So let us do, my friends. Let us not be too hasty in forgiving
ourselves. Let us thank God cheerfully for the present. Let us
look on hopefully to the future; let us not look back too much at
the past, or rake up old follies which have been pardoned and done
away. But let us thank God whenever he thinks fit to shew us the
past, and bring our sin to our remembrance. Let us thank him, when
meeting an old acquaintance, passing by an old haunt, looking over
an old letter, reminds us what fools we were ten, twenty, thirty
years ago. Let us thank him for those nightly dreams, in which old
tempers, old meannesses, old sins, rise up again in us into ugly
life, and frighten us by making us in our sleep, what we were once,
God forgive us! when broad awake. I am not superstitious. I know
that those dreams are bred merely of our brain and of our blood.
But I know that they are none the less messages from God. They tell
us unmistakeably that we are the same persons that we were twenty
years ago. They tell us that there is the same infection of nature,
the same capability of sin, in us, that there was of old. That in
our flesh dwells no good thing: that by the grace of God alone we
are what we are: and that did his grace leave us, we might be once
more as utter fools as we were in the wild days of youth.
Pages:
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152