“He did take them, Mrs Tomkins; and you’ll see them again soon.”
“But, if He never forgets anything——”
“I didn’t say that. I think He can do what He pleases. And if He pleases to forget anything, then He can forget it. And I think that is what He does with our sins—that is, after He has got them away from us, once we are clean from them altogether. It would be a dreadful thing if He forgot them before that, and left them sticking fast to us and defiling us. How then should we ever be made clean?—What else does the prophet Isaiah mean when he says, ‘Thou hast cast my sins behind Thy back?’ Is not that where He does not choose to see them any more? They are not pleasant to Him to think of any more than to us. It is as if He said—‘I will not think of that any more, for my sister will never do it again,’ and so He throws it behind His back.”
“They ARE good words, sir. I could not bear Him to think of me and my sins both at once.”
I could not help thinking of the words of Macbeth, “To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.”
The old woman lay quiet after this, relieved in mind, though not in body, by the communication she had made with so much difficulty, and I hastened home to send some coals and other things, and then call upon Dr Duncan, lest he should not know that his patient was so much worse as I had found her.
From Dr Duncan’s I went to see old Samuel Weir, who likewise was ailing. The bitter weather was telling chiefly upon the aged. I found him in bed, under the old embroidery. No one was in the room with him. He greeted me with a withered smile, sweet and true, although no flash of white teeth broke forth to light up the welcome of the aged head.
“Are you not lonely, Mr Weir?”
“No, sir. I don’t know as ever I was less lonely. I’ve got my stick, you see, sir,” he said, pointing to a thorn stick which lay beside him.
“I do not quite understand you,” I returned, knowing that the old man’s gently humorous sayings always meant something.