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THE RELIGIOUS USES OF 
 MEMORY 
 
THE RELIGIOUS 
 USES OF MEMORY 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 BY 
 
 The Rev. S. PARKES CADMAN, D.D. 
 
 I The Central Congregations 
 Brooklyn, New York City 
 
 Pastor of The Central Congregational Church 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1912 
 BY LUTHER H. CABY 
 
 THB-PLIMPTON-PRBSS 
 
 [ W • D • O ] 
 NORWOOD»MASS»U«S«A 
 
 4 r: a. {(I 1 . »: 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF 
 MEMORY 
 
And thou slialt remember all the icmj 
 which Jehovah thy God hath led thee. 
 
 The Book of Deuteronomy 
 eighth chapter, second verse 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF 
 MEMORY 
 
 npHE book of Deuteronomy is a not- 
 -* able example of the religious uses 
 of memory. It was written during a 
 crisis in the history of the Hebrews, and 
 it is the first serious attempt at a phi- 
 losophy of that history. The text is at 
 once a statement of its theme and a 
 summary of its main content. It is em- 
 phatically the book of remembrance. 
 
 Under the guidance and protection 
 of Jehovah, Moses had led the chosen 
 race out of the house of bondage to 
 the verge of the land of their adoption. 
 A disorganized band of fugitives had 
 been transformed into a consolidated 
 people. Their wanderings and priva- 
 tions in the wilderness had imparted 
 a stern but salutary discipline to these 
 spiritless helots. The former slaves of 
 Egypt became the conquerors of 
 Canaan. Despite the fierce resistance 
 of surrounding tribes, they established 
 themselves in a land of fertility and 
 beauty, and their heroical story was 
 transmitted to posterity. 
 
 7 
 
8 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 God's purposes in this emancipation 
 and nationalizing of a despised and 
 abject race were infinitely larger than 
 even the Hebrews conceived them to 
 be. He had covenanted with their 
 father Abraham that in his seed should 
 all the nations of the earth be blessed. 
 From this believing ancestor, whose 
 faith was reckoned onto him for right- 
 eousness, there sprang that illustrious 
 line of law-givers, psalmists, and proph- 
 ets; men who have illuminated man- 
 kind with the radiance of their spiritual 
 visions. The religious instinct of the 
 race was to find its highest expression 
 in Israel as a peculiar people, and in its 
 theocracy as the holy commonwealth. 
 
 These purposes were enshrined in 
 the Deuteronomic code. But side by 
 side with them is an unsparing portrayal 
 of the repeated apostacies of the 
 Israelites. Their disobedience and 
 disloyalty, their stubbornness and con- 
 tinual backsliding are set over against 
 the signal deliverances which Jehovah 
 had wrought in their behalf. And the 
 punishments which follow these trans- 
 gressions are depicted with fearful 
 severity. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 9 
 
 The book, like an angel standing 
 in the path, solemnly adjures this 
 stiff-necked and self-willed race to re- 
 call the numberless experiences of the 
 past. It would warn them against the 
 perilous indifference toward God wor- 
 ship and duty engendered by prosper- 
 ity. It beseeches them to turn from 
 every distraction of the present and seek 
 the Author of their blessings in the light 
 of their consecrated remembrance. 
 
 Yet not alone for these ancient 
 tribes, but for all time, and for all 
 people was the message of Deuter- 
 onomy given. Whether the book be 
 ideal or actual, whatever sources He 
 behind it, its moral purport remains 
 the same. It offers the wisest and 
 loftiest remonstrance against every 
 God-forgetting age. It speaks to the 
 very heart of those who are so disas- 
 trously preoccupied that, without any 
 studied purpose, they steadily drift 
 away from the center of attachment. 
 Neither history nor the passing hour 
 have divine meaning for them. Faith 
 grows dim, hope dwindles, love waxes 
 cold, every moral susceptibility is 
 deadened. Then on the listless ears 
 
10 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 of these aliens the command of this 
 Scripture peals forth like a midnight 
 warning bell— THOU SHALT RE- 
 MEMBER— and whether they hear 
 or forbear, obey or reject, rest assured 
 that ere the last hour of conscious 
 memory departs, remember they must. 
 
