deal more in his language then than it does in ours now. "I have
sinned against Heaven, and before thee;" and then comes the proof of
his submission, "and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me
as one of thy hired servants"--put me in a stable, or set me to clean
the boots, so that I can be in thy family and have thy smile. That is
repentance--Jesus Christ's own beautiful illustration of true
penitence. Have you done that? Have you forsaken the accursed thing?
Have you cut off that particular thing which the Holy Spirit has
revealed to you? Is the _"but"_ the hindrance that keeps you out
of the Kingdom? You know what it is, and you will never get saved
until you renounce it. Submission is the test of penitence. My child
may be willing to do a hundred and fifty other things, but, if he is
not willing to submit on the one point of controversy, he is a rebel,
and remains one until he yields.

Now, here is just the difference between a spurious and a real
repentance. I am afraid we have thousands in our churches who had a
spurious repentance: they were convinced of sin--they were sorry for
it; they wanted to live a better life, to love God in a sort of
general way; but they skipped over the real point of controversy with
God; they hid it from their pastor, perhaps, and from the deacons,
and from the people who talked with them.

Now, I say, Abraham might have been willing to have given up every
other thing that he possessed; but, if he had not been willing to
give up Isaac, all else would have been useless. It is your Isaac God
wants. You have got an Isaac, just as the young ruler had his
possessions. You have got something that you are holding on to, that
the Holy Spirit says you must let go, and you say, "I can't." Very
well; then you must stop outside the kingdom. I beseech you, do not