The convert is known by his fruits. Conduct, conversation, and character, are the infallible tests of a personality transformed within.
In a large iron factory one of the worst men in the place was converted. He had been a man of terrible temper, and could scarcely speak without swearing and blaspheming against God. After his conversion his comrades waited for his temper to break out as before, and to hear him give utterance to a string of oaths. But nothing of the sort occurred. So they prepared a trap for him, which they felt sure would cause his downfall. They heated a long bar of iron and tempered it so that it would look as tho it were cold. Then they laid it on the floor when he was absent, and waited for him to come in and pick it up. Presently he returned, and, stooping over, grasped the hot iron with both hands. His comrades now expected an explosion, for there was a badly blistered strip of flesh on each hand. But the man simply turned round and said quietly, “Men, I didn’t think you would do that.”
At these words, so different from what they expected, tears ran down the cheeks of those strong men; a revival broke out then and there, and many of those ironworkers found salvation, because that man had not lost his temper, but had shown the reality of his transformation.
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CONVERSION, NOT UNNATURAL
Why should people balk at conversion as if it was something foreign to the universe? The fact is that there is not a moment of time when the process ceases. Dr. W. L. Watkinson calls attention to it in this way:
You come away from your house leaving your inkpot with the sun shining upon it. You go back. Where is your ink? Why, if you look up into the sky to-morrow you will see it in the rainbow! Nature is absolutely full of cleansings, of refinements, of marvelous chemistries, upliftings, transformations, transmutations, transfigurations! And do you mean to tell me that in a world where you see every day the miracle of renewal, the miracle of transfiguration—do you mean to tell me that the only thing in it that can not be changed is the human soul, that which it is most desirable to change? (Text.)
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CONVERSION, SINCERE
Mr. C. T. Studd, a missionary to China, tells the following: