JESUS' CAPTURE OF THE SOUL

THE doctrine of conversion has been spoilt for some of us by the violent type of sinner and by the violent type of evangelist. I can remember when I was in my teens being a member of a class in which from time to time we had what was called a 'testimony evening.' How I dreaded that evening‑I, until recently, a decorous Presbyterian I It was only a tremendous sense of duty that made me go at all. In this class there was at one time a man who had spent a wastrel's manhood in Paris. He had actually been taken out dead drunk from a low Paris restaurant, and he would relate this with vividness; and then he would tell how God had found him and made him a changed man. His experience seemed so definite and dramatic, and his conversion so real and satisfying. When it came to my turn I could not think of any really interesting sins, nor could I honestly speak of some great dramatic change in my life, and I used to wonder if I could claim to be converted at all. The tendency of this violent experience was to suggest that unless you had been a desperate sinner you could never be anything but a very tepid Christian.

One can see at once how that view of conversion, emphasized, pressed for and regarded as the standard
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pattern, rather puts ordinary people off, because most of us have not sinned interestingly. We have never assaulted a policeman. We have never beaten our wives‑at least, not hard and not where it shows I We have never been thrown out of a pub, or fought somebody in the street. So we come to think of conversion as irrelevant to our case, whereas it is just what we need ; for our sins, though less lurid, are just as real, and we are troubled by loss of temper, selfishness, and lust as much as men can be tempted to get drunk or to beat their wives.

The second thing that has spoilt the idea of con­version for us is the violent type of evangelist. I can also remember attending a chapel in which the preacher left the pulpit at one point of the service and walked up and down the aisle saying, ' Come to Jesus ' ; and occasionally, putting his hand on the bowed form of some worshipper, who looked a little more embarrassed than the others, he would bend over him and say, 'Are you saved, brother? ' I think we are all glad that that terrible method is going. In hundreds of churches, right until the present day, people are asked to kneel at the Com­munion‑rail, or stand up, or go into a room ; and, though this method may seem to be justified by some of its results, I cannot but regard it as being just as dangerous a use of emotional force as violence is a doubtful use of physical force.

Because of these two factors, the violent sinner and the violent evangelist, a good many of us have been made to shudder at the word conversion, and what I should like to do in this chapter is to' try to
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separate a great word and a great doctrine from the confusing interpretations which some people have made of it. We must remember two things. First, that the violent type of sinner has again and again been absolutely changed for the better. No one can doubt that who knows anything about the work of the Salvation Army or the work done in some of our own great missions. Secondly, we must not overlook the fact that a man like Dr. Grenfell was converted at a Moody and Sankey mission. In other. words, we must not deny the value of the conversion of the sinner by the violent evangelist ; but we must not limit our conception of con­version to the experience of the one, or the method of the other. It would be a real tragedy if all the values of conversion were lost sight of because some had been misrepresented. Indeed, many of us, though we have had our souls shocked and horrified, would stand almost anything if some sudden cataclysm could change us so completely that we never desired to do or think evil for the rest of our days. We need conversion even if we do not like the ways in which it has been presented in the past,

What does conversion mean? Does it not mean definitely becoming changed by God? I put it in this way, rather than calling it ' deciding for Christ,' in order to keep the emphasis where it ought to be kept‑that is, on the side of God rather than on the side of man. At the same time, it has its human side of definitely allowing God His right to be
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the Master of our lives and the Director of our conduct.

For some people the experience seems to be sudden. They cannot explain it, or see what led up to it, or account for it in any way. But at some moment in life, through a word that is dropped, through an experience of joy, it is as though God sweeps into the life as one can imagine the ocean sweeping into some muddy backwater, overcoming the resistance of all obstacles, changing the whole nature of life, until the happy soul can sing with Masefield's ploughman!

O glory of the lighted mind,
How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind.
The station brook, to my new eyes,
Was babbling out of Paradise;
The waters rushing from the rain
Were singing Christ has risen again!
I thought all earthly creatures knelt
From rapture of the joy I felt,
The narrow station‑wall's brick ledge,
The wild hop withering in the hedge,
The lights in huntsman's upper storey
Were parts of an eternal glory,
Were God's eternal garden flowers.
I stood in bliss at this for hours.

But surely one of the things that ought to be said about conversion is that it is not less real because it is gradual. If a little child grows up in a Christian home, where the true values of Christ are not only taught, but lived, I do not think we ought to demand a sudden cataclysm before we can caJU that child a real follower of Jesus. Surely his little life ought to
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open as naturally and beautifully to the sunshine of God's presence and love as a bud becomes a rose in the gardens of earth. And just as no gardener can say, ' On such and such a date in June that bud became a rose,' so I do not think we need to try to find a date when a growing soul becomes a converted man or woman.