 The faculty of retrospect is one of 
 the highest employments of the mem- 
 ory, and the memory is the superior 
 attribute of the mind. All principles 
 of projected efficiency largely depend 
 upon experience. The statesman en- 
 deavors to guide his country's affairs in 
 the light of what has been. The judge 
 is governed by the precedents of human 
 justice. These vocations have seldom, 
 if ever, been successfully followed except 
 by those who saw that the roots of the 
 present lie deep in the past. We are 
 indebted to the men and women who 
 have wisely handled our yester- 
 days in behalf of our tomorrows. 
 Whatever may be urged against the 
 retrospective attitude, it faces the maj- 
 esty of facts; the purely prospective 
 attitude peers uncertainly into the 
 fortuitous and the fanciful. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 11 
 
 The modern era has been so well 
 furnished on many sides, so full of 
 progress, so distinguished for exciting 
 discoveries, so pregnant with new possi- 
 bilities, that certain thinkers are in- 
 clined to neglect those eras which 
 went before it. They insist that these 
 possibilities will not be realized until 
 we have freed ourselves from the fetters 
 of antiquity. Our convictions must 
 not be allied to the revelations of the 
 Law and the Prophets; they must be 
 imbedded in our present knowledge of 
 God, of Christianity, and of the virtues. 
 
 Their insistence is reasonable within 
 proper limits, but they sometimes for- 
 get that healthy revolt against the 
 tyranny of dead shibboleths is one 
 thing: rebellion against ageless and 
 fundamental verities is quite another. 
 Those verities are as closely related to 
 present excellence and well-doing as are 
 the strata of the earth to its fauna and 
 flora. Should we attempt such an in- 
 surrection, a non-progressive infancy 
 would penalize our folly. It cuts us 
 off from the supply, it separates faith 
 from the career of faith, it divorces us 
 from the accumulated spiritualities 
 
12 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 which enrich history. The living 
 streams that flow through contempo- 
 rary civilization are fed from the great 
 ranges behind them, where Christ 
 stands supreme. Their fountains are 
 in the historical personalities and sig- 
 nificant movements which are at least 
 comparable with anything we know 
 today. 
 
 Ours is the age of distributed genius, 
 and we have not at this moment the 
 intellectual equal of Plato, nor of Soc- 
 rates. There is no man in the present 
 church who can reveal the heart of God 
 as could the great prophets of Jewry 
 or the apostles of Christianity. In the 
 cycles of time, there have been alter- 
 nations of twilight and night, dawn and 
 day; periods when the Kingdom of 
 God came with power, and others when 
 it seemed to linger. Spiritual evolu- 
 tion has had its stages of vigorous 
 growth, followed by those of apparent 
 lassitude, and these again have been 
 superseded by overwhelming outbursts 
 of regenerative vitality. We must ever 
 return to these resources, we must con- 
 stantly ponder them, and we must not 
 allow the dominant hour to obstruct 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 13 
 
 our vision of a mighty and a gracious 
 history. "Thou shalt remember all the 
 way which Jehovah thy God hath led 
 thee/ 5 
 
 The aims of many reformers are 
 nothing if not radical. They flout 
 either the past or the present, more 
 generally the former, and for their one 
 grape would the whole vine destroy. 
 They neglect the empire for the sake 
 of a particular province, and because of 
 this contraction of interest often injure 
 the cause they seek to serve. No phase 
 of history can be thus ignored; from its 
 first dawn to its last occurrence it is 
 inseparably associated with all we strive 
 to be and to do. The planting and 
 training of the Christian church, the 
 growth and inter-relation of every part 
 of the social structure, and our own 
 individual career, should come within 
 the scope of retrospect. 
 
