Conversion (religion)

“ John the Baptist recommended to the Jews—a true and solid conversion. Whether a man has committed mortal sin or not, whether he is born a Catholic or not, there comes upon him, if he is a true Christian, some time in his life, a change which Catholic writers call conversion. It may not be sudden. It may be all but imperceptible. It may be more than once. But at least once, there comes a time when religion becomes a matter of personal conviction with him. He is different from what he was before. A change has passed over him. He has awakened to his moral accountability. His manhood is developed. ”

“ The peculiar danger, then, of the modern appeal for conversion is that it is couched in a form likely to do the minimum of good and the maximum of harm. Where religion exists as a normally operative factor of the environment—as in lower stages of culture—the danger is avoided, because no special machinery is required to bring about religious conviction. ”

“ Many theologians will agree that this has been almost wholly disastrous. On the one side, conversion has been dwelt upon as a cataclysmal epoch in a person's life, produced, negatively, by an act of self-surrender, and, positively, by a supernatural act of grace. This has had the effect of blinding people to the real nature of the process, and has led to certain evil consequences that must always accompany attempts at wholesale conversion. ”

“ The study of religious experience has shown the power of religion (and certainly for the most part its power for good) in the life of the individual and of society. The psychologists have thrust upon our attention with unmistakable emphasis the fact of conversion, however they may theorize about the fact. The recorded experiences of saints, reformers and missionaries, the testimony collected by the questionnaires and the cases of conversion described in such books as Begbie's "Twice-Born Men" have shown beyond a peradventure that men can be born again. ”

“ OF all the follies ever enacted or exhibited under the sun, and of all the ignorance of history, science, and human nature ever displayed in the history of the human race, that which stands out in bold relief, as pre-eminent, is the fashionable custom of conversion, or "getting religion." ”

“ Special circumstances seem usually to be required to rouse this sense of religious conviction. Nearly every story of conversion turns upon something unusual, unexpected, or dramatic occurring as the exciting cause. ”

“ Let, then, the reformed examine strictly into their lives, as to whether they exhibit decisive proofs of a genuine conversion; of conversion, not used in its limited sense, as implying a sudden or even violent change, but in the more extended sense, of a recovery from sin, and of a full development of the Christian character:—a conversion which, in its completion, is equivalent to the renewal of the soul in righteousness; the progress of which may be, in some, so gradual, as almost to be imperceptible, but must be, in all, so certain, as to be unquestionable. ”

“ Conversion is to turn from the love and practice of sin, and through faith in the Son of God to the love and practice of holiness. When a man has conviction of sin, believes in, and depends on, Jesus as His Savior, he is converted, and it matters not how, when, or where. ”

“ The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it. ”

“ We need hardly say we believe in the absolute, the indispensable, the universal necessity of divine conversion. Let a man be what he may; be he Jew or Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, Protestant or Roman Catholic; in short, whatever be his nationality, his ecclesiastical position, or his theological creed, he must be converted, else he is on the broad and direct road to an everlasting hell.
There is no one born a Christian, in the true sense of that word. Neither can anyone be educated into Christianity. ”

“ On the other hand, all who really hate sin, mourn over it, strive against it, trust in and cling to Christ as their personal Redeemer, need no conversion. No matter whether they can tell where and when and how they were converted or not. All who know by blessed experience that they now have in their hearts the elements of penitence and faith, are in a state of conversion, and if they earnestly ask God, may have the assurance that their sins are forgiven and they are accepted in the Beloved. ”

“ Considerable difference of opinion has always existed, and still exists, within the Christian Church as to the true nature and the causes of conversion, especially in the sense last described. Some have held that man is merely the passive recipient of the Divine Grace, a view based largely on the rendering of the Authorized Version of Isaiah vi. ”

“ Who alone performs conversion in us? The Holy Ghost brings us to Christ, or converts us, only through the Gospel. When can the Holy Ghost not perform this work in us? What should we therefore diligently do? ”

“ Third: we may see the influence of humanism upon our preaching in the relinquishment of the goal of conversion. We are preaching to educate, not to save; to instruct, not to transform. Conversion may be gradual and half-unconscious, a long and normal process under favorable inheritance and with the culture of a Christian environment. ”

“ If the Lord brings about the salvation of some, through a mighty outpouring of his Spirit, then we shall never comprehend his ways. Why is it that he does not give us one general outpouring, one grand revival all over our country, and bring about the long prayed for millennial day? Answer.—Conversion is a commandment of God. It must be obeyed or the country lie, in direct opposition to the will of God, in sin. ”

“ I have examined, as you requested, the book entitled ‘The Higher Christian Life,’ with a view of gaining the author's definition of ‘conversion,’ or ‘regeneration,’ and his directions for securing it, and also his idea of what the ‘second conversion’consists in. His view of the first conversion, or regeneration, is the generally entertained one, i.e., it is the pardon of our sins. This pardon is instantaneous and entire. The moment a soul believes in Christ, and accepts his atonement, that moment it experiences a complete sense of pardoned sin. ”

