Conversion of souls

“ Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out: all who have heretofore drawn your motives and rules of actions from the world, and not from the Book of Life—and as you value your immortal souls, consider no proofs of conversion to be depended upon, except faith in the Saviour, and reliance on His merits alone for salvation; love of God as a reconciled father in Christ Jesus our Lord, shed abroad in the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost ”

“ This united action will manifest itself first and above all in prayer. The preservation of the Faith, and the conversion of souls are supernatural works depending primarily and in the final analysis on the grace of God. ”

“ God frequently conceals the part which his children have in the conversion of other souls. Yet one may boldly say, that person who long groans before him for the conversion of another, whenever that soul is converted to God, is one of the chief causes of it. ”

“ The first thing that the Holy Spirit has to do for every soul is to—convert—it.
He began this work at once when he came. He set the apostles to preaching Jesus Christ, and the result of the first day’s preaching was—that three thousand souls were converted.
The conversion of the soul refers to the great change which takes place when a person becomes a Christian. The word conversion is only one of several words applied to this subject in the Scriptures. Sometimes it is called being quickened, or made alive; and at other [226] times it is called being “born again.” ”

“ Are not men in danger of undervaluing and underrating the immense blessedness of conversion? Are they not, when they urge on believers the "higher life" as a second conversion, underrating the length, and breadth, and depth, and height, of that great first change which Scripture calls the new birth, the new creation, the spiritual resurrection? ”

“ If conversion be a blessed miracle by which a debased nature is suddenly lifted up, and a harsh, lead-colored, prosaic world transfigured into the vestibule of heaven, he longed to witness it in his own experience. ”

“ Here, too, we may emphasize the three aspects of tranquil devotion, repentance, and conversion, which both from the point of view of the soul and that of external condition the history of the Divine Passion repeats to mankind, no less than the ideal consummation in glory and the blessedness of pure attainment. ”

“ There is no way back from the "barren dessert," without a complete reversal of direction, a conversion: "He that will pass {285} from the dismal depths of sin to the heights of strength and holiness must make his first motion a conversion, a change from a descent to an ascent, from going outward toward the circle to go inward towards the centre"; there must be an awakening so that the soul comes to see all things in the light of their first Principle; a Birth through the Spirit and a newness of life through the bubbling of the eternal Spring. ”

“ And the divine idea once received, the divine life is imparted also, grows, is fostered and cherished by the Holy Ghost. The man is a new creature, with other aims, and other thoughts, and a life out of himself. The old things have passed away, and all things have become new—the physical being embodying, so to speak, the new life of the spirit.
We may well believe, indeed, that “conversion” is so proper to the physical and spiritual constitution of man that it is inevitable to all of us if only the ideas summed up in Christ be fitly introduced to the soul. ”

“ To use for a moment the language of mystical theology, conversion, or repentance, the first step towards the spiritual life, consists in a change in the direction of these cravings and desires; purgation or purification, in which the work begun in conversion is made complete, in their steadfast setting in order or re-education, and that refinement and fixation of the most desirable among them which we call the formation of habit, and which is the essence of character building. ”

“ It is a raising from the dead: Col ii. 12, 13, “Wherein ye also are risen with him, through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.” Yea, it is a more glorious work of power than mere creation, or raising a dead body to life, in that the effect attained is greater and more excellent. That holy and happy being and spiritual life which is reached in the work of conversion is a far greater and more glorious effect than mere being and life. ”

“ God does much for us at conversion, when, through faith in him, we are changed by his grace into new men and new women. It is like a lost planet finding its central sun, and resuming its accustomed place, and finding light, and warmth, and life, and joy again. Wonderful indeed is the power of God as manifested in the conversion of any individual, but conversion is not perfection. ”

“ All good Christians make the will of God, not their own lusts or desires, the rule of their lives and actions. 3. True conversion makes a marvellous change in the heart and life of every one who partakes of it. It brings a man off from all his old, fashionable, and delightful lusts, and from the common ways and vices of the world, to the will of God. It alters the mind, judgment, affections, way, and conversation of every one who has experienced it. ”

“ Let us sit down before the picture of sin displayed to us in the Bible and consider what guilty, vile, corrupt creatures we all are in the sight of God. What need we all have of that entire change of heart called regeneration, new birth or conversion! ”

“ Their converts, by a wonderful change of manners, became in a moment new creatures. Those who had been the most bitter enemies, long bent to lust and passion, became the most loving, forgiving, and chaste persons in the world. Has grace wrought in us so perfect a conversion? ”

“ Is an instantaneous conversion a miracle in which God is present as he is present in no change of heart less strikingly abrupt? Are there two classes of human beings, even among the apparently regenerate, of which the one class really partakes of Christ's nature while the other merely seems to do so? ”

“ The work of regeneration is performed by the direct and efficient operations of the Holy Spirit upon the heart.
2. The Holy Spirit exerts this regenerating power only on conditions, to be first complied with by the subject of the change.
The first principle I deem it unnecessary to defend farther than it has been defended in the foregoing remarks. It is not objected to by any orthodox Christians that I know of, only so far as the new views of self-conversion, and of conversion by moral suasion, may be thought an exception. ”

