Personal repentance involves a heartfelt turning from sin and returning to God, often prompted by conviction or divine intervention. It signifies a transformative change of heart, where faith and prayer lead to salvation and renewal (Acts 3:19). Illustrations often depict intimate moments of surrender, such as family influence or visions symbolizing Christ replacing the believer's heart (2 Corinthians 5:17).
A dying boy challenges his father to repent, questioning what excuse he will give Jesus.
A little boy on his death-bed, urging his father to repentance, said, "Father, I am going to heaven: what shall I tell Jesus is the reason why you won't love him?"
A dying daughter's plea leads her father to repent and pray, showing faith's power.
A little Indian girl, seven years old, was wasting away with consumption. She had been failing rapidly for several days. One afternoon, when she seemed brighter, she begged that her father might be called. He came. Then, looking up to him with her bright but sunken eyes, she said, "I want to go to the brook once more. May I go?" Without saying a word, he folded her in his arms, and carried her down to the brook. He sat down in the shade, where the little girl could see the water, and the bright play of light and shade between the alders. She watched them a moment; and then, turning away her wasted face, she said earnestly, "Pray, father."—"Oh! I can't, my darling," he said hastily. "But do pray, father, do pray," she pleaded. "No, no! How can I? No, no!"—"Father," said she, laying her little thin hand upon his arm,—"father, I'm going to heaven soon; and I want to tell Jesus Christ, when I see him, that my father prays." The strong man's head was bowed; and there went up from that brookside such a prayer of repentance, and confession, and supplication for forgiveness, as must have thrilled with joy the courts of heaven. He unclosed his eyes: the little one was dead! Her freed spirit had fled on the wings of joy and faith, to tell the Saviour, "My father prays!"
A child's question prompts her wicked father to repent and find salvation.
A little girl, sitting with her wicked father, asked him if he ever prayed; which made him very angry. She told him that the preacher said, "All good people pray; and they who do not pray are not going to heaven." And she added, "Pa, which way are you going?" It flashed upon him that he was in the way of death. He became repentant, and, in a few days, was a happy convert.
A dying unbeliever urges his son to follow his Christian mother’s sincere faith.
A sceptical father went to Annapolis for his son, just returned from the Libby Prison by exchange. He found him at the point of death; and was desired by the chaplain to break the fact to his son. He requested the chaplain to do it for him; especially to tell him to prepare for the future, saying, "I have been an unbeliever, a wicked man; but my son's mother is a Christian, and he had better follow her."
St. Catherine's vision symbolizes Christ replacing the believer's heart with His own.
St. Catherine of Sienna would often pray in the words of Scripture for a new heart: whereupon, as it is related, our Saviour appeared to her in a vision, took her heart from her bosom and replaced it with his own; and there remained a wound or scar on her left side from that time. Mrs. Jameson.
Youthful piety can influence family conversion and spiritual awakening.
Rev. Mr. Bailey, when but a little boy, used to lead his family in prayer. His father, a very wicked man, was struck with conviction, which led to his conversion from this fact. Dr. Watts and Rev. Joseph Alleine were celebrated for youthful piety.
A mother's faith is awakened by her daughter's steadfast Christian example and hope in death.
Children, says the Rev. W. Jay, have conveyed religion to those from whom they ought to have derived it. "Well," said a mother one day, weeping, her daughter being about to make a public profession of religion by going to the Lord's table, "I will resist no longer. How can I bear to see my dear child love and read the Scriptures, while I never look into the Bible—to see her retire and seek God, while I never pray—to see her going to the Lord's table, while his death is nothing to me!" "Ah," said she to the minister who called to inform her of her daughter's intention, wiping her eyes; "yes, sir, I know she is right, and I am wrong—I have seen her firm under reproach, and patient under provocation, and cheerful in all her sufferings. When, in her late illness, she was looking for dissolution, heaven stood in her face. Oh that I was as fit to die! I ought to have taught her, but I am sure she has taught me. How can I bear to see her joining the church of God, and leaving me behind—perhaps for ever!"
From that hour she prayed in earnest, that the God of her child would be her God, and was soon seen walking with her in the way everlasting.
A young woman renounces Roman Catholicism after Scripture study despite priest opposition.
A Roman Catholic young woman, says a Montreal paper, received serious religious impressions, and determined, after a diligent examination of the Scriptures, to renounce the Romish Church.
The priest of her parents deprived them of the partial Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and declared that he would continue to do so, until they had prevailed upon their daughter to return to their church—he also expressed a desire to receive a call from the young woman. She called accordingly upon him, and informed him that her parents were not concerned in her change of views, but had done all in their power to bring her back to Popery.
In the conversation which followed, the priest exerted himself to persuade her that she was in error, but in vain. At length, he inquired if she was willing to enter into the church, and before the altar, ask God to bless her in her present course. She replied that she was, and they proceeded together to the church, where she poured out her heart in unaffected and earnest prayer that God would smile upon her endeavors to know and do his will, and that he would bring her parents to see the errors into which they had fallen.
The priest, amazed at her resolution and steadfastness, seemed to experience a sudden change, and told her to go forward—if she thought she was right, to continue as she had begun. This she has done, and is now on the point of connecting herself with a Protestant church, as a believer in Christ.
In the early stages of her seriousness, a young man, a Romanist, was authorized by her parents, to decoy her back into the bosom of Popery, by the offer of marriage, but the attempt was unsuccessful. Afterwards, when she became more confirmed in her views, this young man came to her employer, with a burdened conscience, which he hoped to relieve in a measure by confession, and declared that he had been authorized by her parents—a priest consenting—to offer his hand to the young woman, and if he could not succeed in making her a Roman Catholic by any other means, to seduce her.
We could not believe this except on the most credible testimony. As it is, we cannot doubt. A harlot, we might infer, is more at home in the Roman Catholic than in the Protestant Church, in the view of Romanists themselves; but it is most distressing to find that such criminal and detestable acts are employed, and that the interests of immortal souls are sacrificed that the ranks of Popery may be kept unbroken.
Who is not aroused from his sleep? What Protestant can stand by inactive, and witness the perpetration of such enormities in the sacred name of religion? We have another fact of much the same description, but we reserve it for a future occasion.
A minister must repent immediately, not delay, to avoid hypocrisy in preaching.
ANCE.—A country minister being invited to preach the weekly lecture to a congregation in the City of New-York, after dismissing the people, took out his tobacco, and began to chew the filthy weed. A member of the church remonstrated with him on the sinfulness of the practice, and stated that he could not expect that impenitent sinners under his instructions, would give up their sins while he indulged in a sin himself. "I know it is wrong," said the minister. "I have often resolved to give up the habit, but I have not resolution enough to persevere."
"Why," said the other, "that is we very excuse the impenitent give for not repenting and forsaking their sins."
"Well, I'll think it over as I go home," observed the minister, "and perhaps I will give it up."
"That will not do," replied the church member, "for we never allow this, if we can help it; we exhort the impenitent to repent on the spot; we never tell them to go home and repent, nor do we pray that they may repent when they reach home."
"I see," said the minister, "I cannot get away so—therefore I will try to give up chewing."
"But," remarked the other, "that will not do either. We never urge sinners to try to give up their sins—do you?"
"Why, no; I think it wrong to intimate that they cannot do it at once."
"Will you act then as you preach, or let your conduct give the lie to your preaching?"
"With the help of God," said the minister, "I will leave off the practice from this moment."
A member of the church where this conversation took place, who was in the practice of chewing tobacco, was so impressed with what had taken place, that he too solemnly promised to abjure the filthy habit without delay.
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