^ A man who had stolen the pyx, and got frightened when justice was at his heels, might feel the sort of penitence which
^ F. Paget, The Spirit of Discipline, 51.
• John Kelman, The Faith of Robert Louis Stevenson, 236,
246 SORROW
would induce him to run back in the dark and lay the pyx where the sexton might find it ; but if in doing so he whispered to the Blessed Virgin that he was moved by considering the sacredness of all property, and the peculiar sacredness of the pyx, it is not to be believed that she would like him the better for it. Indeed, one often seems to see why the saints should prefer candles to words, especially from penitents whose skin is in danger.^
^ The Spartan lad was taught that there was no wrong in anything he did, but that the wrong was in being found out. Consequently, when one lad had stolen a white pet fox, and hid it imder his tunic, he allowed the fox to gnaw into his very breast, and yet made no sign. The theft of the fox was nothing, but being found out was everything ! Eegret for the consequences of sin, or the exposure of sin, or the penalties of sin, is no real element of a godly repentance.^
II
Godly Sorrow.
"Godly sorrow" is, literally rendered, "sorrow according to God," which may mean either sorrow which has reference to God, or sorrow which is in accordance with His will — that is to say, which is pleasing to Him ; for if it is the former, it will be the latter. God sees sin not in its consequences, but in itself — a thing infinitely evil, even if the consequences were happiness to the guilty instead of misery. So sorrow according to God is to see sin as God sees it. The grief of Peter was as bitter as that of Judas. He went out and wept bitterly ; how bitterly none can tell but they who have learned to look on sin as God does. But in Peter's grief there was an element of hope ; and that sprang precisely from this — that he saw God in it all. Despair of self did not lead to despair of God.
We are all of us quite ready to say, " I have done wrong many a time " ; but there are some of us who hesitate to take the other step, and say, " I have done sin." Sin has for its correlative God. If there is no God there is no sin. There may be faults, there may be failures, there may be transgressions, breaches of the moral law, things done inconsistent with man's nature and constitution,
* George Eliot, Felix Holt. ' h- T- Pierson, Foundation Truths, 10,
2 COR. VII. lo 247
and so on ; but if there be a God, then we have personal relations to that Person and His law; and when we break His law it is more than crime; it is more than fault; it is more than transgression; it is more than wrong; it is sin. It is when we lift the shutter off conscience, and let the light of God rush in upon our hearts and consciences, that we have the wholesome sorrow that worketh repentance and salvation and life.
^ I had offered to let my Dearest be free of me, and of any virtual engagement she might think there was; but she would not hear of it, not of that, the Noble Soul ; but stood resolved to share my dark lot along with me, be [it] what it might. Alas, her love was never known completely to me, and how celestial it was, till I had lost her ! " Oh for one five-minutes more of her," I have often said, since April last, " to tell her with what perfect love, and admiration as of the beautif ullest of known human souls, I did intrinsically always regard her ! " But all minutes of the time are irrevocably past : — be wise, all ye living, and remember that time passes and does not return ! ^
^ In the first week in May (about a fortnight after his wife's tragically sudden death) Carlyle, who had hitherto desired to be left alone, sent me a message that he would like to see me. He came down to me into the library in his dressing-gown, haggard and as if turned to stone. He had scarcely slept, he said, since the funeral. He could not " cry." He was stunned and stupefied. He had never realized the possibility of losing her. He had settled that he would die first, and now she was gone. From this time and onwards, as long as he was in town, I saw him almost daily. He was looking through her papers, her notebooks and journals, and old scenes came mercilessly back to him in vistas of mournful memory. In his long sleepless nights, he recognized too late what she had felt and suffered under his childish irritabilities. His faults rose up in remorseless judgment, and as he had thought too little of them before, so now he exaggerated them to himself in his helpless repentance. For such faults an atonement was due, and to her no atonement could now be made. He remem- bered, however, Johnson's penance at Uttoxeter; not once, but many times, he told me that something like that was required from him, if he could see his way to it. " Oh ! " he cried, again and again, " if I could but see her once more, were it but for five minutes, to let her know that I always loved her through all