THE UNPOPULARITY OF REPENTANCE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 58

THE UNPOPULARITY OF REPENTANCE.

By Constance Clyde.

If by any chance the Kaiser really repented, would we welcome him with open arms and perfect kindliness? If through any miraculous psychological change the German army began to retreat in such a manner that we could hot doubt the retreat voluntary and undertaken from the purest of motives, would we, though relieved, of a heavy fear, hail these people as'our brothers at last and take no advantage of their new complaisance ? I am afraid, even though we knew otherwise, we should pretend to attribute their gentleness to fear, and let at least a few jeers mingle with our greetings. The truth is that we do not like repentance nowadays. "Never sin; but if you do, never repent," says a novelist's dictum; and this is wc Idly wise. Outside a film picture there is no mercy shown the sinner who repents. How different- is it in the East (where the Prodigal Son originated) ! There the sinner. who repents may be exalted back into his old position. Once the punishment is over, it is over indeed. "The lost art of repentance," as it is called, is practised and believed in. Readers of Marmaduke Pickthall's "Veiled Women" will remember how the Turkish official's second wife, once she has repented of having tried to poison her English daughter-in-law is almost to greater favour than before. "You have suffered enough," says her husband as he looks at the poor jealous wife at his feet, and later on, even to the English daughter-in-law, the whole episode seems a dream:. Can we imagine relatives in England thus living together after such an attempt? Yet certainly, strange as it seems, this would be the real Christianity. »v e are very far indeed from being Christians in the ethical sense of the word. We lack both its sternness towards sin acted and its gentleness towards sin repented. In other lands a man's punishment ends when he comes out of gaol; in our country it then begins. We are very' sympathetic towards the \man in gaol; but once he is out no repentance, no atonement can give him back every chance that he had before. Should this be? We take it as a matter of ""course. Any other course would astonish us; yet anything short of complete pardon for jatoned-for sin. is anti-Christian. No juggling with texts can show otherwise. Perhaps some day the higher law will be put in force, and we shall live to see an exfelon Minister of the Crown, not because such a person is especially fitted for the positiou, but because a man who has atoned, and more than atoned, for his past is absolutely the same as one who has never sinned at all. In fact, he may be even more immune to temptation than the latter, and might logically be preferred in any position of trust. This, however, we do not act upon. For how many sins and follies is the punishment lifelong? Are we not even becoming more energetic in passing these silent life sentences? One could name many cases of brilliant men whomi the world needs doomed never to fill the highest rank because of some public dishonour. The world never forgives. "What about your father?" was shouted at a young platform speaker in England some years ago. The scandal referred to\ was old, and the man had paid the price—therefore he and his children must suffer more. It was not the sin, but the paying of the price, that the world could not forgive.

Maybe it will be said. Let the results of wrong-doing be life-long, and wrongdoing will be more avoided. I doubt it. Nobody benefits by this except the blackmailer. Nor are we really so much exercised for the cause of morality as we imagine: it is simply a fact that we instinctively dislike the repentant attitude of mind because we cannot dissociate it from weakness. And we moderns respect strength and consistency above all things. We think of ourselves as a virile nation; but a weak craving after a reputation for virility is a sign not of strength, but of

decadence. Were we more truly great we should not have this contempt for-failure and for seeming inconsistency. When we recover our old greatness we shall learn to be less consciously hard in our views and ideas.