s
this misunderstood, perverted, and therefore despised doctrine is
equally capable of defence. Were any reformer, with an adequate
knowledge of human life, to sit down and plan a scheme for the salvation
of sinful men, he would probably come to the conclusion that the best
way after all, perhaps indeed the only way, to turn a sinner from the
error of his ways would be to do it suddenly.

Suppose a drunkard were advised to take off one portion from his usual
allowance the first week, another the second, and so on! Or suppose at
first, he only allowed himself to become intoxicated in the evenings,
then every second evening, then only on Saturday nights, and finally
only every Christmas? How would a thief be reformed if he slowly reduced
the number of his burglaries, or a wife-beater by gradually diminishing
the number of his blows? The argument ends with an _ad absurdum_. "Let
him that stole _steal no more_," is the only feasible, the only moral,
and the only humane way. This may not apply to every case, but when any
part of man's sinful life can be dealt with by immediate Suicide, to
make him reach the end, even were it possible, by a lingering death,
would be a monstrous cruelty. And yet it is this very thing in "sudden
conversion," that men object to--the sudden change, the decisive stand,
the uncompromising rupture with the past, the precipitate flight from
sin as of one escaping for his life. Men surely forget that this is an
escaping for one's life. Let the poor prisoner run--madly and blindly if
he like, for the terror of Death is upon him. God knows, when the pause
comes, how the chains will gall him still.

It is a peculiarity of the sinful state, that as a general rule men are
linked to evil mainly by a single correspondence. Few men break the
whole law. Our natures, fortunately, are not large enough to make us
guilty of all, and the restraints of circumstances are usually such as
to leave a loophole in the life of each individual for only a single
habitual sin. But it is very easy to see how this reduction of our
intercourse with evil to a single correspondence blinds us to our true
position. Our correspondences, as a whole, are not with evil, and in our
calculations as to our spiritual condition we emphasize the many
negatives rather than the single positive. One little weakness, we are
apt to fancy, all men must be allowed, and we even claim a certain
indulgence for that apparent necessity of nature which w