(1) It is an act of will. — Eepentance is not primarily a species of feeling, but an act of will. I want again and again to
^ John WatsoB. • Williiim Forbe*. ' Gipsy Smith.
ST. MARK 85
say that a man can repent with dry eyes. There may be much weeping and no repentance ; there may be real penitence where there are no tears. The tears may come in the later day ; at the moment of the turning the eyes may be undimmed. Some day I shall come to know how deeply I wounded my Saviour, and the thought may unseal the fountain of tears. Some day I shall know how terrible was my waste of the years, and I shall weep in the irreparable loss. But the first act of all penitence is to turn the back on sin and the face to the Lord. The beginning of all fulness is to be found in a sense of want. The perception of unlikeness to the Lord is the beginning of assimilation. And if I lack this sense of want let me turn to the Word of God. Let me take the commandments, and lay my soul against their measures. And then let me turn to the beatitudes, and estimate my life by their exalted demands. And let me turn to the life of the Master Himself, and accompany Him through His days ; and at every turning let me put my soul beside His, and I shall be unlike all others if at the end of the journey I do not feel myself a child of spiritual poverty, craving for the grace and fulness of Christ. " God, be merciful to me, a sinner ! "
(2) It is a TnoverMnt of the whole being. — The late Dr. Bright defined repentance as " a thorough-going movement of the whole being away from sin and towards the love and service of God." And I ask you to note these words — "a thorough- going movement of the whole being." Eepentance knows no half-measures. It is not the correction of this little failing or that little failing. It is not patch-work. It is renovation of the whole state, and the whole nature, and the whole personality — renovation through and through, and out and out. That is what Bishop Wilson meant when he wrote, " There is no repentance where there is no change of heart." That is what Martin Luther meant when he spoke of repentance as " a real bettering and change of the entire life." That is what St. Paul meant in his doctrine of the " new creature." This is what the Saviour meant when He said to men, " Change your mind" — not merely change your actions or your habits, but your mind, your thoughts, your aims, your inner attitude, your very self. "Look to thy repentance," writes Kichard Baxter
86 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
"that it be deep and absolute, and free from hypocritical exceptions and reserves." ^
^ I know some very excellent brethren — would God there were more like them in zeal and love — who, in their zeal to preach up simple faith in Christ, have felt a little difficulty about the matter of repentance; and I have known some of them who have tried to get over the difficulty by softening down the apparent hardness of the word repentance, by expounding it according to its more usual Greek equivalent, a word which occurs in the original of the text, and signifies " to change one's mind." Apparently they interpret repentance to be a somewhat slighter thing than we usually conceive it to be, a mere change of mind, in fact. Now, allow me to suggest to those dear brethren, that the Holy Ghost never preaches repentance as a trifle ; and the change of mind or understanding of which the gospel speaks is a very deep and solemn work, and must not on any account be depreciated. Moreover, there is another word which is also used in the original Greek for repentance, — not so often, I admit, but still it is used, — which signifies " an after-care," a word which has in it something more of sorrow and anxiety than that which signifies changing one's mind. There must be sorrow for sin and hatred of it in true repentance, or else I have read my Bible to little purpose. In very truth, I think, there is no necessity for any other definition than that of the children's hymn —
Eepentance is to leave
The sins we loved before,
And show that we in earnest grieve,
By doing so no more.
To repent does mean a change of mind ; but then it is a thorough change of the understanding and all that is in the mind, so that it includes an illumination, an illumination of the Holy Spirit; and I think it includes a discovery of iniquity and a hatred of it, without which there can hardly be a genuine repentance.^
2. Belief. — "Believe in the gospel." What is this? I suppose it to be assent to the truth as true, and then a personal trust in the influence and result of this truth. It is to turn from sin and to trust the promises of God in Christ for present and eternal salvation. He who thus trusts, honours God's truth, magnifies God's Son, and is saved. And yet people come to me almost every day, saying, " I am trying to trust." Suppose I should go to one of my friends who is the teller of a bank, with ^ F. Homes Duddon, ^ C. H. Spurgeon.