“ It is a duty to repent; but to become regenerate is not a duty: that is a gift, to be received afterwards. God commands conversion: he bestows regeneration. Submission is an act of our own: faith is the gift of God. A change of outward life and conduct we can accomplish ourselves; at least, we can endeavor to accomplish it; but the change of heart God himself will bestow.
Conversion, a turning round, is necessarily instantaneous: it is a change. But regeneration, or reception of divine Love, is a state, not sudden, but passing by gradations into a deeper and deeper life of faith and joy. ”

“ The pietists identified awakening or conversion with regeneration, considered that it was effected in later life through the word of God, mediated by a corporeal and spiritual penitential struggle, and a consequent spiritual experience, and sealed by a sensible assurance of God’s favour in the believer’s blessed consciousness. ”

“ The term conversion is here employed to express that change of will, heart, and life, wrought by divine grace in those, who, when living in ignorance or neglect of God, are brought to believe, obey, and love the Gospel, the spirit of which they had never before truly known, the power of which they had never before really felt. ”

“ We have surrounded the idea of conversion with such mystery, and darkened the entrance way to the new life with theories and doctrines, and a mind unused to solemn thoughts shrinks away from trying to penetrate the mysteries of the change. It is a solemn hour when a life is voluntarily given into God's keeping, the hour of the soul's surrender. ”

“ But emotion alone is a false conversion; one must have faith as well as feeling. To the extent that such psychic mobilization is partial, and in so far as such human-loyalty motivation is incomplete, to that extent will the experience of conversion be a blended intellectual, emotional, and spiritual reality. ”

“ To the convert, conversion means the profound acceptance of a mighty spiritual truth. It means positive knowledge taking the place of doubt or indifference. Conflicting ideas are no longer present in his consciousness. Pent-up energies are released. He wants to do things. His soul is fired with overmastering impulses to action. ”

“ It is because this first seed of life, which is sown into the soul, is itself the light of God, and that every stirring, or opening of this seed of life, every awakening thought or desire that arises from it, must be called the moving, or the quickening of the Spirit of God. Hence also we have a plain declaration of the certain truth, of all those scriptures, which speak of the inspiration of God, the operation of the Holy Spirit, the power of the divine light, as the necessary agents in the renewal and sanctification of our souls. ”

“ We must never forget that true conversion means our being brought to God; and most surely, if we are brought to God, it is in order that we should find in Him a perfect covering for our eyes, a perfect object for the heart, a perfect resource in all our exigencies, from first to last. A truly converted soul is one who is turned from all creature confidences, human hopes, and earthly expectations, to find all he wants in the living and true God, and that forever. ”

“ But even conversion must not be regarded as a change without motives. There must be some connection between motive, character and act, otherwise the new spiritual experience would be simply a magical happening lacking all moral significance. If there were no continuity of consciousness, if I could be something to-day irrespective of what I was yesterday, then all we signify by contrition, penitence, and shame would have no real meaning. Even the grace of God works through natural channels and human influences. ”

“ Allow the thought to be repeated again—According to the constitution which God has given the soul, it must feel the want of spiritual mercies before it can feel love for the Giver of those mercies; and just in proportion as the soul feels its lost, guilty, and dangerous condition, in the same proportion will it exercise love to the Being who grants spiritual favour and salvation. How, then, could the spiritual want be produced in the souls of men, in order that they might love the spiritual Benefactor? ”

“ Closely allied, like these doctrines, to the primitive notion of the apparitional soul, is the belief in the soul’s existence after death, which appears either as a doctrine of transmigration, describing the re-birth of souls in successive bodies, or in its more general and more important form as the doctrine of a future life. ”

“ Secondly, the above conversion is removed to the inmost life of soul, as spiritual mediation by means of repentance, penance, and conversion.
Thirdly, and finally the manifestation of the Divine is so conceived in the world of Nature's reality that the ordinary course of Nature and the natural mode of occurrences as they otherwise take place is arrested, in order to display the might and presence of the Divine. Wonder or miracle is consequently the form of presentation. ”

“ I follow no ritual, and trust no creed, except so far as it is conformable to the instinct of faith—the inward revelation of Himself which he has implanted in my soul—and to that outward revelation, the nearest and clearest that He has ever given of Himself to men, the Divine revelation of love which I find here, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, my Lord. ”

“ There is but one salvation for all mankind, and the way to it is one; and that is, the desire of the soul turned to God. This desire brings the soul to God, and God into the soul; it unites with God, it co-operates with God, and is one life with God. O my God, just and true, how great is Thy love and mercy to mankind, that heaven is thus everywhere open, and Christ thus the common Saviour to all that turn the desire of their hearts to Thee! ”

“ And, if we can do no more towards the conversion of sinners, yet we may do this—pray for the grace and Spirit of God to convert and change them. And let those that are in any way serviceable to convert others know what will be the happy consequence of their doing this: they may take great comfort in it at present, and they will meet with a crown at last. ”

“ Yet while conversion is absolutely necessary for every man, we by no means assert that its inner history must, in each step, be necessarily the same, though the results must be essentially the same in every case. The Spirit of God, who works when and how He pleases, may, in some cases, so work in the soul from its earliest years, that the time when the seed of a new life entered it, and the process by which it has gradually increased there, until it now brings forth fruit, are both unknown. ”

“ Here is the soul transformed. From a simple vital principle animating the body of a man, it has become a spirit, a good or evil genius, or even a deity, according to the importance of the effects with which it is charged. But since it is death which brought about this apotheosis, it is to the dead, to the souls of ancestors, that the first cult known to humanity was addressed. Thus the first rites were funeral rites ”