mercy

133:1.1A very in­ter­est­ing in­ci­dent oc­curred one af­ter­noon by the road­side as they neared Tar­en­tum. They ob­served a rough and bul­ly­ing youth bru­tally at­tack­ing a smaller lad. Je­sus has­tened to the as­sis­tance of the as­saulted youth, and when he had res­cued him, he tightly held on to the of­fender un­til the smaller lad had made his es­cape. The mo­ment Je­sus re­leased the lit­tle bully, Ga­nid pounced upon the boy and be­gan soundly to thrash him, and to Ga­nid’s as­ton­ish­ment Je­sus promptly in­ter­fered. Af­ter he had re­strained Ga­nid and per­mit­ted the fright­ened boy to es­cape, the young man, as soon as he got his breath, ex­cit­edly ex­claimed: “I can­not un­der­stand you, Teacher. If mercy re­quires that you res­cue the smaller lad, does not jus­tice de­mand the pun­ish­ment of the larger and of­fend­ing youth?” In an­swer­ing, Je­sus said:

133:1.2“Ga­nid, it is true, you do not un­der­stand. Mercy min­istry is al­ways the work of the in­di­vid­ual, but jus­tice pun­ish­ment is the func­tion of the so­cial, gov­ern­men­tal, or uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tive groups. As an in­di­vid­ual I am be­holden to show mercy; I must go to the res­cue of the as­saulted lad, and in all con­sis­tency I may em­ploy suf­fi­cient force to re­strain the ag­gres­sor. And that is just what I did. I achieved the de­liv­er­ance of the as­saulted lad; that was the end of mercy min­istry. Then I forcibly de­tained the ag­gres­sor a suf­fi­cient length of time to en­able the weaker party to the dis­pute to make his es­cape, af­ter which I with­drew from the af­fair. I did not pro­ceed to sit in judg­ment on the ag­gres­sor, thus to pass upon his mo­tive—to ad­ju­di­cate all that en­tered into his at­tack upon his fel­low—and then un­der­take to ex­e­cute the pun­ish­ment which my mind might dic­tate as just rec­om­pense for his wrong­do­ing. Ga­nid, mercy may be lav­ish, but jus­tice is pre­cise. Can­not you dis­cern that no two per­sons are likely to agree as to the pun­ish­ment which would sat­isfy the de­mands of jus­tice? One would im­pose forty lashes, an­other twenty, while still an­other would ad­vise soli­tary con­fine­ment as a just pun­ish­ment. Can you not see that on this world such re­spon­si­bil­i­ties had bet­ter rest upon the group or be ad­min­is­tered by cho­sen rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the group? In the uni­verse, judg­ment is vested in those who fully know the an­tecedents of all wrong­do­ing as well as its mo­ti­va­tion. In civ­i­lized so­ci­ety and in an or­ga­nized uni­verse the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice pre­sup­poses the pass­ing of just sen­tence con­se­quent upon fair judg­ment, and such pre­rog­a­tives are vested in the ju­ridi­cal groups of the worlds and in the all-know­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors of the higher uni­verses of all cre­ation.”

133:1.3For days they talked about this prob­lem of man­i­fest­ing mercy and ad­min­is­ter­ing jus­tice. And Ga­nid, at least to some ex­tent, un­der­stood why Je­sus would not en­gage in per­sonal com­bat. But Ga­nid asked one last ques­tion, to which he never re­ceived a fully sat­is­fac­tory an­swer; and that ques­tion was: “But, Teacher, if a stronger and ill-tem­pered crea­ture should at­tack you and threaten to de­stroy you, what would you do? Would you make no ef­fort to de­fend your­self?” Al­though Je­sus could not fully and sat­is­fac­to­rily an­swer the lad’s ques­tion, inas­much as he was not will­ing to dis­close to him that he (Je­sus) was liv­ing on earth as the ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther’s love to an on­look­ing uni­verse, he did say this much:

133:1.4“Ga­nid, I can well un­der­stand how some of these prob­lems per­plex you, and I will en­deavor to an­swer your ques­tion. First, in all at­tacks which might be made upon my per­son, I would de­ter­mine whether or not the ag­gres­sor was a son of God—my brother in the flesh—and if I thought such a crea­ture did not pos­sess moral judg­ment and spir­i­tual rea­son, I would un­hesi­tat­ingly de­fend my­self to the full ca­pac­ity of my pow­ers of re­sis­tance, re­gard­less of con­se­quences to the at­tacker. But I would not thus as­sault a fel­low man of son­ship sta­tus, even in self-de­fense. That is, I would not pun­ish him in ad­vance and with­out judg­ment for his as­sault upon me. I would by ev­ery pos­si­ble ar­ti­fice seek to pre­vent and dis­suade him from mak­ing such an at­tack and to mit­i­gate it in case of my fail­ure to abort it. Ga­nid, I have ab­so­lute con­fi­dence in my heav­enly Fa­ther’s over­care; I am con­se­crated to do­ing the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. I do not be­lieve that real harm can be­fall me; I do not be­lieve that my life­work can re­ally be jeop­ar­dized by any­thing my en­e­mies might wish to visit upon me, and surely we have no vi­o­lence to fear from our friends. I am ab­so­lutely as­sured that the en­tire uni­verse is friendly to me—this all-pow­er­ful truth I in­sist on be­liev­ing with a whole­hearted trust in spite of all ap­pear­ances to the con­trary.”

