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but a turning or giving oneself to a person whose support is expected with confidence and whose will is accepted as a command to be obeyed. And since these commands cannot be obeyed without ceasing to do what is inconsistent with them, belief really includes what we have called both the negative and the positive.
7. Individual instances. — Less can be learnt from these, as referred to in the NT, than might have been expected. Of the conversions of Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, and the rest of St. Paul's great co- adjutors, we know nothing. The Ethiopian eunuch has already been referred to. Cornelius (Ac 10^^), as a proselyte, has already broken with his heathen manner of life, and his passing over to belief in Christ is secured by his vision ; St. Peter's discourse simply completes the process : to adopt Seeberg's suggestive phrase, Belehrung is ended by Bekeh- rung. Lydia also, who is apparently a proselyte, believes while St. Paul is preaching (Ac 16'''), and at once shows the change wrought in her by offering to entertain the Apostle. The Philippian jailer, blurting out in his terror a cry almost of despair (Ac 16^°), receives an answer which must have seemed quite meaningless to him at first ; and then, as the result of a discourse which is unfortunately not preserved for us, believes and is baptized. Whether any conversions took place at Malta as the result of St. Paul's stay there is unknown. The above instances are all of Gentiles. The appeal which led to the conversion of Jews would seem to be that which St. Paul used to Agrippa : ' the re- deeming work of the Messiah is foretold or implied by the prophets ; you believe the prophets ; therefore you must believe in the Messiah, Jesus whom we preach ' (Ac 18» 2622'- » ; Lk 24^7). In the case of St. Paul we have two accounts purporting to come from his own lips (Ac 22. 26), and for the tliird (Ac 9) he must have been the authority. Certainly, he did not turn from any outward works of darkness (Ro 13'^) ; he may have been prepared previously, like Cornelius, though unconsciously ; but when the change came, in a blinding flash of celestial light, it meant an instant and entire transference of his loyalty and a complete destruction of his old self- esteem. The culmination of his conversion, lead- ing to baptism, was brought about, as in the case of Cornelius, through two mutually dependent visions, and actual instruction from a disciple. For St. Paul, it was a turning from darkness to light, a revealing of the Son of God in him (Gal P") ; but the only works of the flesh whose renunciation was involved were anger, pride and hatred, and these he, like his friends, would probably have considered, up to the crisis, as positive virtues. Was this perliaps the reason why anger, hatred, malice and strife find such a prominent place in his later catalogues of evil deeds ?
8. To turn: transitive or intransitive ?— We have left to the last the difficult question whether man turns to God or God turns man to Himself. The language of the NT gives little assistance (see § 1). Where the verb is not intransitive, tlie sub- ject is a man ( Ja 5^»- ^, and perhaps Ac 26^8), and elsewhere we have simply the passive voice (1 P 2-^), with no reference to the agent. But it is im- possible to deny the share of God in the process (Eph 25, Col 2", Tit 3», He lO^^, 1 P 1», Ko IF") or the connexion between conversion and salvation (1 Co r-\ Ro 10'=). But the question of the relative importance of the action of God and of man in con- version never occurred to the NT writers ; and a closer examination of the whole subject will show that it is not a case of ' either . . . or.' According to our point of view, we may see the act as wholly God's or wholly man's. Exhorting the sinner, the preacher will say, * Turn to God ' ; looking back on the act, the sinner will say, 'God turned me to
Himself ' ; or else we may use language which admirably and daringly combines the two, employ- ing the imperative of the passive voice, ' Be ye reconciled to God' (2 Co 5-"). Conversion itself rests on the Atonement ; man must be made ' at one ' with God, and yet this cannot be done unless, at that very moment, he makes himself ' at one.'
The question appears a difficult one just because the answer is involved in the simplest processes of action. All action between persons is interaction. It is the union of two elements to bring a third to the birth. We may for the moment overlook either the one or the other ; but both are there. And the two are really one. William James's theory of the subliminal is suggestive : conversion results from the breaking up of the fountains of the great spiritual deep; there is a 'subliminal uprush' in me ; and a flood of perceptions, feelings, loves and hates, of which I had hitherto been quite uncon- scious, gives me a new conception of myself and my life. The correctness of this account cannot here be discussed. It appears to cover much in the vast changes described so simply in the NT. It leaves room for, but it does not actually state, the main factor in every NT reference to conversion, and this is neither a new moral ideal nor a fresh conception of oneself, but the redeeming love of a God of mercy and righteousness, to whom the sinner turns in repentance and by whose good- ness that turning is encompassed and made possible.