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Like a ship becalmed in tropic seas, whose sails hang useless in the breathless air, whose sailors wearily, idly wander about the decks or lean listlessly over the bulwarks looking into the waveless, torpid sea, and over which the heavy gloom of despair and hopeless waiting hangs like a stifling air, so is many a soul arrested in the voyage of life. Its energies are like the useless sails, its thoughts like the listless sailors, the whole spirit of its life like the dull, weary scene of the idly drifting ship. And when at length the welcome wind comes rippling the sea’s dead calm, filling the drooping sails, lifting the ship onward in its course, what music in the rustle of its coming! what joy in the new force it brings to the forceless ship! what animation of life, revival of hope, fleeing of all the dull, dreary spirits which haunted the scene a moment before! So is a soul who has lived with no great, good purpose which gave progress, importance, and interest to life, when at length it seizes on the great Christian purpose of living unto God. (Text.)—W. R. Brooks, Baptist Examiner.
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See [Creature, A New].
CONVERSION AND A BUTTON
In the life of Charles G. Finney there is an account of the conversion of a prominent merchant. He went to hear Mr. Finney preach and was powerfully affected. Mr. Arthur Tappan, the eminent merchant, sat near him and noticed his agitation. In telling his experience afterward he said that as he arose to go, Mr. Tappan stept up and took him gently by the button of his coat and asked him to stay for prayer and conversation. He tried to excuse himself, but Mr. Tappan held on till he finally yielded. He said afterward, “He held fast to my button, so that an ounce weight at my button was the means of saving my soul.”
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Conversion, Evidence of—See [Family Religion].
CONVERSION, GENUINE