sible to get rid of anger,
worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable affections. One is that an
opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other
is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop--so
we drop down, give up, and DON'T CARE any longer. Our emotional
brain-centres strike work, and we lapse into a temporary apathy. Now
there is documentary proof that this state of temporary exhaustion not
infrequently forms part of the conversion crisis. So long as the
egoistic worry of the sick soul guards the door, the expansive
confidence of the soul of faith gains no presence. But let the former
faint away, even but for a moment, and the latter can profit by the
opportunity, and, having once acquired possession, may retain it.

Carlyle's Teufelsdrockh passes from the everlasting No to the
everlasting Yes through a "Centre of Indifference."

Let me give you a good illustration of this feature in the conversion
process. That genuine saint, David Brainerd, describes his own crisis
in the following words:--

"One morning, while I was walking in a solitary place as usual, I at
once saw that all my contrivances and projects to effect or procure
deliverance and salvation for myself were utterly in vain; I was
brought quite to a stand, as finding myself totally lost. I saw that
it was forever impossible for me to do anything towards helping or
delivering myself, that I had made all the pleas I ever could have made
to all eternity; and that all my pleas were vain, for I saw that
self-interest had led me to pray, and that I had never once prayed from
any respect to the glory of God. I saw that there was no necessary
connection between my prayers and the bestowment of divine mercy, that
they laid not the least obligation upon God to bestow his grace upon
me; and that there was no more virtue or goodness in them than there
would be in my paddling with my hand in the water. I saw that I had
been heaping up my devotions before God, fasting, praying, etc.,
pretending, and indeed really thinking sometimes that I was aiming at
the glory of God; whereas I never once truly intended it, but only my
own happiness. I saw that as I had never done anything for God, I had
no claim on anything from him but perdition, on account of my hypocrisy
and mockery. When I saw evidently that I had regard to nothing but
self-interest, then my duties appeared a vile mockery and a continual
course of lies, for