for God has forgiven our sins. Duty no longer seems arduous and difficult; for there is joy in doing anything for the sake of God. The law is written in the heart. We are born into a new life, the principle of which is faith. "The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God." This faith enables us to see God as he is, not as a stern King, or a distant Power, or an abstract Law, but as a Friend, Father, watchful Providence, surrounding Love, inflowing Life; Source from which we are always coming, and towards which we are always tending. This life of faith makes all things new. Old things have passed away, and the outward world is fresh as on the first morning of creation. Our inward and outward life are both new. We have new convictions, new affectious, new aims, new hopes, new joys. Nature is new, life is new, the Bible is new, the future world is new. Such and so great is the change which Orthodoxy assumes as the result of conversion.

§ 4. Its Reality and Importance. And the experience of the whole Church, the biographies of the saints in every denomination, assure us of the substantial truth of this description. Even in churches which are not Orthodox, churches like our own, which insist more upon development than upon crisis, observation verifies this description. Even those who do not expect such a change, nor believe in it, often come to it unexpectedly. In the course of each one's experience as a Christian minister, though he may never have insisted on the importance of sudden changes, and though may be no revival preacher, he must have known numerous instances of those who seem to have passed from death to life in the course of a day or an hour. And is not this change, either sudden or gradual, that which makes Christianity a gospel? It is the good news, not of a future and distant heaven, but of a present heaven, a heaven not outward, but inward; a present salvation from the power of sin; a present relief from the sense of guilt; a present joy

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and peace in believing; happiness in serving God; sympathy and good-will to man, instead of envy and uncharitableness; peace with God, with man, with ourselves, with our condition and circumstances.

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That such a state is possible for every human being who desires it, is the good news which Christ brings; and the experience of ten thousand times ten thousand grateful hearts declares that it is a reality.

§ 5. Is it the Work of God, or of the Man himself? Orthodox Difficulty. But now comes a difficulty in the Orthodox statement. Orthodoxy declares that this regenerate state is the result of faith, not of works; and that faith is the gift of God; and herein Orthodoxy follows the Scripture. Yet Orthodoxy calls upon us to repent and be converted, that our sins may be blotted out; and herein likewise Orthodoxy follows the Scripture. Is, then, conversion an experience, or is it an action? Is it something God gives, or something which he commands? Is it a duty to be done, or a gift to be received? Is it submission to his will, or joy in his love? a new life of obedience, or a new heart of faith? If it is submission, then we can all change our hearts at once, and make ourselves love God and love man. But who can love by an effort of the will? Yet, if the new life is a gift, then we have no power to procure it, and can only wait till God sees fit to send it; and how, then, can we be called upon to be converted?

Here is a difficulty which it seems to us Orthodoxy does not solve; and yet we think that a solution is to be found in a very simple distinction, which, like all other true and real distinctions, throws light on many other difficulties.

§ 6. Solved by the Distinction between Conversion and Regeneration. The distinction of which we speak is between repentance or conversion on the one side, and regeneration or a new life on the other side. Repentance or conversion consists in renouncing all sin, and resolving to forsake it;

in turning to God, with the purpose of submitting to his will and obeying his law. This conversion or repentance is an act proceeding from the will, and in obedience to the conscience. This is what God commands, and what we can and ought to do. Every conscientious person, every person who is endeavoring to do right and is ready to act up to his light, is a converted person. Every one who hates his sins, resists temptation, watches and prays against it, is a penitent person. This is the great, broad distinction between man and man. This divides all men into two classes those who, in their will and purpose, are for God, truth, and right; and those who, because they are not for God, are really against him. But, besides this broad distinction, there is another secondary distinction a distinction among those who are conscientiously endeavoring to do God's will. Among the converted there are two classes -the regenerate and the unregenerate. A man may be converted, and not be regenerate; for a man may repent of his sin and turn towards God, and yet not have the life of love and joy which we have described.

He is under law, not under grace. He is struggling to do right, but is not borne forward on a joyful tide-wave of love. § 7. Men may be divided, religiously, into three Classes, not. two. If this be so, we may divide men into three classes, and not into two. The first class is of those who are neither converted nor regenerate; the second, who are converted, but not regenerate; the third, who are converted, and also regenerate. The first are like the prodigal in the parable,living without God; the second, like the hired servants in the same story, serving God for wages; the third are sons, serving from love, ever with their Father, and all that he has is theirs. The motive of the first class is selfish will, selfish pleasure; the motive of the second is duty; that of the third, love. The first are without law, the second under law, the third under grace. And so we might multiply

distinctions.

But is it not clear to common observation, that this threefold classification meets the facts of life better than the other? There are three degrees of character. There is the worldly man, who is just as good or bad as society around him leads him to be; whose virtues result merely from a happy organization, or fortunate influences, but who has no principle of goodness, no purpose of righteousness, no serious aim in life. Then there is the conscientious man, who means to live, and does live, by a standard of morality; who has a serious aim, but who is not yet deeply and joyfully religious; whose religion, at any rate, is hard work, not confiding, child-like faith. And then there is the Christian believer, who has begun to live from faith; who begins to feel a higher life pouring into his heart from on high; who has help and strength from above. From his heart the burden has been lifted, and he has become again as a little child. He knows how to pray the prayer of faith. He may not be so very much better than the other in outward character; but he has the principle within him which will make all things new, sooner or later.

The New Testament confirms this view of a threefold division. We saw, in our last chapter, that the apostle Paul, who considers human nature to consist of three elements, - spirit, soul, and body, - divides mankind into the carnal man, the natural (psychical or soulish) man, and the spiritual man. The carnal man is he in whom the bodily instincts and appetites are supreme. “He is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." The natural man is he in whom the soul is supreme: he is neither carnal on one side, nor spiritual on the other. "He cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God;" yet he is not in opposition and hostility to them, like the carnal man, whose mind is enmity against God.

Still more plainly does the apostle indicate the distinction when speaking of those who are without law, those who are

under law, and those who are free from law and above it. The first state he describes in such words as these: "I was alive without the law once the glad, natural life and freedom before conscience is developed. But conscience does awake in all: "The commandment came, sin revived, and I died." When man sees that he ought to serve God, yet continues to serve the flesh and the world, he is spoken of as dead in sin; for all the principle of progress ceases. But if he does endeavor to do right, then Paul speaks of him as under law, and on his way to a higher state. That higher state he speaks of as being "delivered from the law, to serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.”

Thus we see that all religious experiences coincide. The experience of the apostle Paul is exactly the same, in its essentials, with that of every soul, however humble, that begins and goes forward in the Christian life.

If this distinction between conversion and regeneration be correct, it removes the difficulty in the Orthodox statement.

§ 8. Difference between Conversion and Regeneration.— Conversion is an act, regeneration an experience. "Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die?" is the command of the Old Testament. "Repent, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out;""Repent, and be baptized, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost," is the command of the New Testament. It is a duty to repent; but to become regenerate is not a duty: that is a gift, to be received afterwards. God commands conversion: he bestows regeneration. Submission is an act of our own: faith is the gift of God. A change of outward life and conduct we can accomplish ourselves; at least, we can endeavor to accomplish it; but the change of heart God himself will bestow.

Conversion, a turning round, is necessarily instantaneous: it is a change. But regeneration, or reception of divine Love, is a state, not sudden, but passing by gradations into a deeper and deeper life of faith and joy.