“ And to-night we want to get some hint of how to have this infilling, which shall also be an anointing of power and a seal of ownership and an earnest of greater things at Jesus' return.
Broken Couplings.
But perhaps some one is saying, "Have not we all received the Holy Spirit if we are christians?" Yes, that is quite true. It is the Holy Spirit's presence in us that makes us christians. His work begins at conversion. Conversion and regeneration are the two sides of the same transaction. Conversion, the human side: regeneration, the divine side. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The fact is, the conversion of a heathen is always a matter of wonder, if not of curiosity, to the Christian public; and it was just natural that I too was asked to tell them some vivid accounts of how "I threw my idols into the fire, and clung unto the Gospel." But mine was a more obdurate case than those of many other converts. ”

“ Upon the whole, how should we lay out ourselves with all possible concern for the conversion of sinners! It will be for the happiness and salvation of the converted; it will prevent much mischief, and the spreading and multiplying of sin in the world; it will be for the glory and honour of God; and it will mightily redound to our comfort and renown in the great day. Those that turn many to righteousness, and those who help to do so, shall shine as the stars for ever and ever. ”

“ For all this hath been under the notion of ministers feeding their flocks, not of preachers sent to convert the unconverted and unbelieving.
To preach mainly for conversion of that people to whom a man stands shepherd, as to a converted people and flock of Christ, a dangerous disorder. God’s people must seek after a ministry sent by Christ to convert. ”

“ The change we call "conversion" thus residing neither in the transfer of ecclesiastical relations to the church, nor in the growth of ritualism into the external conduct, nor yet even in the adoption of Catholic doctrine as the individual's creed, must have its sphere of action in regions deeper and more fundamental than we have yet explored. The church of God looks with the eyes of God upon the souls of men. ”

“ Of course, as you say, a convert comes to learn, and not to pick and choose. He comes in simplicity and confidence, and it does not occur to him to weigh and measure every proceeding, every practice which he meets with among those whom he has joined. He comes to Catholicism as to a living system, with a living teaching, and not to a mere collection of decrees and canons, which by themselves are of course but the framework, not the body and substance, of the church. And this is a truth which concerns, which binds, those also who never knew any other religion, not only the convert. ”

“ We know nothing of the objective act on God's part by which he reconciled the world to himself, the very description of it being a figure of speech. Conversion is not in accordance with the claims of orthodoxy, for while there were conversions in the early Church, there is no possibility of establishing a harmony between them and those which are now said to occur. ”

“ Conversion may come to him through the successive adoption of Catholic dogmas, through fondness for external rites and forms, through personal friendship and familiarity, through any of those myriad ways by which God leads the steps of his elect toward heaven; but, when it comes, it is the same change for each, for every one—the abnegation of all choice and self-affirmation, and the complete subjection of the heart and will to the obedience of faith. ”

“ To the heathen and infidel conversion is absolutely and always necessary to salvation. The baptized Christian may by God’s grace so continue in that state of salvation in which he was placed in baptism, (see Church Catechism,) that conversion, in this sense, is not necessary to him: still even he, day by day, will fall into sins of infirmity, and he will need renewal or renovation: and all these—the daily renewal of the pious Christian, the conversion of the nominal Christian, and the conversion of the infidel or heathen—are the work of the Holy Spirit of God on the hearts of men. ”

“ From the fact that Jesus complains of a people that will not be converted, lest he might heal them, we would conclude from that, that conversion was a condition of the healing power. Why, says he, "They will not turn from their sins and be converted, that I may heal them." But when they are converted and grown up into one, the day of his power comes, and then says he, "They are converted, and I will heal them." ”

“ For notwithstanding the great love which the converts to these different faiths expressed at the time of their conversion, and the great zeal manifested by the respective clergy, who were active in getting up and promoting this extraordinary scene of religious feeling, in order to have everybody converted, as they were pleased to call it, let them join what sect they pleased—yet when the converts began to file off, some to one party and some to another, it was seen that the seemingly good feelings of both the priests and the converts were more pretended than real ”

“ Of the various corollaries which might be drawn from this demonstration of the real nature of conversion, there is but one which time and space allow us to notice. That one is this: That the whole question between Catholics and Protestants is one of fact and not primarily of doctrine; and can, like any other fact, be investigated and proved by human evidence. On one side, it is asserted that faith and morals are of comparative indifference to salvation, and that no source of divine light exists on earth higher than that of scripture, interpreted and judged by reason. ”

“ If truly converted men, true saints of Christ, could be guilty of sins such as were not named amongst the heathen, or could be drunk at the Lord's Table, or could cherish all that long and dreary catalogue of spiritual crimes enumerated in the Corinthian Epistles, then indeed the words true conversion have completely changed their meaning, and Christianity, instead of being the principle and fountain of a regenerate life, becomes a cloak under which all kinds of maliciousness and evil-doing may have free course and be glorified. ”

“ There is the hindrance of an abuse of the evangelical doctrine of conversion, and the idea that springs up in many hearts that if once a man has 'passed [Pg 241] from death unto life,' and has managed to get inside the door of the banqueting-hall, that is enough. And there are numbers of people in our Nonconformist communities especially, where that doctrine of conversion is most distinctly preached, whose growth is stopped by the abuse that they make of it in fancying if they have once exercised faith in Jesus Christ they may safely and sinlessly stand still. ”