Confounded by memory.
I. IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE CONFOUNDED BY MEMORY.
1. Memory of sin. We desire to forget our sin; but even if no recording angel wrote it down in the books of Divine judgment, the tooth of conscience would bite the memory of it into the very fibre of our hearts. We may succeed in drowning the hideous recollection for a time, but it seems to be proved that the forgotten past may be revived, and that all our life may be brought to mind in an awful flash of recollection, as in the experience of drowning men, or as we all find in the unexpected reminders of old associations suddenly encountered. When our hideous old sins thus glare upon our startled gaze, surely we must be confounded!
2. Memory of mercy. We may not note the favours of providence with which we are daily visited, and we may be accepting them with ingratitude and even abusing them with disobedience. But some day the goodness of God in our past will rise up in memory and accuse our ill reception of it.
3. Memory of opportunity. When the day of service is past and the night wherein no man can work has fallen upon us, it will be useless to plead our lack of opportunity for following God. Many a warning voice, many an appealing invitation, many an open door, many a day of grace, will confront our guilty souls.
4. Memory of the lost. If we have not been true or kind to those near to us, we shall remember the wrong, when, alas! it is too late to make amends, and the recollection will be confounding.
II. TO BE CONFOUNDED BY MEMORY WILL BE A JUST PUNISHMENT,
1. It will be a punishment. Many consequences of sin may be met with a brazen face, but not this. We may even cherish the memory of our evil past with a bad affectionateness, but when it meets us to confound us, all our bravado will be killed, and nothing will remain but shame and anguish and remorse. To be confounded means to have our career arrested, to be put to confusion, to be east down in dismay, to make shipwreck of life. When we fully face the memory of our evil past, impenitent and unpardoned, no less a result can follow. This sin is its own chastisement. The serpent of evil inflicts a deadly wound with its own fangs. There is no necessity for heavenly thunderbolts to dash the sinner to destruction. No demon tormentors need be summoned from Tartarus to torture his guilty soul. His own memory will strike him, his own thoughts will burn and tear and rack his miserable conscience. "Unnatural seeds do breed unnatural troubles."
2. This punishment will be just. It will be the direct consequence of sin. There can be no pretence that the accusation is false. No man can set up the plea of an alibi against the charges of his own memory. Here is a witness who cannot be upset by the most rigorous cross-examination, nor discredited by the bitterest opprobrium. Accused by his own memory, the sinner cannot but be speechless. There is no conceivable escape when the court of justice is a man's own breast and when witnesses, judge, jury, and executioner are all found in his own thoughts.
"To be left alone
And face to face with my own crime, had been
Just retribution."
(Longfellow.)
These terrible thoughts are not written to drive us mad, but to urge us to amendment. When there is no door of escape from the awful chamber of self-judgment the great necessity is to seek a new heart and a Divine pardon that we may never be "confounded by memory."