Again, Repentance as well as aspiration will disappear under the snows of atheism. I have written before on this subject in this REVIEW,[3] and will now briefly say that Mr. Darwin’s almost ludicrously false definition of Repentance is an illustration of the inability of the modern scientific mind to comprehend spiritual phenomena; much less to be the subject of them. In his _Descent of Man_, this great thinker and most amiable man describes Repentance as a natural return, after the satisfaction of selfish passions, to “the instinct of sympathy and good will to his fellows which is still present and ever in some degree active” in a man’s mind.... “And then, a sense of dissatisfaction will inevitably be felt” (_Descent of Man_, p. 90). Thus even on the showing of the great philosopher of evolution himself, Repentance (or rather the “dissatisfaction” he confounds with that awful convulsion of the soul) is only to be looked for under the very exceptional circumstances of men in whom the “instinct of sympathy and good will to their fellows” is ever present, and moreover _reasserts itself after they have injured them_—in flat opposition to ordinary human experience as noted by Tacitus, _Humani generis proprium est odisse quem læseris_. The results of the real spiritual phenomenon of Repentance (not Mr. Darwin’s child’s-play) are so profound and far-reaching that it cannot but happen that striking them out of human experience will leave life more shallow. No soul will survive with the deeper and riper character which comes out of that ordeal. As Hawthorne illustrated it in his exquisite parable of _Transformation_, men, till they become conscious of sin, are morally little more than animals. Out of hearts ploughed by contrition spring flowers fairer than ever grow on the hard ground of unbroken self-content. There bloom in them Sympathy and Charity for other erring mortals; and Patience under suffering which is acknowledged to be merited; and lastly, sweetest blossom of all! tender Gratitude for earthly and heavenly blessings felt to be free gifts of Divine love. Not a little, perhaps, of the prevalent disease of pessimism is owing to the fact that these flowers of charity, patience, and thankfulness are becoming more and more rare as cultivated men cease to feel what old theologians used to call “the exceeding sinfulness of sin;” or to pass through any vivid experiences of penitence and restoration. As a necessary consequence they never see the true proportions of good and evil, joy and grief, sin and retribution. They weigh jealously human Pain; they never place human Guilt in the opposite scale. There is little chance that any man will ever feel how sinful is sin, who has not seen it in the white light of the holiness of God.