t, that healing and sanctifying pain in which sin is
really put away, is not ours in independence of God; it is a saving
grace which is begotten in the soul under that impression of sin which
it owes to the revelation of God in Christ. A man can no more repent
than he can do anything else without a motive, and the motive which
makes evangelic repentance possible does not enter into his world till
he sees God as God makes Himself known in the death of Christ. All
true penitents are children of the Cross. Their penitence is not their
own creation: it is the reaction towards God produced in their souls by
this demonstration of what sin is to Him, and of what His love does to
reach and win the sinful.

The other remark I wish to make refers to those who admit the death of
Christ to be necessary _for us_--necessary, in the way I have just
described, to evoke penitence and trust in God--but who on this very
ground deny it to be _divinely_ necessary. It had to be, because the
hard hearts of men could not be touched by anything less moving: but
that is all. This, I feel sure, is another instance of those false
abstractions to which reference has already been made. There is no
incompatibility between a _divine_ necessity and a necessity _for us_.
It may very well be the case that nothing less than the death of Christ
could win the trust of sinful men for God, and at the same time that
nothing else than the death of Christ could fully reveal the character
of God in relation at once to sinners and to sin. For my own part I am
persuaded, not only that there is no incompatibility between the two
things, but that they are essentially related, and that only the
acknowledgment of the divine necessity in Christ's death enables us to
conceive in any rational way the power which it exercises over sinners
in inducing repentance and faith. It would not evoke a reaction
Godward unless God were really present in it, that is, unless it were a
real revelation of His being and will: but in a real revelation of
God's being and will there can be nothing arbitrary, nothing which is
determined only from without, nothing, in other words, that is not
divinely necessary. The demonstration of what God is, which is made in
the death of Christ, is no doubt a demonstration singularly suited to
call forth penitence and faith in man, but the necessity of it does not
lie simply in the desire to call forth penitence and faith. It lies in
the divine n