133:1.5But Ga­nid was not fully sat­is­fied. Many times they talked over these mat­ters, and Je­sus told him some of his boy­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and also about Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son. On learn­ing how Ja­cob ap­pointed him­self to de­fend Je­sus, Ga­nid said: “Oh, I be­gin to see! In the first place very sel­dom would any nor­mal hu­man be­ing want to at­tack such a kindly per­son as you, and even if any­one should be so un­think­ing as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to be near at hand some other mor­tal who will fly to your as­sis­tance, even as you al­ways go to the res­cue of any per­son you ob­serve to be in dis­tress. In my heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had been Ja­cob, I would have en­joyed pun­ish­ing those rude fel­lows who pre­sumed to at­tack you just be­cause they thought you would not de­fend your­self. I pre­sume you are fairly safe in your jour­ney through life since you spend much of your time help­ing oth­ers and min­is­ter­ing to your fel­lows in dis­tress—well, most likely there’ll al­ways be some­one on hand to de­fend you.” And Je­sus replied: “That test has not yet come, Ga­nid, and when it does, we will have to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.” And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to say on this dif­fi­cult sub­ject of self-de­fense and non­re­sis­tance. On an­other oc­ca­sion he did draw from Je­sus the opin­ion that or­ga­nized so­ci­ety had ev­ery right to em­ploy force in the ex­e­cu­tion of its just man­dates.

54:5.54. While wrong­do­ing is al­ways dele­te­ri­ous to a fam­ily, wis­dom and love ad­mon­ish the up­right chil­dren to bear with an erring brother dur­ing the time granted by the af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther in which the sin­ner may see the er­ror of his way and em­brace sal­va­tion.

2:4.2God is in­her­ently kind, nat­u­rally com­pas­sion­ate, and ev­er­last­ingly mer­ci­ful. And never is it nec­es­sary that any in­flu­ence be brought to bear upon the Fa­ther to call forth his lov­ing-kind­ness. The crea­ture’s need is wholly suf­fi­cient to in­sure the full flow of the Fa­ther’s ten­der mer­cies and his sav­ing grace. Since God knows all about his chil­dren, it is easy for him to for­give. The bet­ter man un­der­stands his neigh­bor, the eas­ier it will be to for­give him, even to love him.

2:4.4Mercy is the nat­u­ral and in­ev­i­ta­ble off­spring of good­ness and love. The good na­ture of a lov­ing Fa­ther could not pos­si­bly with­hold the wise min­istry of mercy to each mem­ber of ev­ery group of his uni­verse chil­dren. Eter­nal jus­tice and di­vine mercy to­gether con­sti­tute what in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence would be called fair­ness.

• divinity correlated in personality

0:1.17Di­vin­ity is crea­ture com­pre­hen­si­ble as truth, beauty, and good­ness; cor­re­lated in per­son­al­ity as love, mercy, and min­istry; dis­closed on im­per­sonal lev­els as jus­tice, power, and sov­er­eignty.

• justice tempered by wisdom and perfection of knowledge

2:3.2How fu­tile to make puerile ap­peals to such a God to mod­ify his change­less de­crees so that we can avoid the just con­se­quences of the op­er­a­tion of his wise nat­u­ral laws and righ­teous spir­i­tual man­dates! “Be not de­ceived; God is not mocked, for what­so­ever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the jus­tice of reap­ing the har­vest of wrong­do­ing, this di­vine jus­tice is al­ways tem­pered with mercy. In­fi­nite wis­dom is the eter­nal ar­biter which de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of jus­tice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given cir­cum­stance. The great­est pun­ish­ment (in re­al­ity an in­ev­i­ta­ble con­se­quence) for wrong­do­ing and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the gov­ern­ment of God is loss of ex­is­tence as an in­di­vid­ual sub­ject of that gov­ern­ment. The fi­nal re­sult of whole­hearted sin is an­ni­hi­la­tion. In the last anal­y­sis, such sin-iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als have de­stroyed them­selves by be­com­ing wholly un­real through their em­brace of in­iq­uity. The fac­tual dis­ap­pear­ance of such a crea­ture is, how­ever, al­ways de­layed un­til the or­dained or­der of jus­tice cur­rent in that uni­verse has been fully com­plied with.

• justice tempered by wisdom and perfection of knowledge

2:4.1Mercy is sim­ply jus­tice tem­pered by that wis­dom which grows out of per­fec­tion of knowl­edge and the full rec­og­ni­tion of the nat­u­ral weak­nesses and en­vi­ron­men­tal hand­i­caps of fi­nite crea­tures. “Our God is full of com­pas­sion, gra­cious, long-suf­fer­ing, and plen­teous in mercy.” There­fore “whoso­ever calls upon the Lord shall be saved,” “for he will abun­dantly par­don.” “The mercy of the Lord is from ev­er­last­ing to ev­er­last­ing”; yes, “his mercy en­dures for­ever.” “I am the Lord who ex­e­cutes lov­ing-kind­ness, judg­ment, and righ­teous­ness in the earth, for in these things I de­light.” “I do not af­flict will­ingly nor grieve the chil­dren of men,” for I am “the Fa­ther of mer­cies and the God of all com­fort.”

2:4.3Only the dis­cern­ment of in­fi­nite wis­dom en­ables a righ­teous God to min­is­ter jus­tice and mercy at the same time and in any given uni­verse sit­u­a­tion. The heav­enly Fa­ther is never torn by con­flict­ing at­ti­tudes to­wards his uni­verse chil­dren; God is never a vic­tim of at­ti­tu­di­nal an­tag­o­nisms. God’s all-know­ing­ness un­fail­ingly di­rects his free will in the choos­ing of that uni­verse con­duct which per­fectly, si­mul­ta­ne­ously, and equally sat­is­fies the de­mands of all his di­vine at­tri­butes and the in­fi­nite qual­i­ties of his eter­nal na­ture.

• justice of Supremacy adapted to evolving finite; not a contravention of justice

2:4.5Di­vine mercy rep­re­sents a fair­ness tech­nique of ad­just­ment be­tween the uni­verse lev­els of per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion. Mercy is the jus­tice of Su­prem­acy adapted to the sit­u­a­tions of the evolv­ing fi­nite, the righ­teous­ness of eter­nity mod­i­fied to meet the high­est in­ter­ests and uni­verse wel­fare of the chil­dren of time. Mercy is not a con­tra­ven­tion of jus­tice but rather an un­der­stand­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the de­mands of su­preme jus­tice as it is fairly ap­plied to the sub­or­di­nate spir­i­tual be­ings and to the ma­te­rial crea­tures of the evolv­ing uni­verses. Mercy is the jus­tice of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity wisely and lov­ingly vis­ited upon the man­i­fold in­tel­li­gences of the cre­ations of time and space as it is for­mu­lated by di­vine wis­dom and de­ter­mined by the all-know­ing mind and the sov­er­eign free will of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and all his as­so­ci­ated Cre­ators.