 In the patience of God, these organ- 
 izations have endured the countless 
 changes of the flight of time, and a 
 millenial extension is but a day in his 
 sight. In the purpose of God, they will 
 fulfil their meaning at the propitious 
 moment, and this so quickly that a na- 
 
14 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 tion shall be born in a day, and the day 
 shall perfect the work of a thousand 
 years. We strengthen them and we 
 fortify ourselves when we call to mind 
 the former times. We cease to be 
 weary in well-doing, we kindle anew 
 our zeal for righteousness, we increase 
 our reverence for law and literature and 
 philanthropy, when we name those 
 great spirits who have been an epitome 
 of mankind, such as Wesley, Wash- 
 ington, Marshall, Milton, and John 
 Howard. It is remembrance which 
 enables us to do this, it ministers to 
 our profoundest feelings, to our char- 
 acter, and to our affections. It places 
 religion in its rightful seat of authority, 
 and on either side it enthrones virtue 
 and wisdom. 
 
 Over all it sheds the halo of its 
 purity and mellowing influences. We 
 seldom see men or measures clearly 
 until, in its interval, we have gained 
 the correct perspective. We do not 
 love with tenderness and beauty divine 
 unless remembrance and imagination 
 blend their enchantments with our 
 affection. The expansion of faith de- 
 pends upon these inward powers of 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 15 
 
 apprehension. By means of retrospect 
 we discover the ways of God toward 
 men, and how that he has been a very 
 present help in every time of trouble, 
 the abundant Giver of all human good. 
 The rule of right, the sovereign quality 
 of mercy, the requirements of moral 
 perfection, and the beauty of holiness, 
 are no chance occupants of our epoch 
 or of any other. They are found wher- 
 ever the universal Spirit has evoked 
 the aspirations of the race, they have 
 their habitation in all the conditions of 
 the past, they have reigned in the race 
 always and everywhere, and no subject 
 mind has escaped their control. 
 
 The interpretation of the text shows 
 that the memory to which it refers is 
 also a personal function. It exhorts us 
 to remember our own way, the direct 
 dealings of God with our individual 
 life, and how these have instructed, 
 chastened, and humbled us, and dis- 
 covered our inner self, and whether or 
 no, in motive and in deed, we would 
 obey the divine commandment. 
 
 For memory is distinctively a con- 
 scious agent, which testifies to the re- 
 
16 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 ality and permanence of our own exis- 
 tence. It is at once the condition and 
 the proof of our self -identity. It brings 
 before us the sense of that vast living, 
 loving, moving, inspiring Spirit who 
 dwells in every soul and makes it the 
 audience-chamber of the Eternal. 
 
 Were memory withdrawn, every 
 mind would be a blank, retaining 
 nothing except momentary sensations 
 which, like the foam-flecks on the wave, 
 are lost as soon as found. Thought 
 feeds on reflection, reflection fastens 
 on experience, experience is reproduced 
 by remembrance, and progress depends 
 on every link in the chain. How neces- 
 sary, then, is this wonderful gift of 
 God for all spiritual enlightenment! 
 
 Every personal event leaves some 
 ingredients behind; it passes, but these 
 are retained. The retention may be 
 unconscious, and one of the strangest 
 aspects of this endowment is its facility 
 for reviving in unexpected ways and 
 places the occurrences we supposed 
 were forgotten. In an unprepared 
 hour, the far-off is instantaneously 
 brought nigh, our former deeds troop 
 in unannounced, faded scenes and 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 17 
 
 dreamland faces flash forth again with 
 startling vividness. We renew our in- 
 tercourse with the departed, and with 
 those delightful prospects to which 
 distance lends additional charm. We 
 hear once more the beloved voices 
 which have lost the accent of pain and 
 the tremulousness of fear. For though 
 we have a glorious fellowship of saints 
 on earth, some of the noblest tokens of 
 our communion do not proceed from 
 our visible intercourse. They emerge 
 again from the fruitful years that men 
 miscall dead, and in the joy and bless- 
 ing of such reveries, we understand 
 how beneficent it is that part of the 
 past in all the present lives. 
 
