Memory is not wise unless it is, so to speak, the sergeant-at-arms of
Conscience, and brings our past before the bar of that judge within,
and puts into the hands of that judge the law of the Lord by which to
estimate our deeds. We all have been making up our accounts to the
31st of December--or are going to do it to-morrow. And what I plead
for is that we should take stock of our own characters and aims, and
sum up our accounts with duty and with God.
We look back upon a past, of which God gave us the warp and we had to
put in the woof. The warp is all bright and pure. The threads that
have crossed it from our shuttles are many of them very dark, and all
of them stained in some part. So, dear brethren, let us take the year
that has gone, and spread them out by the agency of this servant of
the court, Memory, before the supreme judge, Conscience.
Let us remember that we may be warned and directed. We shall
understand the true moral character of our actions a great deal better
when we look back upon them calmly, and when all the rush of
temptation and the reducing whispers of our own weak wills are
silenced. There is nothing more terrible, in one aspect, there is
nothing more salutary and blessed in another, than the difference
between the front and the back view of any temptation to which we
yield--all radiant and beautiful on the hither side, and when we get
past it and look back at it, all hideous. Like some of those painted
canvases upon the theatre-stage: seen from this side, with the
delusive brilliancy of the footlights thrown upon them, they look
beautiful works of art; seen at the back, dirty and cobwebbed canvas,
all splashes and spots and uglinesses. Let us be thankful if memory
can show us the reverse side of the temptations that on the near side
were so seductive.
It is when you see your life in retrospect that you understand the
significance of the single deeds in it. We are so apt to isolate our
actions that we are startled--and it is a wholesome shock--when we see
how, without knowing it, we have dropped into a habit. When each
temptation comes, as the moments are passing, we say, 'Oh, just this
once, just this once.' And the '_onces_' come nearer and nearer
together; and what seem to be distinctly separated points, coalesce
into a line; and the acts that we thought isolated we find out to our
horror--our wholesome horror--have become a chain that binds and holds
us. Look back over the year, and drag its events to the bar of
Conscience, and I shall be surprised if you do not discover that you
have fallen into wrong habits that you never dreamed had dominion over
you. So, I say, remember and repent.
Brethren, I do not wish to exaggerate, I do not wish to urge upon you
one-sided views of your character or conduct. I give all credit to
many excellences, many acts of sacrifice, many acts of service; and
yet I say that the main reason why any of us have a good opinion of
ourselves is because we have no knowledge of ourselves; and that the
safest attitude for all of us, in looking back over what we have made
of life, is, hands on mouths, and mouths in dust, and the cry coming
from them, 'Unclean! unclean!' A little mud in a stream may not be
perceptible when you take a wine-glassful of it and look at it, but if
you saw a river-full or a lake-full you would soon discover the taint.
Summon up the past year to the sessions of silent thought, and let the
light of God's will pour in upon it, and you will find how dark has
been the flow of the river of your lives.
The best use which the memory can serve for us is that it should drive
us closer to Jesus Christ, and make us cling more closely to Him. That
past can be cancelled, these multitudinous sins can be forgiven.
Memory should be one of the strongest strands in the cord that binds
our helplessness to the all-forgiving and all-cleansing Christ.