should submit to him your finished work each day, seeking his expert scrutiny and hoping for his official "O.K." on what you have done― just what effect would this have on the kind of work you do? It would certainly tend to make you do honest work every hour of the day. It would help to make your whole life sincere, genuine to the core. Why not try it?

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Would you rather be thought better than you really are, or be better than folks think? Why?

2. Why is it foolish to sham and make pretenses? Discuss the way this worked out in the case of the young gambler who pretended to be pious. What do you think of that case of the defaulting treasurer? Explain the cathedral illustration.

3. What do you think of Jesus' picture of the praying Pharisee? What is cant? How do you feel when you hear people talk that way? Why is it so important to be sincere in our motives when we worship? 4. How does the quality of our workmanship affect our character? Did you ever do a tricky piece of work and pretend it was good workmanship? If so, how did you feel about it? How would you like to be a "cut-rate druggist" and sell adulterated drugs? 5. If you knew your daily work was to be scrutinized by an inspector named Jesus of Nazareth, what sort of work would you be likely to do?

FOR FURTHER STUDY AND HONOR WORK

6. What did Jesus mean when he said, "I am the truth"? Look up the passages in which he uses the word "truth," and discover, if you can, the great reverence he had for truth. How can you explain this?

7. Try to explain Jesus' bitter attack on the scribes and Pharisees. Why did he consider them so wicked? Look up the origin of the word "hypocrite," and then explain why such a character must have been hateful to Jesus.

8. Study the beautiful way in which Jesus used the metaphor of light as a symbol of sincerity. Look into Luke 11:34 and other references to light in the gospels mentioned in your concordance. Then write what you think Jesus thought about genuineness as a quality of character.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FORGIVING SPIRIT

THIS matter of forgiveness is deeply involved in the problem of our personal life. So long as we need to be forgiven, conscience will not let us alone or give us peace. The feelings of guilt and remorse kill the very joy of life. In order to be happy, to see beauty in the sunlight, to work efficiently, or even to play with a free spirit, we must have a clear conscience.

Do you remember how you felt after you had injured someone? Perhaps you had won a prize in school, but had won it by fraud, cheating in examination. Your friend who stood next really deserved that prize, and you knew it. Do you remember the burden on your mind for days after? It felt like a load of lead. You could hardly take a deep breath comfortably. And by and by you got so self-conscious about it, you imagined people had learned of your guilt and were looking at you askance, disgusted with your meanness. Finally you could stand it no longer. You went and confessed your guilt to your friend and the teacher, to get that load off your mind and find peace of conscience again. You were ashamed to do it, and it took real moral courage, but it paid. Your friends honored you for it and forgave you promptly; and it brought you peace and self-respect again. You felt that God too had forgiven you, as he could not until you had confessed.

The importance of forgiveness.-Forgiving and being forgiven are strangely important in the Christian life. We find the forgiving spirit prominent among the ideals of Jesus, and we find him relieving burdened con

sciences even before he relieved physical pain. Once a man helpless with paralysis was brought by four friends to Jesus for healing. The house in which Jesus was teaching was so crowded that they could not force their way through the multitude, so they broke through the tiled roof and let their sick friend down by ropes. Then before Jesus paid any attention to his paralysis, he said to the sick man, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Whether or not his illness was caused by a dissolute life, Jesus saw at once that the man felt the burden of unforgiven sin and that what he needed first was forgiveness. His penitence must have been evident, or Jesus would not have been so sure that God had forgiven him.

At another time a woman with a sinful past came to express her gratitude to Jesus for his kindness to her, and wept bitter tears as she anointed his travel-weary feet with expensive ointment. Seeing her deep penitence, he said,

Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved deeply; but he loves little to whom little is forgiven.-Luke 7:47.

It is clear that Jesus did not think of forgiveness as merely canceling the punishment for sin. Real forgiveness means getting rid of the sin itself, for sin is its own worst punishment. The word Jesus used for forgive means "to remit," to send away the sin. In his words to this repentant woman, he seems to say that her great love for him had burned out the dross in her life and had driven away her sin by destroying the power of temptation. His pure and noble life had been a revelation to her and had a wonderful effect on her character. Thus she came to hate her sin. Then confession was easy, and forgiveness and peace of conscience were assured her.

Forgive if you would be forgiven.-Some people even God cannot forgive the people who keep on sinning, who are not sorry enough to stop. Jesus went even farther than this and taught a still higher ideal. The test of a righteous life is the forgiving spirit. Unless we forgive others, how can we hope that God will forgive us? We acknowledge this every time we say in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." If we do not show a forgiving spirit, but remember every fancied slight and nurse our grudges, it shows we are not at all humble and sincere in our sorrow for our own shortcomings, and therefore do not deserve God's forgiveness. People who realize their own weaknesses are charitable with other folks.

To illustrate this, Jesus told the story of the servant who owed his king the enormous debt of ten million dollars and was unable to pay it. So the king seized him and ordered him sold into slavery, also his wife and children and all his property, to pay that great debt. But when the man begged hard, the king became wonderfully lenient and finally canceled the entire debt, out of the goodness of his heart. Then instead of being humbly grateful, this forgiven man soon forgot what it meant to forgive, and heartlessly imprisoned a poor fellow servant who owed him a little debt of only about seventeen dollars. Though the poor wretch begged piteously, he showed him no pity. This exhibition of hard-heartedness so angered the king that he punished the first servant severely. He took back his forgiveness, for the man showed he did not deserve it. Jesus ends the story with this clear-cut warning:

So also will my heavenly Father deal with you, unless each one of you cordially forgives his erring brother.-Matthew 18: 35.

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