Editorial March 22, 1919 Issue

The Joy of Repentance

William P. McKenzie

When a certain mental state has shown its fruit in sorrow, despair, or other ill conditions, there should be comfort in knowing that one can change the mental attitude and by this repentance, or change of mind, gain healthier and happier consequences as the outcome of right thinking. Appreciating the benefit of such changes, the apostle James goes so far as to say: "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."

The theory of consistency stands in the way of the joy of repentance quite often. That is, a man will declare, Thus have I spoken and I must stand by it, without questioning whether it may not be a mere fallible, human view to which he is adhering. Said Pilate, "What I have written I have written;" and of a feud one party will say, We have always hated such and such a family and always will; or a labor leader will say, I have always hated employers and always will, or the employer will make the same kind of remark about the labor agitator. Now consistency is a jewel, but the man who rightly wears it must see that his ideals are consistent with Principle. In fact, the only true standard is regular and joyful obedience to God.

It is obedience to God which enables a man to release himself from the family feud or the political antagonism, as well as from the disease he has thought of as a family matter, or the appetite he has thought of as inherited and unavoidable. And this way of deliverance is through the simple process of repentance. Call it renewal, if you will; for Paul says, "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." He also says, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." One of the joys of repentance is that humility is welcomed and not avoided. The effort of pride on one side of the question is to effect humiliation on the other. The conqueror wishes to have kings chained to his triumphal car and would have princes humbled to wait on his table. But let us consider the philosophy of the king of Bezek in the book of Judges. When his men had been defeated and he had been captured and mutilated, he said, "Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me."

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