• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 5
• Page Number:
• Date: 8 9 1916
• Tags:
• advice
• The New Way

REMORSE AND REPENTANCE

Let use never confuse remorse with repentance. Remorse is born of fear and kills the will. Repentance is alight with hope and courage and resolution. Remorse disintegrates; repent- ance builds. Remorse looks backwards into shadows; repentance forwards into new life and a new way. Seen through remorse the past threatens and paralyses; seen in repentance it teaches and guides. Let past mistakes have their burial. What you did you connot change; the man who did it you have already— in repentance—willed to chance and begun to change, and are regaining the right to your self-respect.

Now see the changed quality of the future. Suffering theremust be. No life is worth anything without that. It will be no more than necessary to show you how to complete in yourself that change you would not know your nature deeply enough to complete without it. As that is done, step by step, it passes; for that was its purpose. Search into it; trust it; find its meaning; work with it. So will its burden be light and its guidance very plain. Behind all life is a profound compassion that is nearest to him who suffers most. And this, when its presence and touch are known, makes all suffering welcome. —The New Way