s. Do you say it is because of their great
wickedness? In what does wickedness consist? Is it the neglect of that
which is not in their power? Does not the system that God interposes in
the conversion of the sinner rest upon the idea that the sinner is
helpless in respect to his conversion? It certainly does. Then why
should the sinner he blamed? This view of the sinner's moral condition
necessitates a view of God utterly at variance with his character, viz:
that he is _now_ and _then_ on the giving hand, that he consents to pour
out his Spirit occasionally, and does this only where the good people
wrestle with him and give him no rest day nor night. One would think
that "he who spared not his own son, but gave him up for us all," would
send that Almighty Spirit everywhere, and at once bring about the
millennial glory. What is the trouble? "_God is love!_" "Tell them, as I
live, saith the Lord God, I have _no pleasure_ in the death of him who
dieth, but rather that he would repent and live." This theory of the
sinner's helplessness is the foundation of the entire system of mystical
conversion through mystical operations of the Spirit of God. And as for
plain and easy conditions of pardon and peace that we know all sinners
can comply with, this system of mystical conversion sets them all
_aside_. So you see that difficulties are multiplying on our hands, and
unless we can start off upon another foot, we must be lost in the
mystical and incomprehensible. As reformers, our greatest work is to
clear away mystical and false notions of men in reference to themselves
and their God; to make men sensible of their dignity and responsibility,
as beings endowed with God-like attributes.

We have succeeded, in most communities, in killing the _tap-root_ of the
mystical tree of conversion--_i.e._, the tenet of total hereditary
depravity, but the tree still stands erect, and men claim that a
wonderful outpouring of the Spirit of God has, in many days and nights,
resulted in 100 or 200 or 300 conversions. But what is conversion? It is
lexically defined "_to turn upon, to turn towards_." In a moral sense,
"_to turn upon or to, to convert unto, to convert from error, to turn to
the service and worship of the true God_." "And all who dwelt at Lydda
and Saron saw him and _turned_ to the Lord." Acts ix, 35. The word
_turned_, in the above text, is a translation of the Greek term that is
nine times rendered _convert_ in its forms and thirty-e