These searching words were beyond defeat. They went home to his already convicted heart and mind like arrows. They hurt. They cut. They awakened. They called. They pierced. They pounded with giant fists. They lashed like spiked whips. They burned like a soul on fire. They clamored, and they whispered like a mother's love, and at last his heart opened:
2. Forgiveness
"I know the very words I said,
They bayed like bloodhounds in my head.
'The water's going out to sea
And there's a great moon calling me;
But there's a great sun calls the moon,
And all God's bells will carol soon
For joy and glory, and delight
Of some one coming home to-night.'"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
And then came the consciousness that he was "done with sin" forever:
"I knew that I had done with sin,
I knew that Christ had given me birth
To brother all the souls on earth,"
The Everlasting Mercy and the Widow in the Bye Street.
which was followed by two "glories"—the "Glory of the Lighted Mind" and the "Glory of the Lighted Soul." I think that perhaps in our preaching on conversion we make too little of the regeneration of the "mind." Masefield does not miss one whit of a complete regeneration.
3. The Joy of Conversion
"O glory of the lighted mind.
How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind!
The station brook to my new eyes
Was babbling out of Paradise,
The waters rushing from the rain
Were singing, 'Christ has risen again!'"