• applied love; inevitable offspring of goodness and love

6:3.5God is love, the Son is mercy. Mercy is ap­plied love, the Fa­ther’s love in ac­tion in the per­son of his Eter­nal Son. The love of this uni­ver­sal Son is like­wise uni­ver­sal. As love is com­pre­hended on a sex planet, the love of God is more com­pa­ra­ble to the love of a fa­ther, while the love of the Eter­nal Son is more like the af­fec­tion of a mother. Crude, in­deed, are such il­lus­tra­tions, but I em­ploy them in the hope of con­vey­ing to the hu­man mind the thought that there is a dif­fer­ence, not in di­vine con­tent but in qual­ity and tech­nique of ex­pres­sion, be­tween the love of the Fa­ther and the love of the Son.

• expression of righteousness in attitude of love

10:6.18Jus­tice is the col­lec­tive thought of righ­teous­ness; mercy is its per­sonal ex­pres­sion. Mercy is the at­ti­tude of love; pre­ci­sion char­ac­ter­izes the op­er­a­tion of law; di­vine judg­ment is the soul of fair­ness, ever con­form­ing to the jus­tice of the Trin­ity, ever ful­fill­ing the di­vine love of God. When fully per­ceived and com­pletely un­der­stood, the righ­teous jus­tice of the Trin­ity and the mer­ci­ful love of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther are co­in­ci­dent. But man has no such full un­der­stand­ing of di­vine jus­tice. Thus in the Trin­ity, as man would view it, the per­son­al­i­ties of Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit are ad­justed to co-or­di­nate min­istry of love and law in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verses of time.

• God’s attitude of love for each individual

12:7.1There is op­er­a­tive through­out all time and space and with re­gard to all re­al­ity of what­ever na­ture an in­ex­orable and im­per­sonal law which is equiv­a­lent to the func­tion of a cos­mic prov­i­dence. Mercy char­ac­ter­izes God’s at­ti­tude of love for the in­di­vid­ual; im­par­tial­ity mo­ti­vates God’s at­ti­tude to­ward the to­tal. The will of God does not nec­es­sar­ily pre­vail in the part—the heart of any one per­son­al­ity—but his will does ac­tu­ally rule the whole, the uni­verse of uni­verses.

• culmination of justice, fairness, and patience
• quality of growth

28:6.8The mercy re­flec­tors, with their ter­tiary as­so­ciates, en­gage in nu­mer­ous super­uni­verse min­istries, in­clud­ing the teach­ing of the as­cend­ing crea­tures. Among many other things the Sig­nif­i­cances of Ori­gins teach these as­cend­ers how to ap­ply spirit ethics, and fol­low­ing such train­ing, the Mem­o­ries of Mercy teach them how to be truly mer­ci­ful. While the spirit tech­niques of mercy min­istry are be­yond your con­cept, you should even now un­der­stand that mercy is a qual­ity of growth. You should re­al­ize that there is a great re­ward of per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion in be­ing first just, next fair, then pa­tient, then kind. And then, on that foun­da­tion, if you choose and have it in your heart, you can take the next step and re­ally show mercy; but you can­not ex­hibit mercy in and of it­self. These steps must be tra­versed; oth­er­wise there can be no gen­uine mercy. There may be pa­tron­age, con­de­scen­sion, or char­ity—even pity—but not mercy. True mercy comes only as the beau­ti­ful cli­max to these pre­ced­ing ad­juncts to group un­der­stand­ing, mu­tual ap­pre­ci­a­tion, fra­ter­nal fel­low­ship, spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, and di­vine har­mony.

• saving interval between seedtime and harvest

54:4.6Su­preme jus­tice can act in­stantly when not re­strained by di­vine mercy. But the min­istry of mercy to the chil­dren of time and space al­ways pro­vides for this time lag, this sav­ing in­ter­val be­tween seed­time and har­vest. If the seed sow­ing is good, this in­ter­val pro­vides for the test­ing and up­build­ing of char­ac­ter; if the seed sow­ing is evil, this mer­ci­ful de­lay pro­vides time for re­pen­tance and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion. This time de­lay in the ad­ju­di­ca­tion and ex­e­cu­tion of evil­do­ers is in­her­ent in the mercy min­istry of the seven super­uni­verses. This re­straint of jus­tice by mercy proves that God is love, and that such a God of love dom­i­nates the uni­verses and in mercy con­trols the fate and judg­ment of all his crea­tures.

• season of grace before full ripening of evil

131:3.5“No re­li­gion­ist may hope to at­tain the en­light­en­ment of im­mor­tal wis­dom who per­sists in be­ing sloth­ful, in­do­lent, fee­ble, idle, shame­less, and self­ish. But whoso is thought­ful, pru­dent, re­flec­tive, fer­vent, and earnest—even while he yet lives on earth—may at­tain the su­preme en­light­en­ment of the peace and lib­erty of di­vine wis­dom. Re­mem­ber, ev­ery act shall re­ceive its re­ward. Evil re­sults in sor­row and sin ends in pain. Joy and hap­pi­ness are the out­come of a good life. Even the evil­doer en­joys a sea­son of grace be­fore the time of the full ripen­ing of his evil deeds, but in­evitably there must come the full har­vest of evil-do­ing. Let no man think lightly of sin, say­ing in his heart: ‘The penalty of wrong­do­ing shall not come near me.’ What you do shall be done to you, in the judg­ment of wis­dom. In­jus­tice done to your fel­lows shall come back upon you. The crea­ture can­not es­cape the des­tiny of his deeds.

• leading to perfection

140:3.16“Your Fa­ther in heaven makes the sun to shine on the evil as well as upon the good; like­wise he sends rain on the just and the un­just. You are the sons of God; even more, you are now the am­bas­sadors of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. Be mer­ci­ful, even as God is mer­ci­ful, and in the eter­nal fu­ture of the king­dom you shall be per­fect, even as your heav­enly Fa­ther is per­fect.

