afely assume that in the reports where
no age was mentioned the facts, if disclosed, would not run counter to
the generalisation above given. The Rev. T. Towers, Birmingham, noted
that 16 out of 25 reported converts were children. Rev. A. Le Gros,
Rugby, reported: "A number of our youngest members, especially amongst
the young girls, were amongst those who professed conversion." Rev. H.
Singleton, Smethwick, says: "The bulk of the names sent to me were those
of children under thirteen years of age." Rev. W. G. Percival, Lozells
Congregational Church, says of the 'inquiry' meeting held after the
preaching: "The dear little things followed one another for inquiry
until the place was a scene of utter confusion." Reports of a similar
nature came from other places. The ages were pointed out quite
incidentally; conversions of youths of 17 or 18 would not excite comment
with these. Were the ages of all given, we should, without doubt, find
them fall into line with Starbuck's and Hall's figures.

Professor James quite accepts this view of conversion. The conclusion,
he says, "would seem to be the only sound one: conversion is in its
essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from
the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life
of maturity."[147] Conversion, in the sense of a change from "the
child's small universe" to the large world of human society, may be a
normal fact in life, but the really essential fact in the enquiry is not
the fact of growth, but growth in a specific direction. Why should this
normal change from childhood to maturity be the period during which
_religious_ conversion is experienced? This question is not only ignored
by Professor James, it is made more confused by his method of stating
it. Of course, if all people experienced this religious conviction, as
all people undergo other changes at adolescence, the question would be
simplified. But this is obviously not the case. A large number of people
never experience it so long as they are only brought into contact with
ordinary social forces. Special circumstances seem usually to be
required to rouse this sense of religious conviction. Nearly every story
of conversion turns upon something unusual, unexpected, or dramatic
occurring as the exciting cause. The question is, therefore, why should
the line of growth, general with all at adolescence, be, in the case of
some, diverted into religious channels? A study of