tecost, producing much popular excitement and a large
number of Christian believers.

But, whether or not we accept this account, it is unquestionable that
the apostles were filled with faith in the person and office of their
Master, which is enough to justify His doctrine of regeneration.

_Conversions._

St. Augustine after thirty years of age, and other Fathers, bear
testimony to a sudden, enduring and extraordinary change in themselves,
called _conversion_[66].

Now this experience has been repeated and testified to by countless
millions of civilized men and women in all nations and all degrees of
culture. It signifies not whether the conversion be sudden or gradual,
though, as a psychological phenomenon, it is more remarkable when sudden
and there is no symptom of mental aberration otherwise. But even as a
gradual growth in mature age, its evidential value is not less. (Cf.
Bunyan, &c.)

In all cases it is not a mere change of belief or opinion; this is by no
means the point; the point is that it is a modification of character,
more or less profound.

Seeing what a complex thing is character, this change therefore cannot
be simple. That it may all be due to so-called natural causes is no
evidence against its so-called supernatural source, unless we beg the
whole question of the Divine in Nature. To pure agnostics the evidence
from conversions and regeneration lies in the bulk of these
psychological phenomena, shortly after the death of Christ, with their
continuance ever since, their general similarity all over the world,
&c., &c.

_Christianity and Pain_.

Christianity, from its foundation in Judaism, has throughout been a
religion of sacrifice and sorrow. It has been a religion of blood and
tears, and yet of profoundest happiness to its votaries. The apparent
paradox is due to its depth, and to the union of these seemingly diverse
roots in Love. It has been throughout and growingly a religion--or
rather let us say _the_ religion--of Love, with these apparently
opposite qualities. Probably it is only those whose characters have been
deepened by experiences gained in this religion itself who are so much
as capable of intelligently resolving this paradox.

Fakirs hang on hooks, Pagans cut themselves and even their children,
sacrifice captives, &c., for the sake of propitiating diabolical
deities. The Jewish and Christian idea of sacrifice is doubtless a
survival of this idea of God by way of natural