and after that a man both may and can forget.

"If any man be in Christ he is a new creature." That is literally true
even in this connection. Spiritually a man ceases to be the same person
as the one who was once so weak and unclean. He has entered a new
spiritual country.

Experience has proved all this over and over again. Men who in early
youth were wild have by the grace of God become so essentially pure as
to become capable of true and blessed experiences of love and all that
love leads to with a fine woman. But it does need the grace of God.
Those who attempt simply to forget and make light of their early
follies do not escape from them.

And why should I not boldly say the same thing--exactly the same thing--
about a woman? It is certainly true. No one seriously believes that
the redeeming grace of God, which is sufficient for all other sins,
fails before this one. No one who has understood Christ doubts that He
can make a new woman, and a pure and noble woman, out of one who has
stumbled. And yet curiously society has never learnt to forgive women.
A man is allowed to forget the things which are behind. Generally a
woman is compelled to remember them till the very end. I shall never
forget being once at a meeting of men in New York where a very great
American woman spoke to us all on this subject. She pointed out to us
that society had never learnt to control the evils of this part of life
because it had never learnt to adopt the method of Jesus, which was
frank and full forgiveness. We have been afraid. We have thought it
would be socially disastrous. But Jesus had no hesitation in His voice
when He said to a penitent Magdalene, "Neither do I condemn thee, go
and sin no more." Of course she sinned no more. There is in all the