And ranges far beyond, where absolute
And everlasting compensations are!^
(1) Eemember the Sins of the way. There are times when it is profitable to revive the memories of forgotten sins ; to exhume the carcases, or, rather, read out the fading inscriptions on the headstones of the graves, of self-will, folly, or lust. Generally it is wholesome advice to " let the dead past bury its dead." Morbid natures, brooding over the memories of sins, beget the appetite for fresh ones. The past is best buried under a nobler present, for
I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones. That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.
But that the present may be nobler, let the sins of the past, with their attendant sorrows, sometimes come into remembrance, if only to magnify the patience and long-suffering of God.
The sins of the way are sometimes remembered whether we ^ Hugh Macmillan, T?ie Christmas Rose, 7.
14 REMEMBER ALL THE WAY
will or not, for memory is only partially under our control. It has laws of its own, which run their course in spite of us. If we could always forget what we wanted to forget, and remember only what we desired to remember, we should find life very much simplified. There would be no sense of guilt, no remorse, no passionate and vain longing to get rid of the ghosts of the past. The murderer, the thief, the repentant prodigal would in that case be haunted by no disquieting dreams. But God could not entrust us with such a power over our own past. And so He has given conscience a memory independent of our will.
If Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were the victims of this in- ability to forget ; he, by day, in his waking moments, she, at night, in dreams and nightmares, were pursued by the undying ghost of Banquo, which was but the objectified image of their own con- science, as it drove its shadowy sword into their inmost hearts till he cried : " 0, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife ! " and she wandered about in her sleep, striving in vain to wipe the blood-spot from her hand. This involuntary ethical memory is one of the safeguards of virtue, one of the restraints of vice.
(2) But let the memory be also of the Forgiveness of sin. For it is not enough that our present life be renewed, while the ugly past remains as it was. God's salvation must stretch its redeeming hand over our past as well. He must give us the powers which will purify the secret place where the vanished joys as well as the undying sorrows of the days of old are stored up. Heaven would be no heaven to us if we were to be at the mercy of our past.
IF Those who know Dante will remember how, when he came into the last circle of Purgatory on his way heavenward, he was taken to the brink of two rivers, and given their waters to drink. The first was Lethe, a draught from which cleared the memory of all its stains and scars, its shadows and its corruptions. The second was Eunoe, whose waters brought back to the mind all the happy, soul-lifting recollections of bygone days. With profound insight into the deepest facts of our nature, the great poet there teaches us that God's last, best gift — the key to the soul's true heaven — is a regenerated memory. But where shall we find the true Lethe and Eunoe of the soul ? God in His infinite mercy has provided us with them. God's Lethe is His forgiving love. It flows, sweet and vivifying, from beneath the Cross of our Eedeemer. And those who drink of these healing waters are
DEUTERONOMY viii. 2 15
relieved from the incubus of their evil past. Not by forgetting, but by transfiguring the mistakes and failures and sins of the days of old, does this heavenly secret of forgiveness do its blessed work for the soul. It transmutes the torment of memory into an undying gratitude to Him who has redeemed us by His precious blood, and has enabled us to see in our worst sins the memorials of an Almighty and ever-potent redemption. And Eunoe ? What is this but the certainty of God's gracious lead- ership and kindly discipline? When once we realize how that Hand has led us, and preserved us, and kept us till now, how life's strength has flowed from His sustaining grace, how He has peopled every day with the memorials of His love — then how brightly do even the sorrows of the past shine as we gaze down the chequered vista of our experience ! Deeply had the writer of Deuteronomy drunk of these sweet waters of Eunoe. The book is a psalm of grateful praise for the remembered mercies of the days of old. " And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilder- ness, that he might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his command- ments, or no."^
There were many burning hours on the heart-sweet tide, And we passed away from ourselves, forgetting all