Repeat Performance

There is a sentence currently quoted which says that “Everytime history repeats itself it does so at a higher price.” This would surely seem to be so, for with each repeat performance there are more people and more complexities. But this could well call for a question: Does history have to repeat itself?
The feeling that a man must inevitably repeat his own errors—or that mankind must—is founded on a false philosophy—for the Lord God meant men to be free, and did not place them in a pattern in which they must repeat past errors.
Indeed, it is for improving upon the past that we have the principle of repentance. If this were not so, there would be little point in the efforts of any of us to change our lives.
No one expects perfection of people. But with repentance and improvement, history need not repeat itself as to its undesirable aspects—nor need we personally repeat our own past errors.
And this is a time for each of us individually, and for all of us collectively, to keep some history from repeating itself at a higher price. It requires discipline, work, and an honest wanting to; the overcoming of appetites, of attitudes, of indolence; the will to conquer self as well as adverse outside influences.
He who has turned down a wrong road must turn back, or history will repeat itself undesirably so far as he is concerned. He who has an enslaving habit must break it, or history will repeat itself adversely so far as he is concerned.
There is always the struggle and the striving. There is always opposition in all things, of light and darkness, of good and evil, of truth and error, with the right and responsibility of choice. This is part of the price of freedom.
And always blessedly there is the principle of repentance, with the promise that history need not repeat itself at a higher price, if men will repent, personally and publicly, and change the course and the consequences. But it takes the will and the wanting to, as suggested by these words of an old hymn, with their meaningful message:

Know this, that every soul is free
To choose his life and what he’ll be,
For this eternal truth is given
That God will force no man to heaven.

He’ll call, persuade, direct aright,
And bless with wisdom, love, and light,
In nameless ways be good and kind,
But never force the human mind.