---

I. There is A GIFT OF FORGETFULNESS. What would this world be if it were not given us to forget — if the finger of time had no subduing, and mellowing, and obliterating touches. What a mercy is oblivion! There is not a more gracious revelation of Deity than this — "I will not remember thy sins." It is among the best offices of the Holy Ghost that He can teach us to forget. There are many to whom the greatest lesson which they have to learn in the school of grace is to forget. You should not remember what God has forgotten. But here is our comfort — that if we will let the Spirit work in our hearts, He will secure at once the right memory and the right forgetfulness.

II. A GIFT OF MEMORY.

1. Who has not to lament over his religious forgetfulness? Sermons, conversations, which were so interesting and so useful; hymns once learnt; passages of Scriptures, impressions, thoughts and feelings, which seemed engraven upon the mind as with a pen of iron — how have they effaced themselves? What would it be if everything which once lived in our souls were living there now? And if it be really an attribute of the Holy Ghost to bring all these things back again, and not to allow anything to die which was indeed the voice of Christ, what a possession that Spirit must be! And yet, what else can these words mean?

2. There is no doubt that a strong memory is a natural endowment. And he that has it has a wonderful power. But it is a gift — he could not help it. But that with which we have now to deal is something different. It is the prerogative of the Spirit to help the memory on all sacred subjects. And if upon sacred subjects then on all. For if that faculty of the mind be strengthened and increased in one department, surely it cannot fail to be improved in every other, for all memory is one.

(1) Did you never know a verse of the Bible, which had been lying dormant in your mind for a long time, awake and come to you with a power and a vividness which quite surprised you? And it, strangely appropriate, just fits the circumstances in which you find yourself, and the state of your own mind. If it had been made for you it could not have suited you better. What is this but the Holy Ghost fulfilling His own mission.

(2) Or there is a passage in the Bible with which you are very familiar — but today it stands out in such a new light, and carries such a power, never felt before, that it strikes upon you like a new creation. And yet you have read it hundreds of times — no verse more common. Then why is it so salient now? It is memory illuminated by the Holy Ghost.

(3) Or, it may be no written word at all. Years and years back, Christ spoke to you by an impression. The rough contact of ten thousand things in this rude world has long since trodden it out. You are now as if that good impression had never been. Why is it there again today so distinct and loud? Did you call it up? What has raised it from those sleeping places? I know but one answer — He who quickens all buried things, He who raises dead Christs out of the graves of our dull hearts is bringing back the things of Christ to you.

(4) Or, it may not be even as much as this. Who has not felt the mysterious power of association? It may be the smallest possible thing that evokes it — a breath of wind, a colour, the scent of a flower, the accent of a note. But it will make you go through chapters of existence. And what if all these recovered links of being are the waftings of the Spirit's wing, verifying the promise of Jesus.

(J. Vaughan, M. A.)

---

---

KJV: These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

WEB: I have said these things to you, while still living with you.