140:3.17“You are com­mis­sioned to save men, not to judge them. At the end of your earth life you will all ex­pect mercy; there­fore do I re­quire of you dur­ing your mor­tal life that you show mercy to all of your breth­ren in the flesh. Make not the mis­take of try­ing to pluck a mote out of your brother’s eye when there is a beam in your own eye. Hav­ing first cast the beam out of your own eye, you can the bet­ter see to cast the mote out of your brother’s eye.

• spiritual deliverance from anger, desire for selfish power or revenge

141:3.8Je­sus por­trayed con­quest by sac­ri­fice, the sac­ri­fice of pride and self­ish­ness. By show­ing mercy, he meant to por­tray spir­i­tual de­liv­er­ance from all grudges, grievances, anger, and the lust for self­ish power and re­venge. And when he said, “Re­sist not evil,” he later ex­plained that he did not mean to con­done sin or to coun­sel fra­ter­nity with in­iq­uity. He in­tended the more to teach for­give­ness, to “re­sist not evil treat­ment of one’s per­son­al­ity, evil in­jury to one’s feel­ings of per­sonal dig­nity.”

6:3.2The Eter­nal Son is the great mercy min­is­ter to all cre­ation. Mercy is the essence of the Son’s spir­i­tual char­ac­ter. The man­dates of the Eter­nal Son, as they go forth over the spirit cir­cuits of the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter, are keyed in tones of mercy.

8:4.2God is love, the Son is mercy, the Spirit is min­istry—the min­istry of di­vine love and end­less mercy to all in­tel­li­gent cre­ation. The Spirit is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and the Son’s mercy; in him are they eter­nally united for uni­ver­sal ser­vice. The Spirit is love ap­plied to the crea­ture cre­ation, the com­bined love of the Fa­ther and the Son.

26:11.5The mor­tal crea­ture must find God. The Cre­ator Son never stops un­til he finds man—the low­est will crea­ture. Be­yond doubt, the Cre­ator Sons and their mor­tal chil­dren are prepar­ing for some fu­ture and un­known uni­verse ser­vice. Both tra­verse the gamut of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verse and so are ed­u­cated and trained for their eter­nal mis­sion. Through­out the uni­verses there is oc­cur­ring this unique blend­ing of the hu­man and the di­vine, the com­min­gling of crea­ture and Cre­ator. Un­think­ing mor­tals have re­ferred to the man­i­fes­ta­tion of di­vine mercy and ten­der­ness, es­pe­cially to­wards the weak and in be­half of the needy, as in­dica­tive of an an­thro­po­mor­phic God. What a mis­take! Rather should such man­i­fes­ta­tions of mercy and for­bear­ance by hu­man be­ings be taken as ev­i­dence that mor­tal man is in­dwelt by the spirit of the liv­ing God; that the crea­ture is, af­ter all, di­vin­ity mo­ti­vated.

54:6.3If an af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther of a large fam­ily chooses to show mercy to one of his chil­dren guilty of griev­ous wrong­do­ing, it may well be that the ex­ten­sion of mercy to this mis­be­hav­ing child will work a tem­po­rary hard­ship upon all the other and well-be­haved chil­dren. Such even­tu­al­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; such a risk is in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­al­ity sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing a lov­ing par­ent and of be­ing a mem­ber of a fam­ily group. Each mem­ber of a fam­ily prof­its by the righ­teous con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber; like­wise must each mem­ber suf­fer the im­me­di­ate time-con­se­quences of the mis­con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber. Fam­i­lies, groups, na­tions, races, worlds, sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, and uni­verses are re­la­tion­ships of as­so­ci­a­tion which pos­sess in­di­vid­u­al­ity; and there­fore does ev­ery mem­ber of any such group, large or small, reap the ben­e­fits and suf­fer the con­se­quences of the right­do­ing and the wrong­do­ing of all other mem­bers of the group con­cerned.

54:6.4But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suf­fer the evil con­se­quences of the sin of some mem­ber of your fam­ily, some fel­low cit­i­zen or fel­low mor­tal, even re­bel­lion in the sys­tem or else­where—no mat­ter what you may have to en­dure be­cause of the wrong­do­ing of your as­so­ciates, fel­lows, or su­pe­ri­ors—you may rest se­cure in the eter­nal as­sur­ance that such tribu­la­tions are tran­sient af­flic­tions. None of these fra­ter­nal con­se­quences of mis­be­hav­ior in the group can ever jeop­ar­dize your eter­nal prospects or in the least de­gree de­prive you of your di­vine right of Par­a­dise as­cen­sion and God at­tain­ment.

159:1.4Si­mon Pe­ter was the apos­tle in charge of the work­ers at Hip­pos, and when he heard Je­sus thus speak, he asked: “Lord, how of­ten shall my brother sin against me, and I for­give him? Un­til seven times?” And Je­sus an­swered Pe­ter: “Not only seven times but even to sev­enty times and seven. There­fore may the king­dom of heaven be likened to a cer­tain king who or­dered a fi­nan­cial reck­on­ing with his stew­ards. And when they had be­gun to con­duct this ex­am­i­na­tion of ac­counts, one of his chief re­tain­ers was brought be­fore him con­fess­ing that he owed his king ten thou­sand tal­ents. Now this of­fi­cer of the king’s court pleaded that hard times had come upon him, and that he did not have where­with to pay this obli­ga­tion. And so the king com­manded that his prop­erty be con­fis­cated, and that his chil­dren be sold to pay his debt. When this chief stew­ard heard this stern de­cree, he fell down on his face be­fore the king and im­plored him to have mercy and grant him more time, say­ing, ‘Lord, have a lit­tle more pa­tience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And when the king looked upon this neg­li­gent ser­vant and his fam­ily, he was moved with com­pas­sion. He or­dered that he should be re­leased, and that the loan should be wholly for­given.

