Transcript:
MY CONVERSION
Good instructions as to the contents of the Bible were
mine at school, at 17, under a John the Baptist ministry.
But I never knew the Gospel till, at 19, I went
abroad full of the animal spirits of a military life. I
and my comrade spent a tiring day on the field of Waterloo,
in June 1824, arriving late at night at Quick.
It struck me, “I will say my prayers” (it was a habit of
childhood, neglected in youth). I knelt down by my bedside,
but found I had forgotten what to say. I looked up as if trying
to remember, when, suddenly, there came on my soul a
something I had never known before. It was as if some One,
infinite and almighty, knowing everything, full of the deepest,
tenderest interest in myself, though utterly and entirely abhorring
everything in and connected with me, made known
to me that He pitied and loved myself. My eye saw no one,
my ear heard no one, but I knew, assuredly, that the One
whom I knew not, and never had met, had met me for the first
time and made me know that we were together. There was a
light no sense or faculty of my own human nature ever knew.
There was a presence of what seemed infinite in greatness;
something altogether of a class that was apart and supreme,
and yet, at the same time, making itself known to me in a
way that I, as a man, could thoroughly feel, taste and enjoy.
The Light made all light Himself withal, but it did not destroy,
for it was love itself, and I was loved individually by Him.
The exquisite tenderness and fulness of that love—the way it
appropriated me, myself for Him, in whom all was, while the
light from which it was inseparable in Him discovered to me
the contrast I had been to all that was light and love.
I wept for a while on my knees, said nothing, and jumped
into bed. The next morning’s first thought was, “get a Bible.”
I got one; it was henceforth my handbook. My clergyman companion
noticed this and also the entire change of life and
thought. We journeyed on together to Geneva, where there
was an active persecution of the faithful going on. He went
to Italy, and I found my own company, and stayed with those
who were suffering for Christ. I could quite now, after 50
years’ trial, adapt to myself these few lines:—
as descriptive of that night's experience.
“Christ, the Father’s rest eternal,
Jesus once looked down on me,
Called me by my name external,
And revealed Himself to me.
With His whisper, light, life giving,
Glowed in me, the dark and dead,
Made me live, Himself receiving,
Who once died for me and bled.”
"Things New and Old" 1933 &
“Words in Season” 1930