However, I can see clearly that there is a great danger in supposing that automatically a child in a Christian home will become converted. His conversion may not be so dramatic a change as that of a burglar, but it ought to be just as real, and ultimately bring forth the same fruits and respond to the same tests. It may not be a sudden miracle, but it ought to be as great a miracle; and we might do well to remember Browning's line, that you can see the miraculous not only ' in the comet's rush, but in the rose's birth.' And though we may say that there is not in one sense a dramatic beginning in the case of the conversion that is gradual, there ought to be a time when the growing soul, realizing what has happened, and in a divine closure with God, accepts Christ's mastery and dedicates his life or her life to Him. This may happen so quietly, it may be, that the outer world may not discern it at once; but it must be a divine confirmation of, and realization of, that great miracle which has happened, even though it be as quietly as the birth of a flower. And perhaps we tend to underline the word 'quietly' too much. In my church every year I make much of the public service for the recognition of new members. There is a great psychological value in being able to look
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back to a definite day, if not of conversion, of marking a definite closure with God, giving the consent of the conscious will to a happening which may have been almost unconscious.

The great danger of thinking of conversion as a process is that we should suppose that something has happened, when in reality nothing has happened; and the danger is heightened by our very familiarity with religion and its expressions. "When one reads about the conversions of men in the New Testament, of men of other races across the sea, and of men in the days of the Wesleys, one realizes the presence of that element of wonder and rapture in an experience which is strangely lacking, often, when that experi­ence is a process. One misses the sense of power and aliveness and thrill. Indeed, sometimes one is tempted to wonder whether it was a real advantage that we knew so much about religion before we experienced anything. As Dr. Maltby has pointed out, we assented to everything before we believed anything, we professed more than we possessed, we sang hymns lustily long before their meaning dawned upon us, we were told tremendous things before they ever kindled in us a tremendous emotion.

We are held back by our second‑hand righteous­ness as much as the violent sinner was held back by original sins. The passion of wonder and the potency characteristic of the New Testament have not made us respond as they should because we have been familiar ever since our babyhood with the words which describe it. A child from a slum going to
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stay with a duke is filled with amazement and wonder and rapture at everything he sees. The grounds are paradise, the motor‑car is a miracle, the house is an enchanted castle. The duke's own boy is frankly bored. He is so used to it all. And one of the awful snares of being brought up in Christianity is that, spiritually, we take the attitude of the son of the duke, and, because we are so familiar with the ter­minology and the organization, we miss the majesty of the message.

I am all for the Christian home‑I owe too much to mine ever to disparage it‑but, frankly, there is a danger in it : either the danger that we should cut out the idea of conversion as irrelevant, or that we should think it had happened when it has not happened ; and it is because of this that so many of our Church members are pleasant and well­meaning pagans. They support Christianity as they support a local hospital, because they can see that it is doing good work‑work worthy of their approval and money; but they miss the central thing in Christianity, a personal link between the soul and God‑and they settle down into a complacency which is spiritual death. They use the language of Christianity and sing its hymns with enthusiasm if they know the tune. They feel for the time heroic and uplifted, but when any testing times come they find their house was built on the sand. Of that inward power which comes from fellowship with Christ they know little or nothing; and they are vaguely surprised that, though on Sunday night they
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feel uplifted, on Monday morning the influence of Sunday night has gone, and left them as desolate as one feels when standing on the wet sand of a lonely shore after the last crimson has gone from the sky and clouds are grey again, and the sea booms dully and shrieks amongst the shingle, and the evening breeze has a queer moan in it, and one shivers like a child lost in the dark, or like a stricken creature of the forest when the night comes down.

In your inward soul you know that what the soul needs‑and dreads, what it truly longs for‑and postpones, is a personal closure with God. Don't try to live the Christian life hoping the experience will come. Claim the experience, and then you will find power to live the life. The results may be sudden or slow. Only God knows. But you will live a life of power and peace and deep content such as you do not dream exists.

Some put this closure off, saying, ' First I must feel that I desire to be good,' or, ' First I must feel penitent,' or, ' First I must feel that I truly believe.' Yet, my reader, if you desire Christ, that is a desire for goodness, a symptom of penitence, and an earnest of faith. Something can happen between you and Christ to‑night‑under the stars as you wend your way home ; or now, as you put this book down, if you will but sit quietly in your chair, and in the flickering flames of the fire hear the whisper of His voice.