350 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



relations between God and man which rise quite above 

 the region of phenomena, i.e. which cannot be defined in 

 place and time. Let me illustrate this by a slight digres 

 sion, and call your attention for a moment to certain 

 religious facts of unquestionable reality, which are still 

 transacted in our midst, and which yet refuse to be 

 measured by any phenomenal standpoint. Take the 

 great fact of conversion. An inductive study of religious 

 phenomena will no doubt reach a valuable negative 

 conclusion on this head. It will be possible to show 

 that no mere empirical psychology has solved the question. 

 The phenomena are of a kind which baffle the psycho 

 logist. But for this very reason the psychologist cannot 

 prove by his inductive processes that conversion is the 

 work of God s spirit. He cannot even discover definite 

 empirical marks by which to recognise and identify cases 

 of true conversion. Certain schools of religion you know 

 have tried to do this notably by the aid of a theory 

 which began with Ignatius Loyola, and, passing from the 

 Jesuits to Wesley, has formed the corner-stone of modern 

 as distinguished from true protestant Evangelicalism. 



According to this theory, conversion can be localised 

 in time and place by certain psychical phenomena that 

 accompany it e.g. (to accept the careful analysis given 

 by Loyola, Ex. Spir. Hebd. ii., ad fin., &quot; Of choosings&quot;), 

 when all doubt, or even power of doubting, is removed 

 from the mind so that it cannot but follow the impulse 

 to choose Christ, or when there is a clear persuasion of 

 the divine decree for salvation, or finally, when the choice 

 of a certain course of life as a means to salvation is 

 made with a perfect tranquillity of mind, the soul being 

 agitated by no contending blasts. 



Such is the empirical theory of conversion ; but it 

 always breaks down before two classes of facts : (i) the 

 certainty that such experiences may be deceptive, and 

 that they may be produced by merely natural means. 

 (This experience, of course, does not puzzle Roman 



