What if, while it restored not thy former innocence, it
brought thee a purity by the side of whose white splendour and
inward preciousness, the innocence thou hadst lost was but a bauble,
being but a thing that turned to dross in the first furnace of its
temptation? Innocence is indeed priceless--that innocence which God
counteth innocence, but thine was a flimsy show, a bit of polished
and cherished glass--instead of which, if thou repentest, thou shalt
in thy jewel-box find a diamond. Is thy purity, O fair Psyche of the
social world, upon whose wings no spattering shower has yet cast an
earthy stain, and who knowest not yet whether there be any such
thing as repentance or need of the same!--is thy purity to compare
with the purity of that heavenly Psyche, twice born, who even now in
the twilight-slumbers of heaven, dreams that she washes with her
tears the feet of her Lord, and wipes them with the hairs of her
head? O bountiful God, who wilt give us back even our innocence
tenfold! He can give an awaking that leaves the past of the soul ten
times farther behind than ever waking from sleep left the dreams of
the night.
"If the potency of that awaking lay in the inrush of a new billow of
life, fresh from its original source, carrying with it an
enlargement of the whole nature and its every part, a glorification
of every faculty, every sense even, so that the man, forgetting
nothing of his past or its shame, should yet cry out in the joy of
his second birth: 'Lo! I am a new man; I am no more he who did that
awful and evil thing, for I am no more capable of doing it! God be
praised, for all is well!'--would not such an awaking send the past
afar into the dim distance of the first creation, and wrap the ill
deed in the clean linen cloth of forgiveness, even as the dull
creature of the sea rolls up the grain of intruding sand in the
lovely garment of a pearl? Such an awaking means God himself in the
soul, not disdaining closest vital company with the creature he
foresaw and created.
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