159:1.5“And this chief stew­ard, hav­ing thus re­ceived mercy and for­give­ness at the hands of the king, went about his busi­ness, and find­ing one of his sub­or­di­nate stew­ards who owed him a mere hun­dred denarii, he laid hold upon him and, tak­ing him by the throat, said, ‘Pay me all you owe.’ And then did this fel­low stew­ard fall down be­fore the chief stew­ard and, be­seech­ing him, said: ‘Only have pa­tience with me, and I will pres­ently be able to pay you.’ But the chief stew­ard would not show mercy to his fel­low stew­ard but rather had him cast in prison un­til he should pay his debt. When his fel­low ser­vants saw what had hap­pened, they were so dis­tressed that they went and told their lord and mas­ter, the king. When the king heard of the do­ings of his chief stew­ard, he called this un­grate­ful and un­for­giv­ing man be­fore him and said: ‘You are a wicked and un­wor­thy stew­ard. When you sought for com­pas­sion, I freely for­gave you your en­tire debt. Why did you not also show mercy to your fel­low stew­ard, even as I showed mercy to you?’ And the king was so very an­gry that he de­liv­ered his un­grate­ful chief stew­ard to the jail­ers that they might hold him un­til he had paid all that was due. And even so shall my heav­enly Fa­ther show the more abun­dant mercy to those who freely show mercy to their fel­lows. How can you come to God ask­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for your short­com­ings when you are wont to chas­tise your breth­ren for be­ing guilty of these same hu­man frail­ties? I say to all of you: Freely you have re­ceived the good things of the king­dom; there­fore freely give to your fel­lows on earth.”

159:1.7[The use of the term sev­enty-seven as an il­lus­tra­tion of mercy and for­bear­ance was de­rived from the Scrip­tures re­fer­ring to Lamech’s ex­ul­ta­tion be­cause of the metal weapons of his son Tubal-Cain, who, com­par­ing these su­pe­rior in­stru­ments with those of his en­e­mies, ex­claimed: “If Cain, with no weapon in his hand, was avenged seven times, I shall now be avenged sev­enty-seven.”]

112:5.7If ever there is doubt as to the ad­vis­abil­ity of ad­vanc­ing a hu­man iden­tity to the man­sion worlds, the uni­verse gov­ern­ments in­vari­ably rule in the per­sonal in­ter­ests of that in­di­vid­ual; they un­hesi­tat­ingly ad­vance such a soul to the sta­tus of a tran­si­tional be­ing, while they con­tinue their ob­ser­va­tions of the emerg­ing mor­ontia in­tent and spir­i­tual pur­pose. Thus di­vine jus­tice is cer­tain of achieve­ment, and di­vine mercy is ac­corded fur­ther op­por­tu­nity for ex­tend­ing its min­istry.

112:5.8The gov­ern­ments of Or­von­ton and Neb­a­don do not claim ab­so­lute per­fec­tion for the de­tail work­ing of the uni­ver­sal plan of mor­tal reper­son­al­iza­tion, but they do claim to, and ac­tu­ally do, man­i­fest pa­tience, tol­er­ance, un­der­stand­ing, and mer­ci­ful sym­pa­thy. We had rather as­sume the risk of a sys­tem re­bel­lion than to court the haz­ard of de­priv­ing one strug­gling mor­tal from any evo­lu­tion­ary world of the eter­nal joy of pur­su­ing the as­cend­ing ca­reer.

132:5.13“And so, my friend, if you would be a faith­ful and just stew­ard of your large for­tune, be­fore God and in ser­vice to men, you must ap­prox­i­mately di­vide your wealth into these ten grand di­vi­sions, and then pro­ceed to ad­min­is­ter each por­tion in ac­cor­dance with the wise and hon­est in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the laws of jus­tice, eq­uity, fair­ness, and true ef­fi­ciency; al­beit, the God of heaven would not con­demn you if some­times you erred, in doubt­ful sit­u­a­tions, on the side of mer­ci­ful and un­selfish re­gard for the dis­tress of the suf­fer­ing vic­tims of the un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stances of mor­tal life. When in hon­est doubt about the eq­uity and jus­tice of ma­te­rial sit­u­a­tions, let your de­ci­sions fa­vor those who are in need, fa­vor those who suf­fer the mis­for­tune of un­de­served hard­ships.”

140:3.9“Happy are the mer­ci­ful, for they shall ob­tain mercy.

140:5.172. “Happy are the mer­ci­ful, for they shall ob­tain mercy.” Mercy here de­notes the height and depth and breadth of the truest friend­ship—lov­ing-kind­ness. Mercy some­times may be pas­sive, but here it is ac­tive and dy­namic—su­preme fa­ther­li­ness. A lov­ing par­ent ex­pe­ri­ences lit­tle dif­fi­culty in for­giv­ing his child, even many times. And in an un­spoiled child the urge to re­lieve suf­fer­ing is nat­u­ral. Chil­dren are nor­mally kind and sym­pa­thetic when old enough to ap­pre­ci­ate ac­tual con­di­tions.

146:2.54. There is a ba­sic law of jus­tice in the uni­verse which mercy is pow­er­less to cir­cum­vent. The un­selfish glo­ries of Par­a­dise are not pos­si­ble of re­cep­tion by a thor­oughly self­ish crea­ture of the realms of time and space. Even the in­fi­nite love of God can­not force the sal­va­tion of eter­nal sur­vival upon any mor­tal crea­ture who does not choose to sur­vive. Mercy has great lat­i­tude of be­stowal, but, af­ter all, there are man­dates of jus­tice which even love com­bined with mercy can­not ef­fec­tively ab­ro­gate. Again Je­sus quoted from the He­brew scrip­tures: “I have called and you re­fused to hear; I stretched out my hand, but no man re­garded. You have set at naught all my coun­sel, and you have re­jected my re­proof, and be­cause of this re­bel­lious at­ti­tude it be­comes in­ev­i­ta­ble that you shall call upon me and fail to re­ceive an an­swer. Hav­ing re­jected the way of life, you may seek me dili­gently in your times of suf­fer­ing, but you will not find me.”