 St. Augustine, reflecting on these 
 truths, exclaimed, "I came at last to 
 the fields and courts of memory, where 
 are treasures of unnumbered impres- 
 sions on every hand. There I met all 
 I had discovered by the senses, the 
 heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that 
 in them is. There also I found God, 
 and there I found myself, and what I 
 had been and done, and when and 
 where and in what way. 55 
 
 " There also I found God." Such is 
 
18 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 the chief reward of those who explore 
 "the fields and courts of memory," as 
 did the great Bishop of Hippo. They 
 are full of the evidences of the Supreme 
 Mind, and of the Supreme Memory. 
 So actually involved is the Deity in 
 man that, great as is the universe be- 
 yond us, the universe within is almost 
 greater. Buried in what Arthur Hal- 
 lam so finely called "the abysmal 
 depths of personality M are our own 
 inviolable experiences of grace and of 
 guidance. There abide our secret life, 
 our indisturbable peace, and our hope, 
 both sure and steadfast, of immortality 
 to come. The deeper we sink the shafts 
 of meditation into these hidden springs, 
 the more abundantly will their healing 
 currents flow. 
 
 Every life is divinely planned and 
 sustained, and when we search out the 
 ways of God in this respect, we increase 
 our present confidence and strengthen 
 our hold on the future. A gracious 
 Power, not ourselves, has defended us, 
 a superior Wisdom has gently cleared 
 our path. We have been saved from 
 our own follies and sinfulness. Our 
 sorrows have been healing ministries 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 19 
 
 for good. Our afflictions have re- 
 deemed us from pride and corruption. 
 We have been brought forth with a 
 pillar of cloud by day and of fire by 
 night. The veil that hid tomorrow 
 from our eyes has been gradually lifted 
 to their prepared sight. The eater has 
 been forced to give us meat, and the 
 destroyer to yield us sweetness. Those 
 things which we imagined were against 
 us have issued to our advantages. The 
 Heavenly Father has devised means 
 whereby his banished children be not 
 driven from him. He 'has provided 
 for remedial effects even in our trans- 
 gressions, and where sin did abound 
 grace has much more abounded. 
 Crowning all, eternal love has diffused 
 its warmth and light upon our darkest 
 passages and dispelled the shadows of 
 the dreariest night. 
 
 This is a social consciousness of God, 
 in which all believers can rejoice to- 
 gether. It inspires the exultant strain 
 of praise, the "endless Alleluia" of the 
 worshiping church. It is the cause of 
 that tranquillity which enables us to 
 rest in the Lord and wait patiently 
 for him. When health departs, or 
 
20 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 friends are few, in his omnipotence we 
 are strong, resolute, girded for the fray. 
 Remembering these things, we glow 
 with grateful adoration, and burn with 
 desire for the fullness of the vision of 
 God; for the satisfaction of those who 
 awake in his likeness. 
 
 The text does not deal with the 
 Christian conception of God as our 
 Father, but those who have been the 
 recipients of his unfolding self -manifes- 
 tation know that, while he is the Je- 
 hovah of the Hebrews, he is also the 
 All- Wise and All-Loving Parent who 
 has sent forth the Lord Jesus as the 
 revelation of his nature. And for our 
 apprehension of Christ, it is necessary 
 that he should not only be known as a 
 present and living reality, but that 
 this knowledge should be supplemented 
 by the historical portraiture of the 
 Gospels. Here memory again plays 
 its important part. Those records 
 were written in the light of a loving 
 and stimulated remembrance. This 
 remembrance was at Christ's own solici- 
 tation, and he instituted the Memorial 
 Feast on the night of his Passion in 
 order that his work and his purposes 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 21 
 
 should be lodged in the breasts of the 
 disciples. Those who truly love Jesus 
 will likewise remember Jesus; they 
 will keep in mind the things in which 
 they have been instructed. They, too, 
 can follow him from the arms of Mary 
 and the hillside at Nazareth, through 
 all the scenes of ceaseless ministry and 
 complete abandonment to the Eternal 
 Will, until they bow before that dra- 
 matic concentration of all his service, his 
 submission, his obedience — the cross. 
 
