We bring to renewed life old revenges, ancient hates, and revel again amid scenes of impurity which can never be re-enacted in real life. Such acts, frequently indulged, grow into a habit, and the habit becomes necessity when the memory not only easily and naturally reverts to those events and conditions of the past that were bound up with sin, but becomes so trained that it must recall the evil, and can only with great stress, difficulty, and distaste be made to recall that which is good.
If, on the other hand, by persistent acts of will we force the memory to recall the righteous passages from our past, far-off happenings sweet and holy, we, little by little, train it to retain these righteous things, while all other impressions grow more and more dim as the years go by.
Those who have practised such methods find that after a time the memory, even when left alone, will engage itself with that which is good, just because it has become accustomed to it, and will reject the evil (in many cases, of itself, without the direct interposition of the will), because long exercise has so trained it that in its ordinary operation evil memories are repugnant to it.
Therefore keep the memory definitely busy. Too often when we think it is browsing, as it were, carelessly among the fields of the past, it is, as a matter of fact, being subtly directed by Satan, until, ere we know it, it has fallen upon some evil thing whose touch is poison.
III. Guiding the Imagination
So likewise with the imagination. Perhaps no human faculty is responsible for so much sin, and there is a peculiar heinousness in sins of the imagination. In His mercy God has limited our sphere of sin. There are certain evils impossible for us because He has withheld us from the condition necessary for their commission.
Instead, therefore, of being grateful for such a blessed limitation, we use the imagination to conjure up impossible situations. We create new worlds for ourselves, new theatres for our exploits of pride and wickedness, and in them, through will and imagination, we enact the sin that it would be impossible to commit in our actual external lives.
This strong activity of the imagination can and must be directed. If this mysterious faculty be so prone to produce its own creations, if we indeed will dream of things that do not belong to the present moment, let them be holy things.
Yes, let the imagination run as fast as it will, check it in nothing save in the subjects of its activity. Let it transport us to heavenly places. Let it picture to our astonished vision the things that will be hereafter, the company of heaven, the companionship of the Saints, the glory of the Lamb.