Godliness | Page 5

of my warfare against God; I know I ought to cut off this right
hand, and pluck out this right eye." They are convinced of sin, but they
go no further. That is not repentance. They live this week as they did
last. There is no response to the Spirit; they resist the Holy Ghost.
Neither is repentance mere sorrow for sin. I have seen people weep
bitterly, and writhe and struggle, but yet hug on to their idols, and in
vain you try to shake them from them. Oh! if Jesus Christ would have
saved them with those idols, they would have no objection at all. If
they could have got through the strait gate with this one particular idol,
they would have gone through long since; but to part with that--that is
another thing. Such people will weep like your stubborn child, when
you want him to do something which he does not want to do. He will

cry, and when you apply the rod he will cry harder, but he will not
yield. When he yields, he becomes a penitent; but, until he does, he is
merely a convicted sinner. When God applies the rod of His Spirit, the
rod of His providence, the rod of His Word, sinners will cry, and wince,
and whine, and make you believe they are praying, and want to be
saved, but all the while they are holding their necks as stiff as iron.
They will not submit. The moment they submit, they become true
penitents, and get saved. There is no mistake more common than for
people to suppose they are penitents when they are not. There are some
of you in this condition, I know. I am afraid you are quite
mistaken--you are not penitents. God is true though every man should
be a liar; and, if you had sought, as you say you have, and perhaps,
think you have; if you had been sincere and honest with God, you
would have been saved years ago. Oh! may God, the Holy Spirit, help
you to come out and be HONEST. That is what God wants--that you be
honest. "Oh," says He, "why cover ye my altar with tears, and bring
your vain oblations? Just be honest, and I will be honest with you and
bless you; but while you come before Me and weep and profess, and
bring the halt, and the maimed, and the blind, a curse be upon you." He
looks at you afar off. Be honest. Repentance is not mere sorrow for sin.
You may be ever so sorry, and all the way down to death be hugging on
to some forbidden possession, as was the young ruler. That is not
repentance.
Neither is repentance a promise that you will forsake sin in the future.
Oh! if it were, there would be many penitents here to-night. There is
scarcely a poor drunkard that does not promise, in his own mind, or to
his poor wife, or somebody, that he will forsake his cups. There is
scarcely any kind of a sinner that does not continually promise that he
will give up his sin, and serve God, but he does not do it.
Then what is _repentance_? _Repentance is simply renouncing
sin_--turning round from darkness to light--from the power of Satan
unto God. This is giving up sin in your heart, in purpose, in intention,
in desire, resolving that you will give up every evil thing, and DO IT
NOW. Of course, this involves sorrow, for how will any sane man turn
himself round from a given course into another, if he does not repent

having taken that course? It implies, also, hatred of, sin. He hates the
course he formerly took, and turns round from it. He is like the prodigal,
when he sat in the swine-yard amongst the husks and the filth, he fully
resolved, and at last he acts. He went, and that was the test of his
penitence! He might have sat resolving and promising till now, if he
had lived as long, and he would never have got the father's kiss, the
father's welcome, if he had not started; but he went. He left the filth, the
swine-yard, the husks--he trampled them under his feet; he left the
citizen of that country, and gave up all his subterfuges and excuses, and
went to his father honestly, and said, "I have sinned!" which implied a
great deal more in his language then than it does in ours now. "I have
sinned against Heaven, and before thee;" and then comes the proof of
his submission, "and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me
as one of thy hired servants"--put me in a stable, or set me to clean the
boots, so that