28:6.52. The Mem­ory of Mercy. These are the ac­tual, full and re­plete, liv­ing rec­ords of the mercy which has been ex­tended to in­di­vid­u­als and races by the ten­der min­is­tra­tions of the in­stru­men­tal­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit in the mis­sion of adapt­ing the jus­tice of righ­teous­ness to the sta­tus of the realms, as dis­closed by the por­tray­als of the Sig­nif­i­cance of Ori­gins. The Mem­ory of Mercy dis­closes the moral debt of the chil­dren of mercy—their spir­i­tual li­a­bil­i­ties—to be set down against their as­sets of the sav­ing pro­vi­sion es­tab­lished by the Sons of God. In re­veal­ing the Fa­ther’s pre-ex­is­tent mercy, the Sons of God es­tab­lish the nec­es­sary credit to in­sure the sur­vival of all. And then, in ac­cor­dance with the find­ings of the Sig­nif­i­cance of Ori­gins, a mercy credit is es­tab­lished for the sur­vival of each ra­tio­nal crea­ture, a credit of lav­ish pro­por­tions and one of suf­fi­cient grace to in­sure the sur­vival of ev­ery soul who re­ally de­sires di­vine cit­i­zen­ship.

28:6.6The Mem­ory of Mercy is a liv­ing trial bal­ance, a cur­rent state­ment of your ac­count with the super­nat­u­ral forces of the realms. These are the liv­ing rec­ords of mercy min­is­tra­tion which are read into the tes­ti­mony of the courts of Uversa when each in­di­vid­ual’s right to un­end­ing life comes up for ad­ju­di­ca­tion, when “thrones are cast up and the An­cients of Days are seated. The broad­casts of Uversa is­sue and come forth from be­fore them; thou­sands upon thou­sands min­is­ter to them, and ten thou­sand times ten thou­sand stand be­fore them. The judg­ment is set, and the books are opened.” And the books which are opened on such a mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion are the liv­ing rec­ords of the ter­tiary se­con­a­phim of the super­uni­verses. The for­mal rec­ords are on file to cor­rob­o­rate the tes­ti­mony of the Mem­o­ries of Mercy if they are re­quired.

28:6.7The Mem­ory of Mercy must show that the sav­ing credit es­tab­lished by the Sons of God has been fully and faith­fully paid out in the lov­ing min­istry of the pa­tient per­son­al­i­ties of the Third Source and Cen­ter. But when mercy is ex­hausted, when the “mem­ory” thereof tes­ti­fies to its de­ple­tion, then does jus­tice pre­vail and righ­teous­ness de­cree. For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who de­spise it; mercy is not a gift to be tram­pled un­der foot by the per­sis­tent rebels of time. Nev­er­the­less, though mercy is thus pre­cious and dearly be­stowed, your in­di­vid­ual draw­ing cred­its are al­ways far in ex­cess of your abil­ity to ex­haust the re­serve if you are sin­cere of pur­pose and hon­est of heart.

140:3.18“Dis­cern the truth clearly; live the righ­teous life fear­lessly; and so shall you be my apos­tles and my Fa­ther’s am­bas­sadors. You have heard it said: ‘If the blind lead the blind, they both shall fall into the pit.’ If you would guide oth­ers into the king­dom, you must your­selves walk in the clear light of liv­ing truth. In all the busi­ness of the king­dom I ex­hort you to show just judg­ment and keen wis­dom. Pre­sent not that which is holy to dogs, nei­ther cast your pearls be­fore swine, lest they tram­ple your gems un­der foot and turn to rend you.

186:2.2Be­fore the San­hedrist court Je­sus de­clined to make replies to the tes­ti­mony of per­jured wit­nesses. There was but one ques­tion which would al­ways elicit an an­swer, whether asked by friend or foe, and that was the one con­cern­ing the na­ture and di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. When asked if he were the Son of God, he un­fail­ingly made re­ply. He stead­fastly re­fused to speak when in the pres­ence of the cu­ri­ous and wicked Herod. Be­fore Pi­late he spoke only when he thought that Pi­late or some other sin­cere per­son might be helped to a bet­ter knowl­edge of the truth by what he said. Je­sus had taught his apos­tles the use­less­ness of cast­ing their pearls be­fore swine, and he now dared to prac­tice what he had taught. His con­duct at this time ex­em­pli­fied the pa­tient sub­mis­sion of the hu­man na­ture cou­pled with the ma­jes­tic si­lence and solemn dig­nity of the di­vine na­ture. He was al­to­gether will­ing to dis­cuss with Pi­late any ques­tion re­lated to the po­lit­i­cal charges brought against him—any ques­tion which he rec­og­nized as be­long­ing to the gov­er­nor’s ju­ris­dic­tion.

39:1.8The se­raphic court ad­vis­ers serve ex­ten­sively as de­fend­ers of mor­tals. Not that there ever ex­ists any dis­po­si­tion to be un­fair to the lowly crea­tures of the realms, but while jus­tice de­mands the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of ev­ery de­fault in the climb to­wards di­vine per­fec­tion, mercy re­quires that ev­ery such mis­step be fairly ad­judged in ac­cor­dance with the crea­ture na­ture and the di­vine pur­pose. These an­gels are the ex­po­nents and ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of the el­e­ment of mercy in­her­ent in di­vine jus­tice—of fair­ness based on the knowl­edge of the un­der­ly­ing facts of per­sonal mo­tives and racial ten­den­cies.

178:1.17Through­out the vi­cis­si­tudes of life, re­mem­ber al­ways to love one an­other. Do not strive with men, even with un­be­liev­ers. Show mercy even to those who de­spite­fully abuse you. Show your­selves to be loyal cit­i­zens, up­right ar­ti­sans, praise­wor­thy neigh­bors, de­voted kins­men, un­der­stand­ing par­ents, and sin­cere be­liev­ers in the broth­er­hood of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. And my spirit shall be upon you, now and even to the end of the world.

