Let us remember where we
were foiled, in order that we may be the more careful of that place
hereafter. If we know that upon any road we fell into ambushes, 'not
once nor twice,' like the old king of Israel, we should guard ourselves
against passing by that road again. He who has not learned, by the
memory of his past failures, humility and wise government of his life,
and wise avoidance of places where he is weak, is an incurable fool.

But let us forget our failures in so far as these might paralyse our
hopes, or make us fancy that future success is impossible where past
failures frown. Ebenezer was a field of defeat before it rang with the
hymns of victory. And there is no place in your past life where you have
been shamefully baffled and beaten, but there, and in that, you may yet
be victorious. Never let the past limit your hopes of the possibilities
and your confidence in the certainties and victories of the future. And
if ever you are tempted to say to yourselves, 'I have tried it so often,
and so often failed, that it is no use trying it any more. I am beaten
and I throw up the sponge,' remember Paul's wise exhortation, and
'forgetting the things that are behind . . . press toward the mark.'

In like manner I would say, remember and yet forget past successes and
achievements. Remember them for thankfulness, remember them for hope,
remember them for counsel and instruction, but forget them when they
tend, as all that we accomplish does tend, to make us fancy that little
more remains to be done; and forget them when they tend, as all that we
accomplish ever does tend, to make us think that such and such things
are our line, and of other virtues and graces and achievements of
culture and of character, that these are not our line, and not to be won
by us.

'Our line!' Astronomers take a thin thread from a spider's web and
stretch it across their object glasses to measure stellar magnitudes.
Just as is the spider's line in comparison with the whole shining
surface of the sun across which it is stretched, so is what we have
already attained to the boundless might and glory of that to which we
may come. Nothing short of the full measure of the likeness of Jesus
Christ is the measure of our possibilities.

There is a mannerism in Christian life, as there is in everything else,
which is to be avoided if we would grow into perfection. There was a
great artist in the last century who never could paint a picture without