GROWTH OF THE SOUL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20473, 27 January 1930, Page 5

GROWTH OF THE SOUL.

METHODS OF CONVERSION.

PROCESS OR A CRISIS? [FEOSI OUR OWN COSRESPONDENT.I - " LONDON, Dec. 19. "Among my owri.family and friends I have never met with a.* case even remotely resembling the sadden, -conversions which Wesleyans are led to expert." ■ The speaker was the Dtjan v pf St. Paul s, honorary chaplain of the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, who was preaching at St. James', Garlickhytbe, at a service last Sunday which was attended by the master and members of the Glass Selleis Company. "I have consulted one or two experienced Methodist ministers in our own time," said the Dean, "and they have expressed surprise at what they read in Wesley's'Journal. .Their own experience has not been that sudden conversion is either - universal or to be found in tha majority of cases. For .my. own part I believe that short parable found only in St. Mark about the seed growing slowly is the truest picture of the'growth of a healthy soul.'A The Dean quoted the text, "The Kingdom' of God cometh not with observation." People must not look for external signs of the .approach of conversion. It was within us; .quietly developing, secret and silent;.in the working, too secret to be ostentatious, too genuine to be rapid, too deep to be noisy, too natural to be startling. _ "Now, here we are running counter to a large section of Christian experience," continued the Dean. "The whole body of Wesleyan Methodists and a great many other Christians believe that the Kingdom of God does come to individuals Svith observation,' and that it is not quiet, nor gradual, but palpable, sudden, and startling. * • "Conversion is unquestionably a fact; but it does not make a man different from what God made him; it makes him what God intended him to be, and 'that is often a different individual from what ha lias made himself. If a person is different after conversion Jt is only because he was not himself before it. "Is conversion normally and usually a process or a crisis ? John Wesley said he found that 652 members of his society, who were exceedingly clear in thqir experience, declared, that their deliverance from sin was instantaneous. It was of real practicable importance to know if thesq experiences were normal, natural or not. I have known young people who have been brought up to expect them, and have been sorely troubled -in their minds because nothing-of the kind, has occurred in them. On the other hand, in many religious families any case of this sort would bo treated as unwholesome, morbid, and even hypocritical."