 This scriptural injunction stipulates 
 what we shall remember and to what 
 ends. It takes shape from its sur- 
 roundings, and it is meant to conserve 
 that view of life which is transfused 
 with the sense of God's overruling 
 providence. Apart from this conser- 
 vation there is no purpose discernible 
 either in the world or in man. The 
 forty years in the wilderness were a 
 proof that God intended the elected 
 nation to be his instrument. They 
 were also an assurance to everyone who 
 participated in them that their strong 
 Deliverer had kept his covenant. This 
 assurance has lain behind the making 
 
22 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 of hosts of men and of many nations: 
 not only Israel, but the democracies 
 that now govern the world have arisen 
 to their magnitude because of their 
 faith in Jehovah's guiding hand. 
 
 There is no provision in the Deu- 
 teronomic code for those temperamen- 
 tal tendencies which discolor memory 
 and usurp its religious uses. It is a 
 serious thing to thus interfere with the 
 important processes we are describing. 
 Yet how many have hidden away from 
 God because of the melancholy, the 
 unavailing grief, and the bitter leaven 
 of uncontrolled recollections. 
 
 Some project across their reflections 
 a wistful pensiveness which dims the 
 horizon of approaching age. They feel 
 their strength decrease, the limbs grow 
 stiffer, each movement less exact, each 
 nerve more loosely strung. And they 
 contrast this debility with the vigor 
 and the buoyancy of youth. For them 
 there is no sunset glow, softened and 
 serene, a golden day's decline which re- 
 flects its effulgence even on the eastern 
 skies. With the added tale of years and 
 physical infirmity, they have lost the 
 compensation of those whose rapt pro- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 23 
 
 phetic eyes see the world as from a 
 height, and with a heart profoundly 
 stirred prepare to chant their Nunc 
 Dimittis. 
 
 Others violate the spirit of this 
 Scripture by vindictively accusing 
 their own generation. Nothing is more 
 useless or demoralizing, but they per- 
 sist in it and mourn the evil times on 
 which they have fallen. God has for- 
 saken his world. The complex scheme 
 of life is but a jumble of fatalistic rem- 
 nants. They brood over this confusion 
 and invoke memory in the interests of 
 their jaundice, scanning the past 
 through a distorted medium. One can- 
 not deny that they have some useful- 
 ness : they frequently act as a sobering 
 influence upon a nation like our own 
 and restrain its reckless optimisms. 
 But, when this is said, it still remains 
 that more frequently they take out of 
 life the faith and hope which life must 
 have. Matthew Arnold has voiced 
 their sentiments in many of his poems 
 and in none so sadly as in The Grand 
 Chartreuse — 
 
 " Our fathers water'd with their tears 
 This sea of time whereon we sail, 
 
24 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 Their voices were in all men's ears 
 Who passed within their puissant hail. 
 Still the same ocean round us raves 
 But we stand mute and watch the waves/' 
 
 Yet nothing is more sure than is God's 
 oversight of all the varied elements of 
 life. Our times are in his hands, the 
 reactionary as well as the progressive 
 periods, the days of doubt as well as 
 the days of faith; and if we find it 
 hard to rejoice and easy to mourn, let 
 us not forget that he pours the old 
 wine and the new, the bitter and the 
 sweet, into the chalice of life, and that 
 when he has filled the cup, the draught 
 gives health and power. 
 
 Still others sink down into a hopeless 
 apathy where faith is an exploded 
 dream. The widest scope of effort 
 cannot touch the regions of eternal 
 change and mystery. The end finds 
 men with all their unsolved problems 
 and unsatisfied yearnings and vain 
 desires, inheritors of nothing save 
 
 "The vasty hall of death." 
 
 Such reminiscences conduct those who 
 indulge them to the vaults of despair. 
 They are crippled in spirit by their 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 25 
 
 pagan use of memory's powers; their im- 
 agination is an evil genius, it dwarfs their 
 character and hampers their service. 
 
