My Conversion.

I purpose to fling my name in to swell the "crowd" that gives this book its title. (Yon Motley Crowd)
Earth's wisest king voiced a startling truth when he said, "Better is the day of death than the day of one's birth" (Eccl. 7: 1). Birth launches one on Time's career, but death starts him on Eternity's interminable march. But I want to speak of that event which comes between, and which omy makes the day of death better than the day of birth—conversion. He who dies without this change, better were it for him if he had never been born.
My father was born in England, and my mother in Ireland. While very young, they sailed with their parents to that part of North America over which floats the "Union Jack." They were reared in different orthodox denominations, one of which was very formal, and the other had but scanty light. After they were married, they received much spiritual help and blessing through gifted and deeply-taught evangelists and teachers of the Word. By the time that I was old enough to receive instruction, they had, by reading and hearing the Book of eternal wisdom expounded, a well-grounded faith. Since the reading of Holy Writ in the home was their constant delight, and the Lord was daily sought in prayer and praise, of me was it true (to their honor be it said), "From a child, I knew the Holy Scriptures." But one may know the Bible and the Christ of the Bible intellectually, historically, and theoretically, and not know Him savingly and experimentally—such was my case. As to moral status, I was the very antipodes of the flagrant characters we have been reviewing, and in comparing myself with the majority that came under my observation, I was proud of my probity in contrast to their profligacy. Nevertheless, I knew that I was in the "none-righteous-no-not-one" class, and in the "all-have-sinned" class, and so realized that the truth of these positive and negative scriptures would insure my condemnation.
The broad road is wide enough to have two sides. Thousands are traveling on the dirty side of it; they find their joy in the company of the vile and the wicked; while others are journeying on the clean moral side of it and seek companionship with the amiable and reputable. But all on that road are going on to the same dark terminus.
I had a slavish fear of sin, or rather of what sin brings—judgment. The thought of telling a lie, using profane language, and of plunging into the grosser forms of wickedness almost congealed my soul. "There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Rom. 3: 18) describes vast multitudes of our race, but like Obadiah I "feared the Lord greatly" (1 Kings 18: 3).
But let not my reader think that I was without proclivities, for I had the strongest propensities toward evil, and chafed to be in the swim with the ungodly but was restrained by the heavy hand of fear. A sinner without the fear of God will follow the pull of his fallen nature, but one who fears the God of judgment, will be held back from fulfilling his base desires. Parents, teach your children the fear of God. Solemnly tell them that God hates sin, and that He must punish it, but that He loves them, and will save them if they penitently turn to Him. Cornelius "feared God with all his house," and it resulted in his own salvation, and that of many more beneath his roof (Acts 10).
As I look back over the hill country of my experience, it is evident that from a very early age, I was being led by the hand of the Spirit along the highway of life to Christ, by the way of "the Slough of Despond" and "the wicket gate." And be it remembered, no one has ever reached "the Celestial City" but those who have traveled the path of conviction and repentance, and passed through the gateway of new birth.
The things of God and of eternity often towered before my soul with dread alarm. At times I felt that my soul was manifestly the battle-ground of worlds, that opposing powers were contending for me as for a prize. Sometimes it was winter in my soul, and sometimes it was summer. This fitful condition continued till I was fourteen; then the stern blasts of winter stubbornly refused to yield to summer smiles.
This bitter state of soul-agitation lasted about three months, during which time I could say with the Psalmist, "Day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture was turned into the drought of summer'' (Ps. 32: 4). Since the unrelenting hand of God's Spirit was upon me in compelling power, I was to be a stranger to peace; the spirit of rebellion prompted me to fight against the One who was troubling me with my sins, that I might be made willing to allow Him to take them away, that He might pour into my soul, Heaven's eternal peace and calm.
