ed by external events, and other
circumstances. This we see in the growth of plants, for instance; it
is slow, gradual, continual; yet one day by chance they grow more than
another, they make a shoot, or at least we are attracted to their
growth on that day by some accidental circumstance, and it remains on
our memory. So with our souls: we all, by nature, are far from God;
nay, and we have all characters to form, which is a work of time. All
this must have a beginning; and those who are now leading religious
lives have begun at different times. Baptism, indeed, is God's time,
when He first gives us grace; but alas! through the perverseness of our
will, we do not follow Him. There must be a time then for beginning.
Many men do not at all recollect any one marked and definite time
_when_ they began to seek God. Others recollect a time, not, properly
speaking, when they began, but when they made what may be called a
shoot forward, the fact either being so, in consequence of external
events, or at least for some reason or other their attention being
called to it. Others, again, continue forming a religious character
and religious opinions as the result of it, though holding at the same
time some outward profession of faith inconsistent with them; as, for
instance, suppose it has been their unhappy condition to be brought up
as heathens, Jews, infidels, or heretics. They hold the notions they
have been taught for a long while, not perceiving that the character
forming within them is at variance with these, till at length the
inward growth forces itself forward, forces on the opinions
accompanying it, and the dead outward surface of error, which has no
root in their minds, from some accidental occurrence, suddenly falls
off; suddenly,--just as a building might suddenly fall, which had been
going many years, and which falls at this moment rather than that, in
consequence of some chance cause, as it is called, which we cannot
detect.

Now in all these cases one point of time is often taken by religious
men, as if the very time of conversion, and as if it were sudden,
though really, as is plain, in none of them is there any suddenness in
the matter. In the last of these instances, which might be in a
measure, if we dare say it, St. Paul's case, the time when the formal
outward profession of error fell off, is taken as the time of
conversion. Others recollect the first occasion when any deep serious
thought came into