own salvation in my
life.' ... I tried to recall my convictions, to get back again the load
of sin under which I had been laboring. I tried in vain to make myself
anxious. I was so quiet and peaceful that I tried to feel concerned
about that, lest it should be the result of my having grieved the
Spirit away."[119]

[119] Charles G. Finney: Memoirs written by Himself, 1876, pp. 17, 18.

But beyond all question there are persons in whom, quite independently
of any exhaustion in the Subject's capacity for feeling, or even in the
absence of any acute previous feeling, the higher condition, having
reached the due degree of energy, bursts through all barriers and
sweeps in like a sudden flood. These are the most striking and
memorable cases, the cases of instantaneous conversion to which the
conception of divine grace has been most peculiarly attached. I have
given one of them at length--the case of Mr. Bradley. But I had better
reserve the other cases and my comments on the rest of the subject for
the following lecture.

Lecture X

CONVERSION--Concluded

In this lecture we have to finish the subject of Conversion,
considering at first those striking instantaneous instances of which
Saint Paul's is the most eminent, and in which, often amid tremendous
emotional excitement or perturbation of the senses, a complete division
is established in the twinkling of an eye between the old life and the
new. Conversion of this type is an important phase of religious
experience, owing to the part which it has played in Protestant
theology, and it behooves us to study it conscientiously on that
account.

I think I had better cite two or three of these cases before proceeding
to a more generalized account. One must know concrete instances first;
for, as Professor Agassiz used to say, one can see no farther into a
generalization than just so far as one's previous acquaintance with
particulars enables one to take it in.

I will go back, then, to the case of our friend Henry Alline, and quote
his report of the 26th of March, 1775, on which his poor divided mind
became unified for good.

"As I was about sunset wandering in the fields lamenting my miserable
lost and undone condition, and almost ready to sink under my burden, I
thought I was in such a miserable case as never any man was before. I
returned to the house, and when I got to the door, just as I was
stepping off the threshold, the following impressions came