The strongest plea that the enemy made at this time to hold me in his slavish kingdom was procrastination. I admitted that I was lost, and that my sins would bar me from Heaven's glory, and that I fully intended to be saved some time. Thus, I was sueing for peace by trying to make a bargain with the spirit of conviction. How loth the old deceiver is to give up possession of his dupes! The amazing thing is that his victims will side with him, to remain in servitude and misery, and run the risk of meeting the Almighty's righteous ire.
Again, the Psalmist's experience was mine, "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long." I would neither confess my sins to God, nor make known my troubles to my parents. In silence, I groaned and sighed for deliverance from my sorrowful bondage. Like Hezekiah, I could exclaim, "Behold, for peace (or, before peace) I had great bitterness" (Is. 88: 17). My nights were filled with spasmodic visions of woe, and my days with deep soul-perplexity. Mother, noticing my dark moody condition, enquired as to the cause, but I was gloomily non-committal.
The truth of Christ's coming and the rapture of His saints was familiar to me. Sometimes during night's death-like stillness, chilling fears possessed me that the Lord had come and suddenly caught up my parents to faith's bright homeland, leaving me for judgment. When some slight noise indicated that they were still in the room, great was my relief, for this to me was proof that mercy's day had not closed.
These prolonged and painful soul-exercises would submit to none of the arch-deceiver's charms or the world's attractions. Surrender to Christ, and an invitation to enter the door at which He was persistently knocking, was the only refuge for my storm-lashed conscience.
Many a fearless and valiant warrior fighting in a righteous cause has surrendered to avoid extermination, but here was I—a tiny worm of a transient hour—trying to hold a rebel fort against Omnipotence. But after I was made willing through long and losing conflicts to bow to my conquering Benefactor, the enemy tried to persuade me to believe that I must have some part in my deliverance. I knew what Scripture said about being saved by grace through faith. Though John 3: 16 and 5: 24, and other radiant gems of gospel truth, seemed to stand out before me in transparent clearness, yet the adversary sorely pestered me with thoughts of "doing" as a procuring cause of salvation. Grace on God's part and faith on my part seemed to be too easy a way of obtaining such a "great salvation"—the magnitude of the "Gift" and the freeness of it confounded me.
This phase of experience continued till I was almost driven to distraction on the dark sea of quandary. But as the darkest hour is just before dawn, so my heavy night of gloom was about to break into God's bright morning of emancipation. The Holy Spirit was leading me, through all the swamps and mazes,
To Christ who died on Calvary's tree
To pay my debt, and set me free
From sin, and coming wrath.
Thanks be unto God, one living look of faith at His atoning Son, cleared the whole horizon of all its mist and mystery. The load was lifted, the storm was over, the sky was clear, and I was a delivered and rejoicing soul. Satan was foiled. Christ was triumphant, and I was the booty of the Victor. Like the children of Israel on Canaan's side of the Red Sea, I sang redemption's song to the praise of my Redeemer in a lusty and ecstatic strain.
Now that the valley-gloom was past, and I was skipping on the "Delectable Mountains" of spiritual liberty, I told mother all about my weeks and months of soul-anguish and strife, and of my never-to-be-forgotten deliverance, but she informed me, she knew that the Lord had been dealing with me, and that now by my countenance and deportment knew also that I had "reached the land of corn and wine." But she did not want to interfere with the Spirit's work, and so would say nothing more till I was moved "to tell the story—saved by grace."
What a Saviour, what a salvation, and what a story the ransomed sinner has to sound abroad! There is no theme on earth nor among angelic legions so lofty in strain, so touching in pathos, as the Creator's death for the creature's sin. O my soul, be not thou silent lest the rocks cry out to thy shame!
God has only one Door of refuge for the convicted sinner, that Door is Christ. He said, "I am the Door (not a door); by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved" (John 10: 9). But the devil suggests many avenues of escape from a sin-troubled condition, things and ways too that may be good and right in themselves, reformation, righteous works, Christian rites, and religious affiliations, and all for the purpose of turning the anxious one from Christ and His Cross, that the soul may be deceived and eternally lost.
