1. _Repentance_ is a turning away in sorrow and contrition from a life of sin, a breaking off from evil because a better standard has been accepted. Our Lord began His ministry with a call to repentance. The first four beatitudes set forth its elements; while the parable of the prodigal illustrates its nature. Ethical writers distinguish between a negative and a positive aspect of repentance. On its negative side it is regarded as the emotion of sorrow excited by reflection upon sin. But sorrow, though accompanying repentance, must not be identified with it. Mere regret, either in the form of bitterness over one's folly, or chagrin on account of discovery, may be but a weak sentiment which exerts little or no influence upon a man's subsequent conduct. Even remorse following the commission of wickedness may only deepen into a paralysing despair which works death rather than repentance unto life. (1) On its positive side repentance implies action as well as feeling, and involves a determination of will to quit the past and start on a new life. A man repents not merely when he grieves over his misdeed, but when he confesses it and seeks to make what amendment he can. This positive outlook upon the future, rather than the passive brooding over the past, is happily expressed in the New Testament term _metanoia_, change of mind, and is enforced in the Baptist's counsel, 'Bring forth fruits meet for repentance.'[9] The change of mind here indicated is practically equivalent to what is variously called in the New Testament 'Conversion,'[10] 'Renewal,'[11] 'Regeneration,'[12]--words suggestive of the completeness of the change. (2) The variety of terms employed to describe conversion {172} would seem to imply that the Scriptures recognise a diversity of mode. All do not enter the kingdom of God by the same way; and the New Testament offers examples varying from the sudden conversion of a Saul to the almost imperceptible transformation of a Nathaniel and a Timothy. In modern life something of the same variety of Christian experience is manifest. While what is called 'sudden conversion' cannot reasonably be denied,[13] as little can those cases be ignored in which the truth seems to pervade the mind gradually and almost unconsciously--cases of steady spiritual growth from childhood upwards, in which the believer is unaware of any break in the continuity of his inner history, his days appearing to be 'bound each to each by natural piety.'