gs of character to higher
levels. Men lapse from every level--we need no statistics to tell us
that. Love is, for instance, well known not to be irrevocable, yet,
constant or inconstant, it reveals new flights and reaches of ideality
while it lasts. These revelations form its significance to men and
women, whatever be its duration. So with the conversion experience:
that it should for even a short time show a human being what the high-
water mark of his spiritual capacity is, this is what constitutes its
importance--an importance which backsliding cannot diminish, although
persistence might increase it. As a matter of fact, all the more
striking instances of conversion, all those, for instance, which I have
quoted, HAVE been permanent. The case of which there might be most
doubt, on account of its suggesting so strongly an epileptoid seizure,
was the case of M. Ratisbonne. Yet I am informed that Ratisbonne's
whole future was shaped by those few minutes. He gave up his project of
marriage, became a priest, founded at Jerusalem, where he went to
dwell, a mission of nuns for the conversion of the Jews, showed no
tendency to use for egotistic purposes the notoriety given him by the
peculiar circumstances of his conversion--which, for the rest, he could
seldom refer to without tears--and in short remained an exemplary son
of the Church until he died, late in the 80's, if I remember rightly.

The only statistics I know of, on the subject of the duration of
conversions, are those collected for Professor Starbuck by Miss
Johnston. They embrace only a hundred persons, evangelical
church-members, more than half being Methodists. According to the
statement of the subjects themselves, there had been backsliding of
some sort in nearly all the cases, 93 per cent. of the women, 77 per
cent. of the men. Discussing the returns more minutely, Starbuck finds
that only 6 per cent. are relapses from the religious faith which the
conversion confirmed, and that the backsliding complained of is in most
only a fluctuation in the ardor of sentiment. Only six of the hundred
cases report a change of faith. Starbuck's conclusion is that the
effect of conversion is to bring with it "a changed attitude towards
life, which is fairly constant and permanent, although the feelings
fluctuate.... In other words, the persons who have passed through
conversion, having once taken a stand for the religious life, tend to
feel themselves identified w