ladness or
reconciliation with God: but just the consciousness that certain ways
of life are wrong, mistaken, hurtful, and grieving to God; and the
desire, which becomes the determination, to turn from them, to seek Him
who formed the mountains and created the wind, that maketh the morning
darkness and treadeth upon the high places of the earth.

Repentance may be accounted as the other side of faith. They are the
two sides of the same coin: the two aspects of the same act. If the
act of the soul which brings it into right relation with God is
described as a turning round, to go in the reverse direction to that in
which it had been travelling, then _repentance_ stands for its desire
and choice to turn from sin, and _faith_ for its desire and choice to
turn to God. We must be willing to turn from sin and our own
righteousness--that is _repentance_; we must be willing to be saved by
God, in his own way, and must come to Him for that purpose--that is
_faith_.

We need to turn from our own righteousnesses as well as from our sins.
Augustine spoke of his efforts after righteousness as splendid sins;
and Paul distinctly disavows all those attempts to stand right with God
which he made before he saw the face of the risen Christ looking out
from heaven upon his conscience-stricken spirit. You must turn away
from your own efforts to save yourself. These are, in the words of the
prophet, but "filthy rags." Nothing, apart from the Saviour and his
work, can avail the soul, which must meet the scrutiny of eternal
justice and purity.

Repentance is produced sometimes and specially by the presentation of
the claims of Christ. We suddenly awake to realize what He is, how He
loves, how much we are missing, the gross ingratitude with which we
respond to his agony and bloody sweat, his cross and suffering, the
beauty of his character, the strength of his claims.

At other times repentance is wrought by the preaching of John the
Baptist. Then we hear of the axe laid at the root of the trees, and
the unquenchable fire for the consuming of the chaff: and the heart
trembles. Then we are led to the brink of the precipice, and compelled
to see the point at which the primrose-path we are travelling ends in
the fatal abyss. Then our faith in our hereditary position and
privilege is shattered by the iconoclasm of the preacher; and we are
levelled to the position of stones which are lapped by the Jordan, but
are insensible to its tou