There are few of us who have much time for retrospect, and there is a
very deep sense in which it is wise to 'forget the things that are
behind,' for the remembrance of them may burden us with a miserable
entail of failure; may weaken us by vain regrets, may unfit us for
energetic action in the living and available present. But oblivion is
foolish, if it is continual, and a remembered past has treasures in it
which we can little afford to lose.
Chiefest of these is the power of memory, when applied to our own past
lives, to bring out, more clearly than was possible while that past
was being lived, the perception of the ever-present care and working
of our Father, God. It is hard to recognise Him in the bustle and
hurry of our daily lives, and the meaning of each event can only be
seen when it is seen in its relation to the rest of a life. Just as a
landscape, which we may look at without the smallest perception of its
beauty, becomes another thing when the genius of a painter puts it on
canvas, and its symmetry and proportion become more manifest, and an
ethereal clearness broods over it, and its colours are seen to be
deeper than our eyes had discerned, so the common events of life,
trivial and insignificant while they are passing, become, when painted
on the canvas of memory, nobler and greater, and we understand them
more completely than we can do whilst we are living in them.
We need to be at the goal in order to judge of the road. The parts are
only explicable when we see the whole. The full interpretation of
to-day is reserved for eternity. But, by combining and massing and
presenting the consequences of the apparently insignificant and
isolated events of the past, memory helps us to a clearer perception
of God, and a better understanding of our own lives, On the
mountain-summit a man can look down all along the valley by which he
has wearily plodded, and understand the meaning of the divergences in
the road, and the rough places do not look quite so rough when their
proportion to the whole is a little more clearly in his view.
Only, brethren, if we are wisely to exercise remembrance, and to
discover God in the lives which, whilst they are passing, had little
perception of Him, we must take into account what the meaning of all
life is--that is, to make men of us after the pattern of His will.
'Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way.'
But the growth of Christlike and God-pleasing character is the divine
purpose, and should be the human aim, of all lives. Our tasks, our
joys, our sorrows, our gains, our losses--these are all but the
scaffolding, and the scaffolding is only there in order that, course
upon course, may rise the temple-palace of a spirit, devoted to,
shaped and inhabited by, our Father, God.
So I venture to say that thankful remembrance should exclude no single
incident, however bitter, however painful, of any life. There is a
remembrance of vanished hands, of voices for ever stilled, which is
altogether wrong and weakening. There is a regret, a vain regret which
comes with memory for some of us, that interferes with thankfulness.
But it is possible--and, if we understand that the meaning of all is
to make us Godlike, it is not hard--to remember vanished joys, and to
confer upon them by remembrance a kind of gentle immortality. And,
thus remembered, they are ennobled; for all the gross material body of
them, as it were, is got rid of, and only the fine spirit is left. The
roses bloom, and over bloom, and drop, but a poignant perfume is
distilled from the fallen petals. The departed are greatened by
distance; when they are gone we recognise the 'angels' that we
'entertained unawares': and that recognition is no illusion, but it is
the disclosure of their real character, to which they were sometimes
untrue, and we were often blind. Therefore I say, 'Thou shalt remember
all the way by which the Lord thy God hath led thee,' and in the
thankfulness include departed joys, vanished hands, present sorrows,
the rough places as well as the smooth, the crooked things as well as
the straight.