 It was Carlyle's ill-fate that though 
 he could remember God with reverence 
 he could scarcely tolerate men. He 
 trusted in the Jehovah of his Calvin- 
 istic fathers, but with a few exceptions, 
 and these not always wisely chosen, he 
 despised the divine image in his fellow 
 creatures. He expatiated at length 
 upon their monstrous errors and follies. 
 He surmised these would prevail in the 
 future as heretofore, and he found what 
 he believed to be sufficient proof to 
 support his disheartening conclusions. 
 Yet his immense knowledge of the past 
 should have taught Carlyle that, how- 
 ever undeserving, the human family in 
 its solidarity is the offspring of God and 
 the heir of his promises. But an un- 
 purged memory reacted upon him and 
 he spent his last days crying and curs- 
 ing in the wilderness. 
 
 It becomes us to act worthily as the 
 sons of God, and to assume from all 
 our knowledge of his ways toward us 
 in the past that he will not allow us to 
 be defeated. We shall yet slay the 
 
26 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 beasts that ravage us. Whatever our 
 past errors and omissions and wicked- 
 ness, we have the privilege to solicit 
 and receive God's forgiveness for them: 
 then we should wisely forget them. 
 The things which are behind us may 
 shed the light of experience upon the 
 pathway we must tread; but when 
 they are simply weights and hindrances 
 we are to cast them aside. Let us run 
 with patience the race that is set be- 
 fore us, looking unto him who is both 
 Author and Finisher of our faith, and 
 set free for utmost effort by a proper 
 use of retrospect. Then even the se- 
 verest visitations may chasten, but 
 they cannot abolish our joy, nor take 
 from us the lawful striving which shall 
 at last be crowned. 
 
 The text may seem to have no appli- 
 cation for those whose youth has 
 known no history, but while they re- 
 joice in their new-born freedom, if they 
 would remove sorrow from their hearts 
 and put away evil from their flesh, they 
 must remember now their Creator be- 
 fore the cheerless prospects of a morally 
 destitute age afflict them. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 27 
 
 We return at sunset to eat of the 
 fruit of our own way and to be filled 
 with our own devices. This return is 
 accomplished by an automatic mem- 
 ory which operates independently of 
 our wishes. In that recurrence of 
 youthful recollections, happy is the 
 man who can say of his juvenile period, 
 as said the sun-dial which Hazlitt saw 
 in Italy: "I make record of only the 
 sunny hours." And happier still is the 
 man who has obeyed the w r ords of 
 counsel and encouragement which at- 
 tended his manhood's dawn. He who 
 has received the large and seasonable 
 gifts of the outer world, who has heard 
 the men and women themselves who 
 were behind the things that made them 
 known, who has profited by their ex- 
 ample, will bask in the sunshine of his 
 later day. He will remain alive to the 
 great sights and sounds and to the 
 tender influences of the seasons. In 
 his intercourse with men he will pre- 
 serve the sanity and the charity which 
 should be the distinctive virtues of 
 maturity. If in him love's purifica- 
 tion was early made, he may dwell 
 upon its sweet memories to the very 
 
28 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 end, and all his hours will be filled with 
 beauty and with praise. 
 
 What is more destitute or pitiable 
 than a mumbling senility filled with the 
 blackness of darkness and the pangs of 
 the second death. Godless memories 
 crowd in upon it, the lies it has loved 
 come home to roost. There is no holi- 
 ness, no reverence, no faith, no hope, 
 in that last state. It is the natural 
 sequence of a life whose formative 
 period was spent in prodigality. Would 
 you avoid this dreadful ending? Then 
 pack your reminiscent powers with the 
 thoughts and deeds that well become 
 a son of God. So when your allotted 
 time draws near its close, you will not 
 be all frozen up within and quite the 
 phantom of your former self. You can 
 retire to the kingdom of the mind and 
 challenge the approaching night. For 
 in the spirit's chamber is the quiet 
 sanctuary of many fragrant recollec- 
 tions. Such age is never-withering 
 youth, beneficent, exemplary, vibrant 
 with the presence of the Creator whom 
 you remembered in the days of your 
 youth. 
 
