[Footnote E: Gal. ii:20.]
All which, however, amounts to the same thing; viz.,—those born of the spirit live in God, and God in them. They have received something that the spiritually unborn have not received; and though they may carry that precious thing in earthen vessels, yet is it there. There has come down into such spirit-baptized men a spirit-life which has touched their souls, and left there a spirit life that is deathless, and will grow until it conforms the man receiving it to its own image, and likeness, and quality, unless sinned against to the point of blasphemy. Of which more later.
3. The Process of Regeneration: "What can be gathered on the surface as to the process of regeneration in the individual soul," asks Henry Drummond. "From the analogies of biology," he continues, "we should expect three things: First, that the new life should dawn suddenly; second, that it should come "without observation;" third, that it should develop gradually. On two of these points there can be little controversy. The gradualness of growth is a characteristic which strikes the simplest observer. Long before the word Evolution was coined Christ applied it in this very connection—"First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." It is well known also to those who study the parables of nature that there is an ascending scale of slowness as we rise in the scale of life. Growth is most gradual in the highest forms. Man attains his maturity after a score of years; the monad completes its humble cycle in a day. What wonder if development be tardy in the Creature of Eternity? A Christian's sun has sometimes set, and a critical world has seen as yet no corn in the ear. As yet? "As yet," in this long life, has not begun. Grant him the years proportionate to his place in the scale of life. 'The time of harvest is not yet!'"
"Again, in addition to being slow, the phenomena of growth are secret. Life is invisible. When the New Life manifests itself it is a surprise. Thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. When the plant lives whence has the life come? When it dies whither has it gone? Thou canst not tell; * * * so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
"Yet once more—and this is a point of strange and frivolous dispute —this life comes suddenly. This is the only way in which life can come. Life cannot come gradually—health can, structure can, but not life. A new theology has laughed at the doctrine of conversion. Sudden conversion especially has been ridiculed as untrue to philosophy and impossible to human nature. We may not be concerned in buttressing any theology because it is old. But we find that this old theology is scientific. There may be cases—they are probably in the majority—where the moment of contact with the living spirit, though sudden, has been obscure. But the real moment and the conscious moment are two different things. Science pronounces nothing as to the conscious moment. If it did it would probably say that that was seldom the real moment—just as in the natural life the conscious moment is not the real moment. The moment of birth in the natural world is not a conscious moment—we do not know we are born till long afterward. Yet there are men to whom the origin of the new life in time has been no difficulty. To Paul, for instance, Christ seems to have come at a definite period of time, the exact moment and second of which could have been known. And this is certainly, in theory at least, the normal origin of life, according to the principles of biology. The line between the living and the dead is a sharp line. When the dead atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, are seized upon by life, the organism at first is very lowly. It possesses few functions. It has little beauty. Growth is the work of time. But life is not. That comes in a moment. At one moment it was dead; the next it lived. This is conversion, the "passing," as the Bible calls it, "from death unto life." Those who have stood by another's side at the solemn hour of this dread possession have been conscious sometimes of an experience which words are not allowed to utter—a something like the sudden snapping of a chain, the waking from a dream."[A] And as it is in death, so it is in life—life comes suddenly; as at the last moment it departs suddenly.
[Footnote A: "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," pp. 91-94.]
4. Conformity to Type: The Spiritual life of God once established in man—what then? What is to come of it? "Beloved," said one of old, "now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man who has this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."[A] "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."[B] "And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. * * * For whom he did fore know, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son." All which means that man receiving into his soul spirit-life from God, that spirit-life will conform and transform the man receiving it to itself, until man is brought into perfect union with God.[C] If it were expressed in terms of biology one would say that the spirit life imparted to man would conform to its type, making man's spirit conform to God's spirit, to the type of the Christ.
[Footnote A: I John iii:2, 3.]
[Footnote B: II Cor. iii:18.]
[Footnote C: On this head the Prophet of the New Dispensation of the Gospel, Joseph Smith, has a fine passage: "If you wish to go where God is, you must be like God, or possess the principles which God possesses, for it we are not drawing towards God in principle, we are going from Him, and drawing towards the devil. . . . A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world, as evil spirits will have more knowledge, and consequently more power than many men who are on the earth. Hence it needs revelation to assist us, and give us knowledge of the things of God." (Minutes of April Conference, 1842. History of the Church, Vol. IV, p. 588.)]