Repeentance

There can be 
no saving act of faith without repentance. The 
essence of repentance is desire, a divinely inspired 
thing of the heart, arising from the discovered hate- 
fulness of sin and its consequences, and the desira- 
bleness of Christ and His great salvation. The end 
or object of repentance is unreserved submission to 
the will of God, consenting to an utter abandon- 
ment of everything in heart or life opposed to His 
will, and accepting whatever His will enjoins as "our 

reasonable service." As the object of repentance 

* 
IS neither to improve the condition of the sinner, 

nor to add anything to Christ's atonement or pro- 
visions, it is not a process which necessarily re- 
quires much time, though the principle of obedience 
involved in it must be maintained for ever. If, like 
the Philippian jailor, he can reach the point of sur- 
render in a few minutes, it is just as well as if he 
had struggled for years. But whether the process 
be long or short, the object to be attained by it is 
a surrender to God, which is preliminary to, and 
essentially involved in, the saving act of faith, which 
is'the one only condition of salvation.