Psalms 44:1 - Homiletics

The blessing of memory: a commemoration sermon.

"We have heard," etc. Memory is the thread which binds life together. A failing memory is one of the saddest infirmities of old age. Yet there is often this compensation—that the long-distant past is well remembered. The old man forgets what weather it was yesterday, but the sunny birthdays and snowy Christmas Days of childhood live in his memory. The old house, the old frees and voices, the old joys and sorrows, the lessons that sank into his heart in childhood are with him still. Suppose the reverse possible—that one had a clear memory of even the least occurrences of the last few weeks or mouths, but no memory of things long ago; no associations clinging, binding him to old scenes, old friends; not so much as an old prejudice;—what a shallow, mechanical, uninteresting life his would be! There are common memories as well as individual; household words, family traditions, public and national history, sacred heritages of former generations. One of the most precious possessions of mankind is the knowledge and remembrance of the past.

I. THE DUTY AND BENEFIT OF REMEMBERING THE PAST iS taught in the most impressive way in the Bible. Its whole structure is historical. Alone among books, it professes to trace an unbroken line of family history from the first human being to the beginning of the Christian era; ending in him who is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Its deepest and greatest lessons are bound up with the lives, the examples, the prayers, the spiritual experience of men who loved and feared God thousands of years ago. What could make up for the loss, if we could forget the faith of Abraham, the Laws of Moses, the Psalms of David? But the lives of these and other spiritual heroes are but links in the history of a great spiritual community—the Church of God. Christians, St. Paul tells us, are children of Abraham. The gospel itself is history. Our Saviour consecrated this principle when he said, "Do this in remembrance of me."

II. FORGETFULNESS OF THE PAST MEANS IGNORANCE OF GOD 'S DEALINGS . His most wonderful works and glorious manifestations. The great law of God's creation, providence, and grace is that the present grows out of the past, and is the root and seed of the future. The watchword of modern philosophy, " evolution ," has been used as a sort of conjuring word to get rid of God; to show how the universe may dispense with a Creator. But Scripture is full of evolution in the truest and highest sense, viz. the unfolding of God's purpose, the development of Divine thought and love. "Evolution" means "unfolding" or "out-folding." Nothing can be unfolded that has not been folded up. The plan, order, beauty, unity, life, happiness, of this wonderful universe could not be folded up in atoms of fiery gas, which after millions of years come out still as unchanged atoms of gas. They could be folded up nowhere but in a mind able to see the end from the beginning, and in the beginning to prepare for every following step and stage. What is true of God's works in creation is true of his providential government of men and of nations; and equally true of his grace ( Ephesians 1:4 ; Ephesians 3:9 ).

III. FORGETFULNESS OF THE PAST IS GREAT INGRATITUDE . True, we suffer for the faults and follies of our ancestors; but they conquered for us a rich inheritance. Who can reckon what we owe to the men who invented letters, figures, the plough, the loom, the anvil, the ship? Where should we be to-day without the mariner's compass, the printing-press, the steam-engine? So in spiritual things. What do we owe to the evangelists for the four Gospels; to St. Paul and the other apostles for their Epistles; to the translators of the Scriptures; to reformers, preachers, sacred poets, writers? Ungrateful forgetfulness and consequent undervaluing of the past is one of the dangers and faults of our age. We are in little peril of the Chinese superstition—worshipping our ancestors. Men's eyes turn feverishly to the future. What is old is set down as antiquated, obsolete, worn-out. In the wonderful movement, amazing discoveries, manifold progress of our day, we are apt to forget that our ancestors sowed, or at least ploughed, where we reap; and made the roads along which we travel, and the ladders by which we climb. If language, institutions, art, science, industry, had to make a fresh start with each generation, life would never rise above barbarism.

CONCLUSION . There is a sense in which it is well to forget the past—its failures, so far as they would discourage; its achievements, so far as they would content us ( Philippians 3:13 , Philippians 3:14 ). We are not to dwell among the tombs; not to resemble a man carrying a looking-glass before him, which reflects only what is behind, and hides his path; but we are to converse with the past, that we may learn thankfulness ( Psalms 103:2 ), humility ( Job 15:7 ), courage ( James 5:17 ), wisdom ( 1 Corinthians 10:11 ), faith and hope ( Psalms 77:10 , Psalms 77:11 ; Psalms 48:14 ).