it out, himself begin to disobey it, and work righteousness.  As much as either is it common sense that a man should look for and expect the help of his Father in the endeavour.  Alone, he might labour to all eternity and not succeed.  He who has not made himself, cannot set himself right without him who made him.  But his maker is in him, and is his strength.  The man, however, who, instead of doing what he is told, broods speculating on the metaphysics of him who calls him to his work, stands leaning his back against the door by which the Lord would enter to help him.  The moment he sets about putting straight the thing that is crooked—­I mean doing right where he has been doing wrong, he withdraws from the entrance, gives way for the Master to come in.  He cannot make himself pure, but he can leave that which is impure; he can spread out the ‘defiled, discoloured web’ of his life before the bleaching sun of righteousness; he cannot save himself, but he can let the Lord save him.  The struggle of his weakness is as essential to the coming victory as the strength of Him who resisted unto death, striving against sin.

The sum of the whole matter is this:—­The Son has come from the Father to set the children free from their sins; the children must hear and obey him, that he may send forth judgment unto victory.

Son of our Father, help us to do what thou sayest, and so with thee die unto sin, that we may rise to the sonship for which we were created.  Help us to repent even to the sending away of our sins.

THE REMISSION OF SINS.

John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.—­Mark i. 4.

God and man must combine for salvation from sin, and the same word, here and elsewhere translated remission, seems to be employed in the New Testament for the share of either in the great deliverance.

But first let me say something concerning the word here and everywhere translated repentance.  I would not even suggest a mistranslation; but the idea intended by the word has been so misunderstood and therefore mistaught, that it requires some consideration of the word itself to get at a right recognition of the moral fact it represents.

The Greek word then, of which the word repentance is the accepted synonym and fundamentally the accurate rendering, is made up of two words, the conjoint meaning of which is, a change of mind or thought.  There is in it no intent of, or hint at sorrow or shame, or any other of the mental conditions that, not unfrequently accompanying repentance, have been taken for essential parts of it, sometimes for its very essence.  Here, the last of the prophets, or the evangelist who records his doings, qualifies the word, as if he held it insufficient in itself to convey the Baptist’s meaning, with the three words that follow it—­[Greek:  eis aPhesin amartion:—­kaerusson Baptisma metauoias