The shadows that rest at times on that part of
marriage even for some very happy lovers are due to the fact that the
man (or sometimes the woman) was once involved in something else before
that was a little like it, and yet was haunted then by a sense of
wrong-doing and so could not have a perfect experience. It is only to
the pure that _all_ things are pure.
But it is _not_ true that the past need dog and spoil the future. It is
not true that sin is irremediable, nor that its stains remain for ever.
The essential and central thing in Christianity is the assertion that
there is a remedy for the situation that sin creates.
I do not think there is any remedy to be found in simply trying to
ignore the past--or in saying that our aberrations were only those of
ninety per cent. of mankind, and were so natural as to be not worth
bothering about. In such ways we may push the past out of sight, but we
do not deal with it. It remains there though out of sight. For the fact
is that such sayings do not quite convince us, and therefore they
cannot kill the past.
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