' Carlyle, Reminiscences, ii, 168,
248 SORROW
that. She never did know it, never." If he could but see her again ! His heart seemed breaking as he said it.^
1. This sorrow is awakened by considerations that have respect to God as good and gracious. Its burden is not, " I have incurred the wrath of an angry God," but, " I have displeased and grieved my Father, my Saviour." Hence it is a sorrow for sin as such. It is not the thought of the penalty that oppresses, but of the fault itself, as a thing against God. It is not the father's frown, but the father's grieved look, that melts and subdues the offending child. Hence this sorrow is a real contrition, a broken- ness of heart. Hence it is a self abhorring and a shame ; its thought is, "Oh how could I have so displeased my God and Father, how sinful have I been, how weak and wayward is my heart ! " Hence the longing and the cry of this sorrow is to be delivered from the power and pollution of sin. While it sues for pardon it supplicates for cleansing. Therefore it is a reclaiming sorrow, it brings back the soul to God and holiness.
Law and the fear of hell may startle into sorrow, and even lead to some kind of repentance. But it is the great power of Christ's love and sacrifice that will really melt the heart into true repentance. You may hammer ice to pieces, but it is ice still. You may bray a fool in a mortar, and his folly will not depart from him. Dread of punishment may pulverize the heart, but not change it ; and each fragment, like the smallest bit of a magnet, will have the same characteristics as the whole mass. But " the goodness of God leads to repentance," as the prodigal is conquered and sees the true hideousness of the swine's trough when he bethinks himself of the father's love.
^ My husband's eldest sister writes : — " Father was apt to be very strict, and would punish disobedience or other wrongdoing very heavily. But the rod never brought my brother Tom to repentance ; he would stand any flogging without giving in, and father had to try another way. He had only to say, ' Tom, I see grey hairs on your mother's head, and they are caused by your bad conduct,' to bring the lad to sorrowful tears." ^
^ Fix in your minds — or rather ask God to fix in your minds — this one idea of an absolutely good God ; good with all forms
^ J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle : lAfe in London, ii. 322.
* E. M. Champness, Th* Life-Story of Thomas Champness, 19,
2 COR. VII. lo 249
of goodness which you respect and love in man ; good as you, and I, and every honest man, understand the plain word good. Slowly you will acquire that grand and all-illuminating idea; slowly and most imperfectly at best : for who is mortal man that he should conceive and comprehend the goodness of the infinitely good God ! But see, then, whether, in the light of that one idea, all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relation of God to man; whether Providence, Prayer, Inspiration, Eevelation, the Incarnation, the Passion, and the final triumph of the Son of God — whether all these, I say, do not seem to you, not merely beautiful, not merely probable, but rational, and logical, and necessary, moral consequences from the one idea of an Absolute and Eternal Goodness, the living Parent of the Universe.^
2. " Godly sorrow worketh repentance." What is repentance ? A ready answer is, Eepentance is sorrow for sin ; but clearly this text draws a distinction between the two. There are very few of the great key-words of Christianity which have suffered more violent and unkind treatment, and have been more obscured by misunderstandings, than this great word. It has been weakened down into penitence, which, in the ordinary acceptation, means simply a regretful sense of our own evil. And it has been still further docked and degraded, both in its syllables and in its substance, into penance. But the " repentance " of the New Testament and of the Old Testament — one of the twin conditions of salvation — is neither sorrow for sin nor works of restitution and satisfaction, but it is, as the word distinctly expresses, a change of purpose in regard to the sin for which a man mourns.
Eepentance is a principle of life, a new posture of mind, a new attitude toward God, a new attitude toward sin, a new attitude toward salvation. Feeling is not to be mistaken for repentance. There may be feeling that does not lead to repentance, and there may be repentance that is preceded by very little feeling. If you want to go from one room to another, it is important you should leave one room behind you and enter into the other, but it matters not how you get from one to the other, so long as you get there. And the great thing is this : if you have been living in sin, you want to get out of sin into God ; and by what means or with what feeling you get out is of comparatively little consequence, so long as you get out. Eepentance is the leaving - Charles Kingsley : Letters and Memories, ii. 310.