580 APPENDIX TO PART III

perhaps as important as the last, and He saw how little held the tree to its old roots long before you saw it nod.

Consider, further, if you think that the wrath of God was the same against Herod when he first fainted on his throne as when he expired, whether God’s love is not as great to a man when first He strikes at his heart, or goes forth to seek him on the dark mountains, as when He brings him home to His fold? Consider, also, since you say that a work which God begins He always finishes, and infer thence that a man once converted is safe, whether these first strokes be not the true beginning of God’s work, and whether God is likely to stop when the tree is only cut half-way through.

§ 14. But I have to press another Analogy. As in Conversion we Die to Sin, so we are Born to Christ. This is the Analogy in accordance with which you Evangelical Christians restrict the term “Regeneration” to the moment of Conversion. Consider, therefore, this analogy carefully.

Are you quite sure, in the first place, that the moment of the natural birth is a more important one in God’s eyes than any other of the child’s existence? It is with Astrologers, but is it with God? Are you quite sure that the child receives its soul at that moment-neither after nor before? Does the mere fact of its breathing air with its lungs, and of light being admitted to its eyes, make this difference between mortality and immortality? Is there any real sign or evidence of more of a soul being put into it at that moment, than there was before? Might it not have had what you call its soul a month sooner, if you had frightened its mother; and if you now fasten a ring of iron round its skull, will it ever show more evidence of a soul than it did by its motions in the womb? nay, was not the peculiar disposition of its soul influenced by the mother’s thoughts, before you admit that its soul existed? But grant it otherwise, grant that though it draw only two breaths and so expires, it is an immortal being, and that if it had lost life ten seconds before it was but a piece of clay, was God’s power then less exerted in framing its bones and sinews, and preparing it for an habitation of the soul, than at the moment of birth, or more especially at that moment than afterwards in developing the intelligence and affections of this New Creature? It indeed is a date of some peculiar importance to us when the child is first trusted to our care; but in God’s eyes perhaps the moment of conception is as important as this, and the direction which He gives to the thoughts of the mother, while the Child is still in her bosom, as important a part of the creation of the Child’s soul as the admission of air to its lungs.

§ 15. Now apply this analogy. It is an important moment to Us, in our short-sighted Humanity, when we first see that our friends have become Christians, or feel that we are New Creatures ourselves. But is that moment much more important in God’s sight than any of the others in which He was preparing us and them for the change, or in which, after that change, He leads us to further perfection? And if not, and if the Grace of God is effectually exerted upon us perhaps many years before outward evidence of it appear to ourselves or others, is there any sign by which we may so much as conjecture when this Grace is first extended to us and called into active operation? Is it not perfectly possible for you, Evangelical Christians, without one whit abandoning your conception of conversion as the visible

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