100:1.8Re­li­gious habits of think­ing and act­ing are con­trib­u­tory to the econ­omy of spir­i­tual growth. One can de­velop re­li­gious pre­dis­po­si­tions to­ward fa­vor­able re­ac­tion to spir­i­tual stim­uli, a sort of con­di­tioned spir­i­tual re­flex. Habits which fa­vor re­li­gious growth em­brace cul­ti­vated sen­si­tiv­ity to di­vine val­ues, rec­og­ni­tion of re­li­gious liv­ing in oth­ers, re­flec­tive med­i­ta­tion on cos­mic mean­ings, wor­ship­ful prob­lem solv­ing, shar­ing one’s spir­i­tual life with one’s fel­lows, avoid­ance of self­ish­ness, re­fusal to pre­sume on di­vine mercy, liv­ing as in the pres­ence of God. The fac­tors of re­li­gious growth may be in­ten­tional, but the growth it­self is un­vary­ingly un­con­scious.

2:3.5In any uni­verse con­test be­tween ac­tual lev­els of re­al­ity, the per­son­al­ity of the higher level will ul­ti­mately tri­umph over the per­son­al­ity of the lower level. This in­ev­i­ta­ble out­come of uni­verse con­tro­versy is in­her­ent in the fact that di­vin­ity of qual­ity equals the de­gree of re­al­ity or ac­tu­al­ity of any will crea­ture. Undi­luted evil, com­plete er­ror, will­ful sin, and un­mit­i­gated in­iq­uity are in­her­ently and au­to­mat­i­cally sui­ci­dal. Such at­ti­tudes of cos­mic un­re­al­ity can sur­vive in the uni­verse only be­cause of tran­sient mercy-tol­er­ance pend­ing the ac­tion of the jus­tice-de­ter­min­ing and fair­ness-find­ing mech­a­nisms of the uni­verse tri­bu­nals of righ­teous ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

54:4.1An­other prob­lem some­what dif­fi­cult of ex­pla­na­tion in the con­stel­la­tion of Nor­la­ti­adek per­tains to the rea­sons for per­mit­ting Lu­cifer, Sa­tan, and the fallen princes to work mis­chief so long be­fore be­ing ap­pre­hended, in­terned, and ad­ju­di­cated.

54:4.2Par­ents, those who have borne and reared chil­dren, are bet­ter able to un­der­stand why Mi­chael, a Cre­ator-fa­ther, might be slow to con­demn and de­stroy his own Sons. Je­sus’ story of the prodi­gal son well il­lus­trates how a lov­ing fa­ther can long wait for the re­pen­tance of an erring child.

54:4.3The very fact that an evil-do­ing crea­ture can ac­tu­ally choose to do wrong—com­mit sin—es­tab­lishes the fact of free-will­ness and fully jus­ti­fies any length de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice pro­vided the ex­tended mercy might con­duce to re­pen­tance and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

54:4.4Most of the lib­er­ties which Lu­cifer sought he al­ready had; oth­ers he was to re­ceive in the fu­ture. All these pre­cious en­dow­ments were lost by giv­ing way to im­pa­tience and yield­ing to a de­sire to pos­sess what one craves now and to pos­sess it in de­fi­ance of all obli­ga­tion to re­spect the rights and lib­er­ties of all other be­ings com­pos­ing the uni­verse of uni­verses. Eth­i­cal obli­ga­tions are in­nate, di­vine, and uni­ver­sal.

54:4.5There are many rea­sons known to us why the Su­preme Rulers did not im­me­di­ately de­stroy or in­tern the lead­ers of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. There are no doubt still other and pos­si­bly bet­ter rea­sons un­known to us. The mercy fea­tures of this de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice were ex­tended per­son­ally by Mi­chael of Neb­a­don. Ex­cept for the af­fec­tion of this Cre­ator-fa­ther for his erring Sons, the su­preme jus­tice of the super­uni­verse would have acted. If such an episode as the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion had oc­curred in Neb­a­don while Mi­chael was in­car­nated on Uran­tia, the in­sti­ga­tors of such evil might have been in­stantly and ab­so­lutely an­ni­hi­lated.

54:4.7The mercy de­lays of time are by the man­date of the free will of the Cre­ators. There is good to be de­rived in the uni­verse from this tech­nique of pa­tience in deal­ing with sin­ful rebels. While it is all too true that good can­not come of evil to the one who con­tem­plates and per­forms evil, it is equally true that all things (in­clud­ing evil, po­ten­tial and man­i­fest) work to­gether for good to all be­ings who know God, love to do his will, and are as­cend­ing Par­adis­e­ward ac­cord­ing to his eter­nal plan and di­vine pur­pose.

54:4.8But these mercy de­lays are not in­ter­minable. Not­with­stand­ing the long de­lay (as time is reck­oned on Uran­tia) in ad­ju­di­cat­ing the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, we may re­cord that, dur­ing the time of ef­fect­ing this rev­e­la­tion, the first hear­ing in the pend­ing case of Ga­briel vs. Lu­cifer was held on Uversa, and soon there­after there is­sued the man­date of the An­cients of Days di­rect­ing that Sa­tan be hence­forth con­fined to the prison world with Lu­cifer. This ends the abil­ity of Sa­tan to pay fur­ther vis­its to any of the fallen worlds of Sa­ta­nia. Jus­tice in a mercy-dom­i­nated uni­verse may be slow, but it is cer­tain.

54:5.1Of the many rea­sons known to me as to why Lu­cifer and his con­fed­er­ates were not sooner in­terned or ad­ju­di­cated, I am per­mit­ted to re­cite the fol­low­ing:

54:5.21. Mercy re­quires that ev­ery wrong­doer have suf­fi­cient time in which to for­mu­late a de­lib­er­ate and fully cho­sen at­ti­tude re­gard­ing his evil thoughts and sin­ful acts.

54:5.32. Su­preme jus­tice is dom­i­nated by a Fa­ther’s love; there­fore will jus­tice never de­stroy that which mercy can save. Time to ac­cept sal­va­tion is vouch­safed ev­ery evil­doer.

