What Repentance Is – Dwight Lyman Moody

Suppose I am to go down to Boston tonight, and I go down to the Union station, and say to a man I sere there, “Can you tell me, is this train going to Boston?” and the man says “Yes.” I go and get on board the train, and the superintendent comes along and says, “Where are you going?” I say, “I am going to Boston,” and he says, “Well, you are in the wrong train, that train is going to Albany.” “But I am quite sure I am right; I asked a railroad man here, and he told me this was the train.” And the superintendent says, “Moody, I know all about these trains; I have lived here forty years, and see these trains go up and down here every day.” And at last he convinces me that I am on the wrong train. That is conviction, not conversion. But if I don’t remain on that train, but just get into the other train, that is repentance. Just to change trains — that is repentance.

(D. L. Moody.)