When the Pilgrims left Holland bound eventually for a new life in a new world, their pastor, John Robinson, wrote a letter to them that reflects the genuine concern of a pastor for his flock. Where we might bid someone "bon voyage," or at most ask God's blessing of protection to be with them, pastor Robinson was most concerned about their spiritual well being. Knowing that even the most godly would be tempted to impatience with one another in cramped circumstances on that small vessel for three months, he encouraged them in three areas: (1) repentance, (2) to avoid offending others, and (3) not allow themselves to become offended by others.

What he says about repentance is quite interesting: "And first, as we are daily to renew our repentance with our God, special for our sins known, and general for our unknown trespasses; so doth the Lord call us in a singular manner, upon occasions of such difficulty and danger as lieth upon you, to a both more narrow search and careful reformation of our ways in His sight, lest He calling to remembrance our sins forgotten by us or unrepented of, take advantage against us, and in judgement leave us for the same to be swallowed up in one danger or other. Whereas, on the contrary, sin being taken away by earnest repentance, and the pardon thereof from the Lord sealed up unto a man's conscience by his Spirit, great shall be his security and peace in all dangers, sweet his comforts in all distresses, with happy deliverance from all evil, whether in life or in death."

Oswald Chambers in his well-known devotional book My Utmost for His Highest writes: "Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses a man's conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God - 'against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.' The marvels of conviction of sin, forgiveness, and holiness are so interwoven that it is only the forgiven man who is the holy man, he proves he is forgiven by being the opposite to what he was, by God's grace. Repentance always brings a man to this point: I have sinned. The surest sign that God is at work is when a man says that and means it. Anything less than this is a remorse for having made blunders, the reflex action of disgust at himself.

"The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man's respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, Who produces these agonies, begins the formation of the Son of God in the life. The new life will manifest itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness, never the other way about. The bedrock of Christianity is repentance. Strictly speaking, a man cannot repent when he chooses; repentance is a gift of God. If ever you cease to know the virtue of repentance, you are in darkness. Examine yourself and see if you have forgotten how to be sorry."

Think carefully and prayerfully over these words, and we shall visit this subject again.