3I2 THE OLIVE LEAF, CHAP. 



our sins ; they are buried in the channel of Christ's 

 pardoning grace, and can no more rise in judgment 

 against us. But we know they are there still ; they have 

 entered into our memory and into the substance of our 

 being, and the recollection of them will follow us 

 through all our life. Things cannot be obliterated or 

 abolished ; they remain, and the record of them remains 

 for ever. The memorial of Adam's transgression re- 

 mained in the curse on the ground ; the memorial of 

 Abraham's unbelieving laughter remained in the name 

 of his son Isaac ; the memorial of Jacob's deceitfulness 

 remained in his halting step ; the memorial of David's 

 crime remained in the sword that hung suspended over 

 his house ; and when Jesus finished the work which His 

 Father had given Him to do, and passed into the glory 

 which He had with the Father before the world was, 

 neither did He leave behind the memorial of the sins 

 which He bore for us. We see it still in the wounds of 

 the cross which mark His glorified body in the midst of 

 the throne a lamb as it had been slain. And so we 

 carry in the depths of our being the memorials of the 

 sins which God has forgiven ; we bear their conse- 

 quences, if they have been translated into outer deeds, 

 in our lives. But while there is thus no obliteration of 

 the past, while there is no Lethe of forgetfulness flowing 

 for man on earth, and even in heaven we cannot forget 

 the sins for which the Lord of glory was slain, and a 

 sinner's experience must be ours for evermore ; still the 

 waves of the river that maketh glad the city of our God 

 flow over our sins, hide them from view, and separate 



