latent possibility within himself—not of drinking only or of gambling, but alas! of passionately enjoying the evil thing. And this is true in a measure of all sin. The more I have been habituated to sinning, the feebler is my capacity of contrition. But even once to have sinned is to have lost once for all its ideal perfectness. It is sin, as sin, which blunts the edge, and dims the power, of penitence.

But if the perfect identification of being with righteousness which perfect consummation of penitence would necessarily mean, is ipso facto impossible to one who has sinned, just because the sin is really his own: what is this but to say-hardly even in other words-that the personal identity with righteousness in condemnation and detestation of sin, which penitence in ideal perfection would mean and be, is possible only to One who is personally Himself without sin? The consummation of penitential holiness,— itself, by inherent character, the one conceivable atonement for sin,—would be possible only to the absolutely sinless.

We are not concerned, here and now, with the other side of the question-How it is possible for the absolutely sinless, to have, or to take, such personal relation to sin that His inherent holiness could really be, and really suffer as being, penitential holiness. We are discussing at present no further problems beyond the one single question—what it is, on scrutiny, that penitence, as penitence, requires and is. And the more we try to run back to the root of the matter, the more we shall find our thought tied up to this irresistible—if paradoxical-truth: that a true penitence is as much the inherent impossibility, as it is the inherent necessity, of every man that has sinned.

Need we go on to ask, under pressure of our own logic, why it does not follow forthwith-as, first, that adequate penitence is impossible, fundamentally, for every one: so, secondly, that the more each man has sinned, the less he

need dream of penitence; for that penitence, hopeless from the first, is more and more progressively impossible, just in precise proportion as it is more necessary?

The fact is, we have said already too much or too little. It is easy, perhaps, to prove our impossibility of penitence. There is no marvel in that. Those who find spiritual analogies in natural things are nowhere apt to be baffled so much as here. Penitence seems like a reversal of all analogies. It is a standing miracle in human life. But be the marvel what it may of its origin or possibility, it is at least undeniable among the experiences of the spiritual life. The proof of its impossibility, however logically simple, would find its disproof in every personal consciousness. It would not only darken the brightness of our sky. It would stultify almost everything that we have ever known to be true. It would cross out not only future hope; but all the deepest realities of experience. The logical proof would really prove too much. It would really cut us off-not only from the ideal consummation, but from any reality, of penitence at all!

Considering, indeed, of what quality penitence is, it is perhaps the greatest miracle of experience that any reality of penitence should be possible at all. And yet, possible or impossible, there it is the most familiar, as well as the most profound, and transcendent, of spiritual experiences Are not all the annals of Christian consciousness full, from end to end, of penitence? And this penitence, this marvellous possibility, which so transcends, yet interprets, we might almost say constitutes, Christian experience; this penitence which is almost another word for spiritual consciousness, do we not recognize it at once as more than humanly profound and tranquillizing? as beautiful almost beyond all experience of beauty? as powerful, even to the shattering of the most terrible of powers?

Inversion of natural history, moral recovery,

- re

identifying of the sinner's spirit with holiness; so that he can at all really hate what really was the old self, and cling, through voluntary pain, to a real contradiction of the self: the touching beauty, which as beauty is unsurpassed, the tremendous spiritual and spiritually uplifting force, of the penitence of countless soulsmen and women, boys and girls,-since the Kingdom of Christ began: what is it? or whence is it?—this impossibility in them, which is nevertheless a fact? This humiliation, which is so exquisite a grace? This weakness confessed, which is so paradoxically sovereign in power? This upon earth, which is so incommensurate with earth?

This at least we may say about it: that it is no natural possibility,—it is not of themselves. There was that within themselves which witnessed for it, which needed it, which could correspond with it: but it was not, and could not have been originated, within themselves. Necessary as it was for themselves, it was yet, from the side of themselves, an unqualified impossibility.

And yet again, though not of themselves, it is by far the deepest truth of themselves. If not of, it is in, them: and when in them, it is the very reality of what they are,—the central core and essence of their own effective personality. Though it cries aloud in them that it is not of them; though it utterly transcends and transfigures them; yet is it more, after all, the very central truth of themselves than all else that they have themselves ever done or been.

In saying this, we are in part anticipating thoughts which lie beyond the range of our present subjects.

But it is well to say at once that it is precisely the impossible which has been, and is, and is to be, the real. What is precisely impossible in respect of ourselves, is exactly real in the Church-the breath of whose life is the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Men do not always understand the depth of what

penitence means, because their conceptions of penitence are based so often upon its imperfectness or its failure. So they have been content to feel that they felt sorry; content if their sorrow had carried them to some little touch of shame or suffering. They have hardly perhaps even aimed at an attitude towards sin-towards themselves as wilfully characterized by sin,—which would be nothing less than that inexorable condemnation which must be the attitude towards sin of the eternal Righteousness. Perhaps the least glimpse of the real meaning of penitence is at once confounding and inspiring. The true penitent condemns and loathes sin, even in himself, not with a foolish shallow, half-insincere regret, but as God loathes and condemns it.

After all, then, this penitence in the hearts of the penitent, of which we cannot but say things so paradoxical,-what is it, or from whence? It is the real echo, the real presence-in their spirit, of Spirit; Spirit, not their own, as if of themselves; yet their very own, for more and more that Spirit dominates them and constitutes them what they are. It is, in them, the Spirit of human contrition, of human atonement; the Spirit of Holiness triumphing over sin, and breaking it, within the kingdom of sin; the Spirit at once of Calvary and of Pentecost; the Spirit, if not of the Cross yet of the Crucified, who conquered and lived through dying.

It is only thus, only from hence, that the least reality of penitence is possible at all. But this we may add in conclusion, that the reality of the penitence which is so familiar in Christian experience (if it may not be said to constitute Christian experience) is itself a guarantee of the possibility-nay more, of the certain realization,—of perfectly consummated penitence. For, after all, this penitence which is so familiar in Christian experience, may truly perhaps be called,-wonder for wonder-an even

greater miracle, than, in comparison with it, the most ideal perfection of penitence would be.

Is it not the Spirit of the Crucified which is the reality of the penitence of the really penitent? Only there remains to the end this one immovable distinction. What was, in Him, the triumph of His own inherent and unchanging righteousness, is in them the consummation of a gradual process of change from sin to abhorrence and contradiction of sin. They are changed. But the fact of changedness remains. Unaided, of themselves, they did not conquer, and could not have conquered, sin. Nor do they so grow into oneness of Spirit with Him as to cease to be themselves, who had sinned and are redeemed from sin. That past, which would have made their own penitence an impossibility, though no longer a living present, as character or as power, within themselves, is yet present with them just so far as this,-that they are still, though sinless in the Spirit of the Sinless, yet not simply sinless, but brought to sinlessness out of sin; not simply pure but purified; not simply blessed but beatified; not simply holy but redeemed. The song of eternal praise is in their hearts, as of those who are eternally "the Redeemed,"— towards one who is none the less eternally their Redeemer, because no longer without but within themselves,—He is their own capacity of responsive holiness; "for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe and tongue and people and nation ;"-"worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and might, and glory, and blessing ;"—" Unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever."