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3. THE SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF REPENTANCE.
Over against this external view of repentance the
Scriptural idea should be maintained. According to Scripture repentance is wholly an inward
act, and should not be confounded with the change of life that proceeds from it. Confession of
sin and reparation of wrongs are fruits of repentance. Repentance is only a negative condition,
and not a positive means of salvation. While it is the sinner’s present duty, it does not offset the
claims of the law on account of past transgressions. Moreover, true repentance never exists
except in conjunction with faith, while, on the other hand, wherever there is true faith, there is
also real repentance. The two are but different aspects of the same turning, — a turning away
from sin in the direction of God. Luther sometimes spoke of a repentance preceding faith, but
seems nevertheless to have agreed with Calvin in regarding true repentance as one of the fruits
of faith. Lutherans are wont to stress the fact that repentance is wrought by the law and faith
by the gospel. It should be borne in mind, however, that the two cannot be separated; they are
simply complementary parts of the same process.
E. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONVERSION.
During recent years psychologists have made a special study of the phenomena of conversion.
1. THE NATURE OF THIS STUDY.
The nature of this study can best be learned from such works
as those of Coe, The Spiritual Life; Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion; James, Varieties of
Religious Experience; Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience; Pratt, The Religious
Consciousness; Clark, The Psychology of Religious Awakening; Hughes, The New Psychology and
Religious Experience; and Horton, The Psychological Approach to Theology. For a long time
Psychology neglected the facts of the religious life altogether, but for more than a quarter of a
century now it has taken notice of them. At first the attention was focussed primarily — not to
say exclusively — on what must have appeared to be the great central fact of religious
experience, the fact of conversion. Psychologists have studied many cases of conversion
inductively and have attempted to classify the various forces at work in conversion, to
distinguish the different types of religious experience, to determine the period of life in which
conversion is most apt to occur, and to discover the laws that control the phenomena of
conversion. While they presented their study as a purely inductive investigation into the
phenomena of religion as shown in individual experience, and in some cases expressed the
laudable desire and intention to keep their own philosophical and religious convictions in the
background, they nevertheless in several instances clearly revealed a tendency to look upon
conversion as a purely natural process, just as amenable to the ordinary laws of psychology as
any other psychical fact; and to overlook, if not to deny explicitly, its supernatural aspect. The
more careful scholars among them ignore, but do not deny, the supernatural in conversion.
They explain their silence respecting the deeper aspects of this central fact in religious