The Confession of Memory
I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.” — Psalm XXXVII. 25.
Who is the “I” that speaks with such confidence? Nobody knows. It is someone unseen by history — below the level of fame. Perhaps it was a poor seamstress in a garret; perhaps it was an invalid upon the couch ot pain; perhaps it was a breaker of stones by the roadside. Whoever it was he has become immortal. Doubtless, when he wrote he had not thought of being heard beyond the next street; it reads very like a letter of condolence to a distressed neighbour. But the angels caught it up, and therefore the press caught it up. It became a song for all nights. No wonder. It has a note of quite special music. Many have uttered songs of faith, but this is not a song of faith, it is a song ot retrospect; it is the retrospect of an obscure man, a nobody, and that is its value. It claims no authority but experience; it appeals to no testimony but fact, not even God’s testimony. It quotes neither Moses nor the prophets; it just gives an autobiography without a date and without a name.
My brothers, why have we so few autobiographies of the common plain! We have societies for collecting strange testimonies. We gather the record of apparitions. We invite the narration of fulfilled dreams. We solicit the disclosure of foretold events. Why do we not ask common men to give their experience of every-day life! We have our confessions of faith; why have we not our confessions of memory! You ask me to sign my belief in a plan of salvation. Perhaps I may demur to do so; the universe may be too big for me to see it round and round. But I shall not refuse to sign the confession of my own memory; I shall not refuse to say, “I have always found God good to me’’ There are few of us, even the most forlorn, who would not rather live than die. That itself is a confession of memory — the confession that God is good. Be this our bond of creed, my brothers; we shall leave the rest to hope, but we shall put our sign to memory. Hope may flicker, for an hour it may even expire; but memory is stereotyped; it is a fact; it is a monument; it is unaffected by clouds; it is independent of night or day. I may lose the star of to-morrow, but not the green patch of yesterday. No progress can wash away that record of the past, “I have not seen the righteous forsaken.”