C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Reconciliation
Forget, forgive; conclude, and be agreed.
Let not the sun go down upon your wrath!
God pardons like a mother who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.
How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there, and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light!
Every relation to mankind, of hate or scorn or neglect, is full of vexation and torment.
If you bethink yourself of any crime, unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace, solicit for it straight.
It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured.
It is much safer to reconcile an enemy than to conquer him; victory may deprive him of his poison, but reconciliation of his will.
Oh, my dear friends,—you who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year to year, meaning to clear them up some day,—if you only could know and see and feel that the time is short, how it would break the spell! How you would go instantly and do the thing which you might never have another chance to do!
To be a finite being is no crime, and to be the Infinite is not to be a creditor. As man was not consulted he does not find himself a party in a bargain, but a child in the household of love. Reconciliation, therefore, is not the consequence of paying a debt, or procuring atonement for an injury, but an organic process of the human life.
Wherein is it possible for us, wicked and impious creatures, to be justified, except in the only Son of God? O sweet reconciliation! O untraceable ministry! O unlooked-for blessing! that the wickedness of many should be hidden in one godly and righteous man, and the righteousness of one justify a host of sinners!