city and its
entanglement. What would we not give if only we could leave some things
behind us! What would we not do if only we could put a space between
ourselves and our past! The fetters of evil habit may be broken, but their
marks are upon us, and the feet that bore the fetters go more slowly for
them many days. The hands that have been used to grasping and holding do
not open without an effort, even though the heart has at last learned that
it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Yes, and our sins come to life again in the lives of others. The light word
that ought to have been a grave word and that shook another's good
resolution, the cool word that ought to have been a warm word and that
chilled a pure enthusiasm--we cannot have done with these things. Parents
sometimes live to see their sins of indulgence or of neglect blighting the
lives of those to whom they owed a debt of firmness and kindness. It is
iniquity at the heels. These passages of carelessness and unfaithfulness
haunt men, be their repentance never so bitter and their amendment never so
sincere and successful. But all this is for discipline and not for despair.
It casts us back upon God's mercy. It keeps the shadow of the cross upon
all our path. It has something to do with the making of 'a humble, lowly,
penitent, and obedient heart.' The memory of the irreparable is a sorrow of
the saints.

Saint, did I say? With your remembered faces,
Dear men and women whom I sought and slew!
Ah, when we mingle in the heavenly places,
How will I weep to Stephen and to you!

Only let us not be afraid nor wholly cast down. Rather let us say,
'Wherefore should I fear when the iniquity at my heels compasseth me
about?' By the grace of God the hours of the soul's sad memory and of
clinging regrets shall mean unto us a ministry of humility and a passion of
prayer. And through them God shall give us glimpses of the gateway of that
life where regret and shame and sorrow fall back unable to enter. There is
a place whither the iniquity at a man's heels can no longer follow him, and
where in the perfect life the soul, at last, is able to forget.

X.

THE WINGS OF THE DOVE

And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!
Then would I fly away, and be at rest....
I would haste me to a shelter
From the stormy wind and tempest.

Ps. lv. 6, 8.

These words are the transcript of a mood. The writer is not unfolding to us
any of the deep