, it believes, an absolutely new
nature is breathed into us, and we become partakers of the very
substance of the Deity.

That the conversion should be instantaneous seems called for on this
view, and the Moravian Protestants appear to have been the first to see
this logical consequence. The Methodists soon followed suit,
practically if not dogmatically, and a short time ere his death, John
Wesley wrote:--

"In London alone I found 652 members of our Society who were exceeding
clear in their experience, and whose testimony I could see no reason to
doubt. And every one of these (without a single exception) has
declared that his deliverance from sin was instantaneous; that the
change was wrought in a moment. Had half of these, or one third, or
one in twenty, declared it was GRADUALLY wrought in THEM, I should have
believed this, with regard to THEM, and thought that SOME were
gradually sanctified and some instantaneously. But as I have not
found, in so long a space of time, a single person speaking thus, I
cannot but believe that sanctification is commonly, if not always, an
instantaneous work."[122]

[122] Tyerman's Life of Wesley, i. 463.

All this while the more usual sects of Protestantism have set no such
store by instantaneous conversion. For them as for the Catholic
Church, Christ's blood, the sacraments, and the individual's ordinary
religious duties are practically supposed to suffice to his salvation,
even though no acute crisis of self-despair and surrender followed by
relief should be experienced. For Methodism, on the contrary, unless
there have been a crisis of this sort, salvation is only offered, not
effectively received, and Christ's sacrifice in so far forth is
incomplete. Methodism surely here follows, if not the healthier-
minded, yet on the whole the profounder spiritual instinct. The
individual models which it has set up as typical and worthy of
imitation are not only the more interesting dramatically, but
psychologically they have been the more complete.

In the fully evolved Revivalism of Great Britain and America we have,
so to speak, the codified and stereotyped procedure to which this way
of thinking has led. In spite of the unquestionable fact that saints
of the once-born type exist, that there may be a gradual growth in
holiness without a cataclysm; in spite of the obvious leakage (as one
may say) of much mere natural goodness into the scheme of salvation;
revivalism has a