But at present there is too much of what Paul would call "worldly sorrow" mixed up with the idea of repentance. Too much mourning over sin, yet running into temptation; an excess of lamentation and not enough of turning away from evil; in a word, the sorrow of the world, which worketh death, is too prevalent. How weary must be the old, old story to God and angels, as well as to men--"we have done those things we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things we ought to have done!" Then again, the sorrow of the world, the sorrow which worketh death, is too generally accepted for genuine repentance; the latter may be known and distinguished from the former by its being accompanied by a reformation of life, a turning away from that which is evil--the kind of repentance required in the Gospel, the only kind that will be accepted of God, or that savors of salvation. God, whom we esteem as a being in whom all the fullness of perfection dwells, must ever be more pleased with the substance of worship, or religion, or repentance than with the forms pertaining to it, and this is abundantly proven by instances recorded in holy writ. In the days of Israel's captivity in Babylon, certain messengers from those who were captive, Sherezer and Regem-melech and their men, went up to Jerusalem to inquire of the prophets and priests of the Lord if Israel while in captivity should keep the fast of the fifth month, and weep, separating themselves as they had hitherto done. In answer to these inquiries the word of the Lord came through the prophet Zechariah, and he asks: "When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? Should ye not hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain?" He reminds them that through the former prophets he had commanded Israel to execute true judgment, to show mercy and compassion every man to his brother; to oppress not the widow and the fatherless, the stranger nor the poor; to let none imagine evil in his heart against his brother. But these things they neglected to do, and the Lord permitted their enemies to scatter them among strange nations.