n, entirely by the
righteousness of Christ."[116]

[116] Edward's and Dwight's Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822, pp.
45-47, abridged.

I have italicized the passage which records the exhaustion of the
anxious emotion hitherto habitual. In a large proportion, perhaps the
majority, of reports, the writers speak as if the exhaustion of the
lower and the entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous,[117]
yet often again they speak as if the higher actively drove the lower
out. This is undoubtedly true in a great many instances, as we shall
presently see. But often there seems little doubt that both
conditions--subconscious ripening of the one affection and exhaustion
of the other--must simultaneously have conspired, in order to produce
the result.

[117] Describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we
might say that the movement of new psychic energies towards the
personal centre and the recession of old ones towards the margin (or
the rising of some objects above, and the sinking of others below the
conscious threshold) were only two ways of describing an indivisible
event. Doubtless this is often absolutely true, and Starbuck is right
when he says that "self-surrender" and "new determination," though
seeming at first sight to be such different experiences, are "really
the same thing. Self-surrender sees the change in terms of the old
self, determination sees it in terms of the new." Op. cit., p. 160.

T. W. B., a convert of Nettleton's, being brought to an acute paroxysm
of conviction of sin, ate nothing all day, locked himself in his room
in the evening in complete despair, crying aloud, "How long, O Lord,
how long?" "After repeating this and similar language," he says,
"several times, I seemed to sink away into a state of insensibility.
When I came to myself again I was on my knees, praying not for myself
but for others. I felt submission to the will of God, willing that he
should do with me as should seem good in his sight. My concern seemed
all lost in concern for others."[118]

[118] A. A. Bonar: Nettleton and his Labors, Edinburgh, 1854, p. 261.

Our great American revivalist Finney writes: "I said to myself: 'What
is this? I must have grieved the Holy Ghost entirely away.

I have lost all my conviction. I have not a particle of concern about
my soul; and it must be that the Spirit has left me.' 'Why!' thought I,
'I never was so far from being concerned about my