 There is a selective memory which is 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 29 
 
 determined by your moral preferences. 
 These strike the backward path across 
 the teeming fields of recollection. The 
 philosopher retains to the last his rea- 
 soning processes, the saint his holy 
 days, the mother the hour when her 
 first-born lay upon her breast. When 
 all else departs the ruling passions 
 linger. The veteran sunk in decay 
 hears his famous captain's name, and 
 at the sound leaps to his feet, erect and 
 military, and cries with a resonant 
 voice, "For Waterloo and the Duke!" 
 Then the sporadic flame dies down and 
 leaves him in his dotage. Memory 
 touched him and the dead revived. 
 
 But watch as we may the selective 
 tendencies of memory, it has an invol- 
 untary ethical recollection whose mo- 
 tions escape our scrutiny. If men 
 could control these they would lay the 
 ghosts, but conscience employs them 
 without regard to our pleasures or our 
 pains. "Oh! Full of scorpions is my 
 breast, sweet wife," moaned the guilty 
 Macbeth and his guilty spouse could not 
 console him. This ethical memory is 
 an avenger of unconfessed sin. Its chilly 
 reminders, its stinging retorts, its unre- 
 
30 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 mitting tortures, are the stuff out of 
 which masters like Poe and Ibsen have 
 woven their tragedies; and when such 
 memories finally come to judgment the 
 secrets of all hearts are bared, the doors 
 of concealed horrors are opened wide, 
 the burnt embers are refired. 
 
 Is there no Gospel for such a woeful 
 state? The modern fatalism would 
 scarcely allow that there is. But in 
 the provisions of God's fatherly love, 
 there must be a complete oblivion 
 where men can finally forget; and if 
 our hearts condemn us for saying this, 
 then "God is greater than our hearts, 
 and knoweth all things." A regener- 
 ated memory, relieved of its burdens, 
 alive to the noble and the pure, is as 
 great a need as a regenerated heart. 
 
 The great Florentine was aware of 
 this. That mediaeval theology of 
 which he was the master, and which 
 we too little know, was, in some re- 
 spects, more humane than our own. 
 Dante tells us that in the last circle of 
 the Purgatorio there flow two rivers 
 which take all blame and remorse out 
 of the alienated will. The candidates 
 for paradise must drink of these ere 
 
THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 31 
 
 they can enter into its passionless re- 
 nown. The first is the river of Lethe, 
 which is the river of forgetfulness. 
 When they partake of its healing 
 stream their iniquities are fully par- 
 doned, their warfare is ended. They 
 emerge from it, separated from the evils 
 that have beset them, possessors of a 
 peace that passeth understanding. 
 
 The second river is the one of which 
 Beatrice speaks: 
 
 "Some more pressing care, 
 That oft the memory 'reaves, perchance hath 
 
 made 
 His mind's eye dark. But lo, where Eunoe 
 
 flows! 
 Lead thither; and, as thou are wont, revive 
 His fainting virtue." 
 
 Here all foretastes of approaching bliss 
 are given and the candidates are made 
 ready for the Mount of Light. 
 
 This is more than the dream of an 
 inspired imagination; it is the poetical 
 setting of a gracious truth. Even in 
 this life our sins and sorrows lessen, 
 our hot and fevered memories cool. 
 The ameliorating drift of time brings 
 with it many silent gradual changes 
 for the better. We merge from dark- 
 
32 THE RELIGIOUS USES OF MEMORY 
 
 ness into dawn, the prophecy of greater 
 light to come. While still on pilgrim- 
 age, we can humbly pray, "Remember 
 not past years." The Divine response 
 is, "I will cast thy sins behind my 
 back, to be remembered against thee 
 no more forever." Our shame is swal- 
 lowed up in the bottomless abyss of 
 love, while new delights await us from 
 him who has said," I will restore unto 
 thee the dew of thy youth." 
 
 Thrice blessed is the man who lives 
 the first life well. lie can accompany 
 his petition for grace and consolation 
 with the record of a purified heart and 
 a will which has been made obedient to 
 the higher powers, he has remembered 
 all the way Jehovah has led him; he 
 awaits the word that he may enter 
 into the fullness of joy and sit down 
 with Christ on his throne. 
 
 THE END 
 
APR 4 im 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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