The Lord is faithful to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from our transgressions,[E] but it is on condition of our repentance, that we confess our sins, and make a manly, determined effort to forsake them. Therefore, while the tender mercies of our God, and his readiness to forgive should encourage men "to pray and not faint," and by that means seek forgiveness of sins, they should also remember that it is decreed that the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man,[F] and that there are some sins that may not be forgiven either in this life, or in that which is to come.[G] [Footnote E: I. John i: 9.] [Footnote F: Gen. vi: 3.] [Footnote G: Matt. xii: 31, 32.] CHAPTER XX. REPENTANCE.--HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATION. If we turn to the history of peoples and nations in order to learn the lessons which their experiences teach, we shall find that the hand-dealings of God with them as collected bodies, as well as the experiences of individuals, demonstrate the same great facts of God's long-suffering and abundant mercy, and of his willingness to pardon on the first manifestation of sincere repentance. It was not until the antediluvians had become thoroughly corrupt, not until every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was evil continually,[A] and they rejected the teachings of Noah, and were beyond the hope of reformation, that the Lord sent the flood upon them and cut them off that they might not perpetuate in their posterity their corruption. [Footnote A: Gen. vi.] Next in chronological order to the antediluvians stands the people of Jared; and from the brief history we have of them in the Book of Mormon, consisting of an abridgement of the twenty-four plates of the prophet Ether, we learn that they were frequently in rebellion against God, and continually straying from his precepts and ordinances. Yet as often as they repented he forgave them; and not only that, but supplemented that forgiveness by such periods of prosperity, that one would think that even if they knew no more than the dumb ass that merely knows his master's crib, they must have been aware that it was to their present as well as to their eternal interests to live in obedience to the will of heaven. Yet sin, individual and national, was added to sin, transgressions followed close upon the heels of each other, and secret combinations were formed for robbery and to obtain political power, spreading rapine, murder and terror throughout the land, and menacing always the security of the political fabric.