III.

REPENTANCE.

"And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem."-Luke xxiv. 47.

In all true evangelistic preaching, the Way of salvation ought to appear clearer and clearer with every sermon. This is a capital note of these meetings, the clearness of the Way, to be heard over and over. No one should be left ignorant nor inquiring. All uncertainty should be dissipated. Every doubt should be dissolved. The light of the Gospel should be an unclouded light for the sinner's anxiety and need. And all the time, too, in showing this clear way, we shall be impressed by another remarkable fact, if we preach the Gospel as the Apostles preached it. The clearness of salvation and the motives of salvation go impressively together. The Gospel shows the sinner, not only what he must do to be saved, but why he should do it, and how he must do it. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, because it is both light and motive; its light and motive are verily the power of God.

Here it is, unmistakably: "Repentance and remission of sins"-there is the duty of the sinner, and there is the blessing for him. So were duty and blessing preached by the Apostles, beginning from Jerusalem on that notable day of Pentecost. The duty was clear, the blessing was immediately ready. But read on,

"Should be preached in his name." There is the motive of it all. It is a Gospel for both head and heart. There is light for man's ignorance, and there is strength for man's weakness. The commandment of God is proclaimed to man, "that they should all everywhere repent." But it is no cold, abstract commandment of duty, terrifying the sinner's heart, and leaving him cowed and helpless, to repent as best he can. The light of man's duty shines in the larger light of God's love, and the truth falls gently upon the heart: "The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance."

All this we want to hear and hold together this evening. "Repentance and remission of sins, "-the duty and the blessing; but "in his name "-the motive. The more deeply you feel your responsibility to repent, the more keenly will you feel your need of the name of Christ, to repent thoroughly and savingly. Surely what we all desire here to-night is sincerity of purpose and deed. It is no time for hasty action. Surface work will not answer. Gospel repentance is no light matter. You do not want to be deceived, nor misled, nor kept waiting in doubt; but certainly you do not want to repent in a half-hearted, impulsive way. It is, indeed, something strangely pathetic-these wayward, these feeble desires to be better. I might ask. the question, in genuine sympathy, Do you not want to be a better man? a better woman? a better child? And I am sure that heart after heart would stir with a tiny flame anyhow; bruised and battered lives would look around and move a little; even downright wicked persons might stop and listen for a moment. But if repentance is to have its perfect work, it must be in the name of Jesus Christ. Nothing short of that name,

its light, its character, its power, its authority, can make you and me repent soundly. Gospel repentance is something far more than chance desires of being good. It is something surer than just swearing off from sin now and then, and afterwards wallowing in the mire more filthily than ever. It is something happier and brighter than cold, stoical efforts to cure our faults by ourselves, without any concern for the evil that lurks away down secretly in the depths of our hearts.

The history of missions will make this clear to us. More than a hundred years ago the Moravian missionaries, in their work of faith and toil of love, landed among the icy mountains of Greenland. There they preached-what? Honest, devoted men of God, they thought that they were preaching as they ought to preach. They thought that a sinner, a heathen, needed to hear not the Gospel first, but the Law. The Law must first convict him of sin, and slay him; and then he would be ready to hear the Gospel of salvation. Not Christ first, but Moses-not Calvary, but Sinai, was the order. They thought that only by the Law could come at all the knowledge of sin. So they preached; and the more they so preached, proclaiming only the Law of righteousness and its voice of condemnation for every transgressor, the more they wondered at the result. The Greenlanders acknowledged their sins; but the acknowledgment? Somehow it lacked depth, warmth, tears. There was no broken heart, no contrite spirit. The poor heathen saw that he had not always done right, so his conscience accused him; and he saw that he needed to be better. But he did not see the need deeply, searchingly, thoroughly. There was no upheaval of life in him. He was not moved,

intelligently and powerfully moved, to repent. One day one of them entered the hut of a missionary, where the latter was translating the Bible. The Scripture was the story of the crucifixion of the Saviour. When the Greenlander curiously inquired what was going on, the preacher, from some cause, began to read the story of the Cross, and to tell its meaning. Strange to say, and yet not strange to say, a human heart was touched -the fountain of tears was broken up-again a mortal man could see Christ openly set forth crucified-again a sinner could say, "He died for me;" and there was great joy in Greenland.

When Jesus Christ said that repentance should be preached in His name, He meant it. His name is the only reason and power that can cause one to repent radically and thoroughly. The Cross is the light for us all to behold sin in, and for us to study our own sins by. The background of our guilt looks all the darker around the pure life and precious self-sacrifice of the Son of God. The thunder of Sinai is not as powerful to convict us of sin as the silent suffering of Calvary. "In his name "-not in the name of Moses-so the Apostles preached, and so God granted repentance unto life. The Gospel as fulfilling the righteousness of the Law; God commending His own love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us; the grace of God bringing salvation to all men, and teaching self-denial and a new life-these are the constant notes of the New Covenant, both to Jew and Gentile. Let us see more and more how it is that the name of Christ works this deep and genuine repentance, along with the remission of sins.

What, then, is repentance, and how much is it, in