Reader, if you are deceived, it is because you do not believe God's undeceiving, illuminating and life-giving Word.
If anyone has reason to be more thankful to God for being saved than another, it is one from among the moral or religious class. The ungodly sinner knows he is wrong. His wicked works rise up against him and convict him in the court of his own conscience, and the arch-hoodwinker himself cannot with all his counseling fiends, contrive a plan to make him believe he is on the road to Heaven. But he has no trouble in causing the moral and religious class to believe they are in the way of righteousness, and so on the way to that ''better country"—they think what they are, and what they are doing, is pleasing to God, and in the end, hope to be accepted of God. And so—
"As an angel of light"
He wins the fight
Over millions of our race.
Satan's mightiest weapon in damnation's scheme is deception. He is in the ''wholesale" business of deceiving; "he deceiveth the whole world" (Rev. 12: 9). And only those who drink at wisdom's heavenly spring can say with the apostle, "We are not ignorant of Satan's devices" (2 Cor. 2: 11).
More than forty years have swept into eternity's sea since that glad morning dawned on the night of my soul, and yet it is almost as vivid on memory's record as when the storm-clouds rolled away. I have been on the home-stretch longer than the children of Israel wandered in the desert, and can joyfully testify to the sinner—saving and saint-sustaining grace of God. I cannot boast of a failure-less life, or of flawless perfection, but can rejoice in the unwearied love and unfailing faithfulness of the Father's forgiving and tender care.
With the saving and illuminating grace of God, there came an impelling desire to make known to others the One who was precious to my soul, and to meet children of God, to rejoice together in what we possess, and in the glories that await our entrance into the saint-thronged courts above. So, by the enabling grace of God, I continue to this day.
And reader, in love and faithfulness to you and to the Lord, I thrust this sober question upon you for solemn consideration: Have you been converted—saved—born again?
An intelligent Christian in view of changing worlds, desirous of impressing mortals with God's vital truth to man, ordered these incisive words chiseled upon his tombstone: "Reader, art thou born again? Remember, there is no salvation without a new birth."
A nation-wide evangelist, whose voice is now stilled in death, used to cry out in clarion notes to his vast audiences, "Ye must be born again, or never enter Heaven."
And to Nicodemus, and through him to you and to all of Adam's undone race, eternal, incarnate Wisdom cried: "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." And with added emphasis He exclaimed, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see, or enter the kingdom of God" (John 3: 3, 5). Since His Word is absolute and everlasting, new birth and Heaven are interlocked in God's decree.
Many and varied are the scriptures elucidating this matchless theme. Like so many suns, they diffuse floods of celestial light. Some of them point out what it means:
Becoming a new creature .................. 2 Cor. 6: 17.
Passing from death unto life .. ............. 1 John 3: 14.
Being made a partaker of the divine nature ... 2 Pet. 1: 4.
Passing from the power of Satan unto God ...Acts 26: 18.
Being born again, of incorruptible seed—the Word of God .......1 Pet.1: 23.
Being born of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 John 3: 9.
Being born of water (Word) and of the Spirit ..John 3: 5.
Christ sums all up with His emphatic "must"—"Ye must be born again" (John 3: 7).
If after such an array of texts, any beclouding mist remains, it is dispelled by the clear statement of John 1: 12, 18; "As many as received Him, to them gave He power (right, or authority) to become sons of God, to them that believe on His name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Strong, lucid, soul-liberating, and peace-imparting are the positive and negative truths of these verses.
God has marked the way to His Home in letters of living clearness. The cost of the sinner's getting there has all been paid by the infinite and compassionate Redeemer. And if you find yourself forever excluded from its glory, it will not be because of any abstruseness in the way of salvation, or of any difficult task imposed upon you, but because of your sheer indifference to His claims, and your utter disregard for the everlasting blessing that He urges you to freely receive.
Reject not the light,
Lest your terrible plight
Be the wail of endless remorse.