came unto His own, and His own received Him not." John 1:11. Why He did not wipe the bloody sweat from His brow that night in the garden and return to His Father, is the mystery of love. How He can be so patient with me in all my sins and blunders, is another mystery; but I love Him for it all! God has proved His love to us, "in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." "Christ died for the ungodly." Romans 5:8, 6.

I once heard Dr. Parker Mills tell of visiting a little town in Iowa. After his evening lecture, he was introduced to an elderly lady, who was to entertain him. Upon entering her home, Dr. Mills noticed, among the other pictures, one of N. Dwight Hillis, the Brooklyn preacher. He began at once to tell his hostess what a great man Mr. Hillis was. She listened awhile patiently, then interrupted him by saying, "I do not think him so great as all that." "But you do not know him," urged Dr. Mills, "or you would agree with me!" She replied, "Oh, I know a little bit about him; I'm his mother."

Your heavenly Father knows you better than your mother does; yet He loves you. He wants you. He will miss you if you are not saved. He is hungry for your love. How a mother's heart aches for the love of a wayward son! Do not you think the One who died for you wants your affection? Do you not think He would like to hear you say "Thank You"?

Eva Booth tells of an instance where a young man was arrested and charged with the crime of murder. His old mother followed him to his cell, and sitting down beside him, asked, "Jim, tell me truly, did you do it?" The boy looked into his mother's face, his lips trembling, and replied, "Mother, I did not do it." When the time for trial came, the judge said to the mother, "If you will persuade your boy to plead guilty, we will be easy with him." "But, your honor," she

said, "he did not do it." The neighbors came in to sympathize with her, and she would smile, and say, "But he did not do it." The prosecuting attorney said to her, "If you will tell Jim to change his plea, the judge will be easy with him." And the mother said, "Thank you, sir; but he didn't do it."

However, the jury said "Guilty." Jim was convicted, and the day of execution came. The prison chaplain visited him, and said: "Jim, you are facing eternity. Tell me, did you do it?" Jim was still a moment; then, raising his eyes, he said, "Chaplain, I did it; you go and tell my mother." The chaplain went over to her home. The old woman knew what day it was. The shadow of the gallows was touching her too. When he entered the room and spoke to her, she sat with head bowed in her hands, and made no sign that she heard him. The chaplain said, "Mother, Jim did it; he says he did." And that mother did what my mother would have done, or yours. She gave one shudder, and her head, for a moment, went lower in her hands. Then, raising her face, down which the tears were streaming, she said, "Chaplain, go back as quickly as you can, and tell him I love him still." And that is like God; only it is but a faint picture of His love. To know His love is to repent.

Do not continue to sin against love. God's love for you will never die; but unless you repent, your heart will sometime get to the point where all desire for repentance will cease. "If the mercies of God are not loadstones to draw you to heaven, they will be millstones to draw you to perdition." The same sun that melts the ice dries the soil. The same heat that softens the wax hardens the clay.

Let me call to you, in closing, in the words of another: Are you a farmer? Every time you go out to your field to sow seed, God says, "I have been sowing the seed of life in your heart all your days." When you

go out to look at the grain growing so beautifully, God says, "Where are the seeds I have sown in your heart?" When you go out to reap your wheat, God says, "The sickle of death will call for you some day." When you thresh the wheat and separate it from the chaff, God says, "That is just where I shall be by and by, separating the wheat from the chaff; and the chaff will be burned until there is nothing left of it."

Are you a lawyer? Every time a client comes to you, God says to you, "Have you an advocate up yonder to plead your cause before the bar of God?" Are you a doctor? Every time you visit a sick patient, God whispers, "I can heal your sin-sick soul." Are you a teacher? Jesus says, "Learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart." Are you a blacksmith? Every time you bring the hammer down on the anvil, God says, “O man, I have been hammering your heart with My Word and love all your days; yet it will not give." Are you a merchant? Every time you measure off a yard of cloth, God says, "I am measuring your days for you." When you take your scissors and cut the cloth, God says to you, "Death's shears will cut you loose from time one of these days." As you put sugar on the scales and weigh it, God says, "You are weighed in the balances, and found wanting."

God is always speaking to men's hearts. As you look on river, lake, and ocean, He says, "Will you drink of the healing waters of the river of life forever?" As you look out upon the trees, God says, "Will you eat of the fruit of the tree of life, and sit in its shade in the world to come?" What is your answer? Believe and live.

"I Don't Understand Repentance"

HERE are some sincere people who do not understand how to become Christians. Men and women are more ignorant of the plan of salvation than they are of most other themes. This is true of those inside the church as well as of those outside of it. Many such questions. as these are asked: How can I find Jesus? How can I find forgiveness? What about repentance? confession? baptism?

The thing which, in the beginning, separated man from his heavenly Father, which shut him out of Eden, was sin disobedience. That which keeps up the separation is the same thing - sin. Sin, therefore, is the great problem. So long as sin rules in the heart, this separation will continue. Because millions refuse to part with sin, because they persist in disobedience, they will forever be debarred from heaven; for God will never admit sin into heaven.

Our chief concern, then, should be, not how to gain heaven, not how to secure eternal life and happiness, but how to get away from sin. When sin is eradicated, peace follows, heaven follows, eternal life follows. Job asks this very important question: "How should man be just before God?" Job 9: 2, margin.

How may a sinner be reconciled to God? How may this barrier, sin, be got out of the way? At one end is God; at the other end is the sinner; in between is sin. Now, how can God and the sinner ever get together?

God does not hate His child because the child has sinned. On the contrary, He loves him as only God can love. He Himself has made the first advances toward a reconciliation. On certain just conditions, He offers free pardon for all past sins, and overcoming power to resist all future temptation to sin. He supplies the

pardon, and the power to reinstate poor fallen sinners in the glory of heaven.

What are the conditions? These everyone ought to be most anxious to learn. What must man do? What is his part in the reconciliation? Briefly stated, the conditions are these: 1. The sinner must accept God's offer, and take Jesus, who died as man's substitute and suffered the penalty of sin for man, as his Saviour. 2. He must agree to forsake all sin forever and to live a holy and obedient life. 3. He must confess all his sins individually and collectively, and claim forgiveness through the merits of Jesus' blood. 4. At a suitable time and place, he must make a public profession by receiving baptism.

Those steps follow in the order given. No one is ready to be baptized into Christ's body, the church, until he has first trusted in Christ as his Saviour, repented of and confessed his sins. The first three steps bring pardon. Until pardon has been written opposite his name in the books of record above, he is not ready for baptism into the family of God.

The Bible does not teach that the sinner must repent before he can come to Christ. Many think that they can not come to Christ unless they first repent, because they know that repentance precedes forgiveness of sin. Repentance does precede forgiveness; and without forgiveness, there is no salvation. But it is a man's privilege and duty to come to Jesus just as he is and implore His help. Jesus alone can give repentance. A person can no more repent without the Spirit of Christ to awaken the conscience than he can be forgiven without Christ.

Repentance is being sorry for sin. How sorry? Sorry enough to stop sinning. Of himself, a man can never have "godly sorrow." He may have "worldly sorrow," the kind Judas had when he was found out; many people have this kind, but it does not work a