those, because a few days or hours only marked a transition from death
to life, from darkness to light, from their serving Satan to serving
God, from being enemies to their being friends of Jesus?

But apart from this evidence, what, we would ask, is there in the
nature of conversion inconsistent with its alleged suddenness? There
may indeed be a _preparedness_ for it that may occupy much time, as
dawn ushers in the sunrise, or as months of travail precede the "child
born into the world;" and there maybe _results_ whose character may
require time to determine. Nevertheless, why should not conversion
itself, apart from its antecedents or consequents, be sudden? Let us
consider briefly what conversion is.

It is not, for example, the attainment of _good habits_ nor even the
doing of good works, though it leads to and must end in this, if
genuine. These are the _results_ of conversion. Nor, again, does it
imply anything like a full or accurate _knowledge_ of the Christian
scheme, far less of its "evidences;" for how little could have been
thus known by the converted jailer of Philippi, who was one day a
heathen, and the next day a baptized Christian--or by the converted
thief on the cross--or by the three thousand converts on the day of
Pentecost!

But in conversions there must be _thorough earnestness_ about the
salvation of the soul, or of our relationship to God. And why should
not this feeling be suddenly kindled? Men can be easily roused to
_sudden_ earnestness, in order to save their bodies, when they realise
present danger; and why not to save their souls? _If_, indeed, the
soul can never be in such danger, or if a man can never be ignorant or
forgetful of the fact, or if in no circumstances or by any means