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"Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old," says the prophet. The new must break the power of the old, not only in reality, but also in our memory; and one is not possible without the other. We cannot be born anew if the power of the old is not broken within us; and it is not broken so long as it puts the burden of guilt upon us. Therefore, religion, prophetic and apostolic, pronounces above all, forgiveness. Forgiveness means that the old is thrown into the past because the new has come.

Nothing is more surprising than the rise of the new within ourselves. We do not foresee or observe its growth. The new is being born in us, just when we least believe in it. It appears in remote corners of our souls which we have neglected for a long time.

The new which we sought and longed for comes to us in the moment in which we lose hope of ever finding it. That is the first thing we must say about the new: it appears when and where it chooses. We cannot force it, and we cannot calculate it.

"Behold, I am doing a new thing." "I" points to the source of the really new, to that which is always old and always new, the Eternal. The really new is that which has in itself eternal power and eternal light.

New things arise in every moment, at every place. Nothing is today as it was yesterday. But this kind of new is old almost as soon as it appears. It falls under the judgment of the Preacher: "There is no new thing under the sun." Yet sometimes a new thing appears which does not age so easily, which makes life possible again, in both our personal and our historical existence, a saving new, which has the power to appear when we least expect it, and which has the power to throw into the past what is old and burdened with curse and guilt. Its saving power is the power of the Eternal within it.