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ing the door, lest those enter who have no right there.

Three steps there are, by which we may pass into Christ's land of hope. The first is white and clear, for therein must we see and know ourselves. The second is dark and rough and cracked: he who stands thereon must have pride broken and heart humbled before the searching light. We have trodden these two steps under the guidance of this modern moralist. But there is a third, which he did not know, and hence his characters remain outside God's deep peace to the end. The third stone is red, blood-red, and it proclaims the anguish and the triumph of God's amazing love. It is a very sure ground on which to stand, and from it millions have passed into deathless hope.

"My blood so red

For thee was shed.

Come home again! Come home again!
My own dear heart, come home again.

You've gone astray,

Far from your way.

Come home again! Come home again!"

JOHN MASEFIELD: "THE EVER

LASTING MERCY"

The Fact of Conversion

JOHN MASEFIELD: “THE EVER

LASTING MERCY"

THE FACT OF CONVERSION

"For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

2 CORINTHIANS IV. 6.

"No man can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Spirit."

THE

1 CORINTHIANS XII. 3.

HE FACT of Conversion, declares the Apostle, is as truly the act of God, as is the birth of light. It cannot be achieved without the grace of Him, "Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness." The spiritual change involved in the acceptance of the authority of Christ is so stupendous, that without the aid of the Holy Spirit, it cannot be accomplished. It is He Who leads us to say, "Jesus is Lord," quickening the bruised conscience, informing the mind, creating an ever-deepening sense of need, and in manifold ways ministering to the heart as its Supreme

Evangelist. From the first wistful look of the soul standing afar until its completed return, He is its helper, present in every movement, as the sun is present in the growth of the flower from a tightly closed bud to the beauty and fragrance of the full-blown rose.

Much attention has been given in recent days to the Psychology of Conversion. The fact has been approached from the scientific standpoint and, after much investigation, it stands as one of the admitted elements in the shaping of human character. The psychologist is very ready to take up the great word "Conversion" which some timid believers are inclined to lay aside. Professor James Ward, in his book just published, entitled, "Psychological Principles," a work which may be claimed to be the final pronouncement of that eminent student of the human mind on this important doctrine, declares his belief in Conversion as emphatically as any evangelical preacher. "Crises in the development of personality," he writes, are the rule rather than the exception." And of such crises the most notable instance is what "is familiarly known in religious experience as conversion or second birth." To

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