54:5.43. No af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther is ever pre­cip­i­tate in vis­it­ing pun­ish­ment upon an erring mem­ber of his fam­ily. Pa­tience can­not func­tion in­de­pen­dently of time.

54:5.65. Re­gard­less of Mi­chael’s at­ti­tude to­ward Lu­cifer, not­with­stand­ing his be­ing Lu­cifer’s Cre­ator-fa­ther, it was not in the prov­ince of the Cre­ator Son to ex­er­cise sum­mary ju­ris­dic­tion over the apos­tate Sys­tem Sov­er­eign be­cause he had not then com­pleted his be­stowal ca­reer, thereby at­tain­ing un­qual­i­fied sov­er­eignty of Neb­a­don.

54:5.76. The An­cients of Days could have im­me­di­ately an­ni­hi­lated these rebels, but they sel­dom ex­e­cute wrong­do­ers with­out a full hear­ing. In this in­stance they re­fused to over­rule the Mi­chael de­ci­sions.

54:5.87. It is ev­i­dent that Im­manuel coun­seled Mi­chael to re­main aloof from the rebels and al­low re­bel­lion to pur­sue a nat­u­ral course of self-oblit­er­a­tion. And the wis­dom of the Union of Days is the time re­flec­tion of the united wis­dom of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

54:5.98. The Faith­ful of Days on Eden­tia ad­vised the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers to al­low the rebels free course to the end that all sym­pa­thy for these evil­do­ers should be the sooner up­rooted in the hearts of ev­ery pres­ent and fu­ture cit­i­zen of Nor­la­ti­adek—ev­ery mor­tal, mor­ontia, or spirit crea­ture.

54:5.109. On Je­ru­sem the per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Su­preme Ex­ec­u­tive of Or­von­ton coun­seled Ga­briel to fos­ter full op­por­tu­nity for ev­ery liv­ing crea­ture to ma­ture a de­lib­er­ate choice in those mat­ters in­volved in the Lu­cifer Dec­la­ra­tion of Lib­erty. The is­sues of re­bel­lion hav­ing been raised, the Par­a­dise emer­gency ad­viser of Ga­briel por­trayed that, if such full and free op­por­tu­nity were not given all Nor­la­ti­adek crea­tures, then would the Par­a­dise quar­an­tine against all such pos­si­ble half­hearted or doubt-stricken crea­tures be ex­tended in self-pro­tec­tion against the en­tire con­stel­la­tion. To keep open the Par­a­dise doors of as­cen­sion to the be­ings of Nor­la­ti­adek, it was nec­es­sary to pro­vide for the full de­vel­op­ment of re­bel­lion and to in­sure the com­plete de­ter­mi­na­tion of at­ti­tude on the part of all be­ings in any way con­cerned there­with.

54:5.1110. The Di­vine Min­is­ter of Sal­ving­ton is­sued as her third in­de­pen­dent procla­ma­tion a man­date di­rect­ing that noth­ing be done to half cure, cow­ardly sup­press, or oth­er­wise hide the hideous vis­age of rebels and re­bel­lion. The an­gelic hosts were di­rected to work for full dis­clo­sure and un­lim­ited op­por­tu­nity for sin-ex­pres­sion as the quick­est tech­nique of achiev­ing the per­fect and fi­nal cure of the plague of evil and sin.

54:5.1211. An emer­gency coun­cil of ex-mor­tals con­sist­ing of Mighty Mes­sen­gers, glo­ri­fied mor­tals who had had per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with like sit­u­a­tions, to­gether with their col­leagues, was or­ga­nized on Je­ru­sem. They ad­vised Ga­briel that at least three times the num­ber of be­ings would be led astray if ar­bi­trary or sum­mary meth­ods of sup­pres­sion were at­tempted. The en­tire Uversa corps of coun­selors con­curred in ad­vis­ing Ga­briel to per­mit the re­bel­lion to take its full and nat­u­ral course, even if it should re­quire a mil­lion years to wind up the con­se­quences.

54:5.1312. Time, even in a uni­verse of time, is rel­a­tive: If a Uran­tia mor­tal of av­er­age length of life should com­mit a crime which pre­cip­i­tated world-wide pan­de­mo­nium, and if he were ap­pre­hended, tried, and ex­e­cuted within two or three days of the com­mis­sion of the crime, would it seem a long time to you? And yet that would be nearer a com­par­i­son with the length of Lu­cifer’s life even if his ad­ju­di­ca­tion, now be­gun, should not be com­pleted for a hun­dred thou­sand Uran­tia years. The rel­a­tive lapse of time from the view­point of Uversa, where the lit­i­ga­tion is pend­ing, could be in­di­cated by say­ing that the crime of Lu­cifer was be­ing brought to trial within two and a half sec­onds of its com­mis­sion. From the Par­a­dise view­point the ad­ju­di­ca­tion is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the en­act­ment.

54:5.14There are an equal num­ber of rea­sons for not ar­bi­trar­ily stop­ping the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion which would be par­tially com­pre­hen­si­ble to you, but which I am not per­mit­ted to nar­rate. I may in­form you that on Uversa we teach forty-eight rea­sons for per­mit­ting evil to run the full course of its own moral bankruptcy and spir­i­tual ex­tinc­tion. I doubt not that there are just as many ad­di­tional rea­sons not known to me.

21:5.7The el­e­va­tion of a sev­en­fold be­stowal Son to the un­ques­tioned sov­er­eignty of his uni­verse means the be­gin­ning of the end of age­long un­cer­tainty and rel­a­tive con­fu­sion. Sub­se­quent to this event, that which can­not be some­time spir­i­tu­al­ized will even­tu­ally be dis­or­ga­nized; that which can­not be some­time co-or­di­nated with cos­mic re­al­ity will even­tu­ally be de­stroyed. When the pro­vi­sions of end­less mercy and name­less pa­tience have been ex­hausted in an ef­fort to win the loy­alty and de­vo­tion of the will crea­tures of the realms, jus­tice and righ­teous­ness will pre­vail. That which mercy can­not re­ha­bil­i­tate jus­tice will even­tu­ally an­ni­hi­late.