to forgive himself. Nor does it always cleanse an unclean inner life.
To many a man it has been just the fact that his fiancée or wife was so
sublimely willing and able to forgive that has revealed to him his own
unworthiness and made it sting the more.

No! there has got to be something much more drastic in our lives if we
are to get free from shame and remorse. We have got to go down into
that stony valley of humiliation where men and women face the naked
facts before their God, and stop all attempt to hide or to deceive. We
have got to stop the sophistries which are so dear to us, and through
which we try to put the blame on others, or on circumstance, or on
fate. We have got to face the fact that the evil things--whatever they
were, either small or great--happened because we were weak--because we
put pleasure before duty--because we gave in to lust, or evil
suggestion, or a craven longing to please the flesh. Yes! They happened
because we were weak, and that is a horrible thing to have to admit.
Yet admitting it is the only way to regain contact with the truth. And
what next? The next thing is that in that extremity we find God. It
might seem that He would probably be the last one to be found through
humiliation and the open admission of being impure. But in actual
experience that is how He is found. That is His way--to meet the man
who has discovered his own insufficiency--to intervene at the desperate
minute--to reveal to incarnate weakness His eternal strength--to give a
strange assurance that He Himself is about to enfold the man or woman
in His power, and tale charge of the future. And when that has happened
a man knows what to do with his past. He can leave it with God, and
then it loses at once all power to haunt him or put him to shame. It
was unclean, but the cleansing fires of the divine love have taken it
in charge, and its power is broken. That is something very different
from trying to hide it or trample upon it. That is really killing it,