The kind of repentance indicated in the book as appropriate was a
deep abasement, a horror and hatred of one's sinful propensities;
and the language used seems to me now not only hollow and
meaningless, but to insult the dignity of the soul, and to be
indeed a profound confession of a want of confidence in the methods
and purposes of God. Surely the right attitude is rather a manly,
frank, and hopeful co-operation with God, than a degraded kind of
humiliation. One was invited to contemplate God's detestation of
sin, His awful and stainless holiness. How unreal, how utterly
false! It is no more reasonable than to inculcate in human beings a
sense of His hatred of weakness, of imperfection, of disease, of
suffering. One might as well say that God's courage and beauty were
so perfect that He had an impatient loathing for anything timid or
ugly. If one said that being perfect He had an infinite pity for
imperfection, that would be nearer the truth--but, even so, how far
away! To believe in His perfect love and benevolence, one must also
believe that all shortcomings, all temptations, all sufferings,
somehow emanate from Him; that they are educative, and have an
intense and beautiful significance--that is what one struggles,
how hardly, to believe! Those childish sins, they were but the
expression of the nature one received from His hand, that wilful,
pleasure-loving, timid, fitful nature, which yet always desired the
better part, if only it could compass it, choose it, love it. To
hate one's nature and temperament and disposition, how impossible,
unless one also hated the God who had bestowed them! And then, too,
how inextricably intertwined! The very part of one's soul that made
one peace-loving, affectionate, trustful was the very thing that
led one into temptation. The very humility and diffidence that made
one hate to seem or to be superior to others was the occasion of
falling. The religion recommended was a religion of scrupulous