Our past sins—they, in their issue—are in us still. If we have not truly turned from them to Him, who can "restore to us the very years which the canker-worm hath eaten," they are in us in all their bitterness and guilt. And if, of God's mercy, we have indeed come and received, as we most surely may, pardon and healing beneath the cross of Christ our Master, still, in one sense, are they with us. For we are the result of all our past minutes; and those sins, therefore, unless they have, through the blessed working of the Spirit of all grace, become the occasions of a deeper penitence and a simpler casting of ourselves on Him, are still with us as losses in the sum of our lives. But for them we might have been holier than we are, and therefore happier, as well as stronger in the blessed power of serving worthily before God our Father.

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