“It is a duty to forgive everyone that is indebted to us, under pain of the Divine condemnation… for an unforgiving spirit cannot possibly be a happy one.”

~ The Reverend William H. Sutherland, Ohio frontier circuit preacher | DDiv | my great-grandfather

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Good thought, eh?  I stumbled upon it when I was doing some random genealogical research.

[Amazing what a person can find online.]

The quote you see above comes from Charles C. Cole’s Lion of the Forest: James B. Finley, Frontier Reformer, a biography about Finley.  Like Finley, my great-grandfather was a frontier circuit preacher who travelled via horse or on foot to spread the word of God.  It was a difficult life and the pay was nominal.  Most men did the job for a few years and then moved onto something less strenuous, less religious.

However, my great-grandfather toughed it out and eventually went on to earn an advanced degree in theology.  Throughout his subsequent career as a reverend he rose within the ranks of the Methodist Episcopal Church* to become an elder of some sort.  [More research needed.]  But before he became someone of note within the church, he ruffled a few feathers out there on the circuit.

[Specifically, the feathers of Finley.]

As I understand it, Finley and my great-grandfather did not agree on what constituted Christian forgiveness.  Finley believed that a Christian could not forgive someone unless that someone had first repented.

My great-grandfather took a more progressive view and said that forgiveness was not dependent upon someone else repenting, but was an action that a good Christian took as a matter of course.  The responsibility to forgive was the appropriate behavior of the forgiver, regardless of what the person requiring forgiveness did– or did not do.

[You still with me here?]

I like learning that my great-grandfather, who is affectionately known within this house as The Old Coot, was not as coot-ish as I imagined him to be.  My take-away from this is that he had a good heart, and apparently the sense to know what to worry about and what to let go of.

Rather modern thinking, for an old-time religious fellow.  I’m impressed.

* In 1844 there was a schism within the U.S.A. Methodist church resulting in the denomination dividing into two factions: the Methodist Episcopal Church condemned slavery;  the Southern Methodist Church allowed slavery.  This schism foreshadowed the Civil War by about 20 years.