he king? Suffering has very opposite influences on different types of
character. Sometimes it hardens us, it makes us only the more bitter
and rebellious. But suffering did not have that effect on Manasseh.
It made him think, and it is a tremendously good day when God can get a
man to think. He thought, I dare say, of his saintly father. He
thought of his father's God. This story is another evidence of how all
but impossible it is for a child to break finally away from the saving
influence of a truly good father or truly good mother.

This experience not only made him think but it sent him to his knees in
an agony of prayer. He came to hate the sin that had been the ruin of
him. He asked God for forgiveness. And God did forgive him. Truly,
"though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." No
man ever goes so far away from God, no man ever lives in sin so long
but that if he will return to God, God will receive him and will give
him abundant pardon.

Not only did God save this man. He brought him again to his throne.
And he who had once been a captive in a strange land wore his crown
once more. And for the remaining years of his life he was a devout
follower of the Lord. He did his best to undo the evils of the earlier
years of his reign. He tore down the altars to false gods that he had
builded. He tried to bring his people back to the new and saving faith
that he had found. His conversion was genuine and lasting.

But what was the result? He did not succeed. He found that it was
easier to lead folks astray than it was to bring them back after he had
led them astray. He was a good man. He knew God. But this was his
hell, that he had to stand in utter helplessness and see his nation
totter to its ruin because of the sins that he had committed. He was
not even able to save his own home. His boy became a godless idolater,
as he himself had been during the best years of his life.

So we are brought face to face with this fact. Repentance will bring
us salvation whenever we repent, but there is one thing that repentance
cannot do. It cannot save us from the consequences of our sin. Go out
into the field of life and sow tares for half a century, if you dare.
Even then God will forgive you if you will come in repentance to Him,
but there is one thing that God will not do and cannot do. He cannot
change the tares that you have sown into wheat. I may be exceedingly
sorry for my wro