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Like Fear, like Hope, like Love, like Conscience, Memory has a place, a large place, in the heart, in the life, and therefore in the gospel. Whose to-day is not the product of a number of yesterdays? Whose present is not the very fruit and harvest of his past? We should expect that this thing — call it faculty, gift, talent, infliction, or what you will — would have a place, and it has a large place, in Revelation; for Revelation is nothing else than God speaking to man as he is, and calling him to something of which he has in him already the capability and the germ. God Himself ascribes to Himself memory; speaks of remembering, and remembering not; speaks of remembering man's sorrows and His own mercy; speaks of that other faculty, the reverse of memory, the power of forgetting, which is a more Divine faculty still, when it is exercised, as in the mind and heart of God, in so putting away a man's sins that He remembers them no more. And God bids man exercise memory; bids him remember his own sins, and be ashamed, bids him remember God's commandments, and set himself to obey; bids him remember his last end, and make preparation: bids him remember death, judgment, and eternity, and the great gulf fixed.

1. Remember, we will say first, God's dealings with thee. O, it is not philosophy, it is mere commonplace vulgar infidelity, which makes any of us doubt whether God has been about our path and about our journey in the time past of our life. If we have not seen Him, it is the worse for us.

2. Remember the opportunities, seized or neglected, with which God in the past has furnished and endowed you. Who can think of his school-days, and not reproach himself bitterly with neglects, now irreparable, of instructions and influences which might have altered the very complexion of his life? Who can remember his friends, and not mourn over evil done and good left undone? And when we pass from these outward gifts to such as are altogether spiritual; when we think of the Word of God, and His House, and His Ministry, and His Sacraments; then, there is a solemnity, an awfulness, even as it is heard in this life, in the charge, "Son, remember."

3. Remember the blessings God has showered upon thee.

(Dean Vaughan.)

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KJV: There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:

WEB: "Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day.