STUDY II. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN.

"For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (Phil. i. 21.)

"Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is from God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead." (Phil. iii. 8-11.)

PART 3. THE CHANGE FROM A SELF-CENTERED TO A GOD-CENTERED LIFE.

THE center of the non-Christian life is the ego. The philosophy of this life is self-preservation and self-development. Even the best of the non-Christian religions are self-centered. They turn the thought of the worshiper in upon himself, so that salvation in these religions is a selfish release or freedom from punishment. So deep is this matter of self ingrained in us that we are scarcely able to shake ourselves free from it. So long as one continues to be completely self-centered there can be no friendship, for friendship means the giving up of self, the surrender of one's life to another life. It means the submerging of our good in the larger good of two lives.

When a man deliberately yields himself to the friendship of Christ, somehow he ceases to be a self-centered man and becomes a God-centered man. The man who before thought only of himself now begins to think about the things in which God is interested. A big athlete in one of our colleges was accustomed to laugh at missions as the work of fanatics.

But one day he was converted. He became a follower of Christ, and at once began to wonder why he should not go out to the non-Christian lands to preach the gospel. Something had happened in his life: whereas before he was selfish, now he was unselfish; whereas he was planning for his own pleasure, now he forgot himself in service for others. It is a mighty change which takes a life directed for years in one selfish channel and suddenly turns it in an exactly opposite direction. This is a fact which no scientific mind can pass over lightly. What has happened?

The psychologist says that by a sudden emotion or otherwise the life has become organized around a new nervous center; that the old channels of thought have been walled up; and that the self has become identified with a new world, where newer and broader channels of thought must be found. This seems perfectly plausible; indeed, I think it is the way in which the change comes about. But what makes that change? Why should religion and religion alone make this completely new center of nervous life?

The religious man knows what has happened. Somehow, doubtless according to the laws of psychology-for God works according to law, though not necessarily according to what man conceives to be law-somehow God has touched the soul of a man, and all things have become new. His very thoughts move in different channels. The very channels of his old thought have been inhibited-walled up, to put it in untechnical terms—and his life flows out in an entirely different direction. It is a marvelous thing to take a self-centered, self-indulgent, self-loving soul and turn it round into a God-centered, self-sacrificing, service-loving life. And yet that is what happens when men become Christians.

Who that one moment has the least descried him
Dimly and faintly, hidden and afar,

Doth not despise all excellence beside him,

Pleasures and powers that are not and that are

-Myers's "St. Paul"

STUDY II. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN.

"For thou hast made him but little lower than God,

And crownest him with glory and honor.

Thou makest him to have dominion over the work of thy hands
Thou has put all things under his feet." (Ps. viii. 5, 6.)

"The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him." (Rom. viii. 16, 17.)

PART 4. A NEW APPRECIATION OF THE SELF.

ONE of the most marked results of the Christian life is the new appreciation which the Christian has of his own life. This seems almost to contradict the last section of our study, where we saw a man forgetting himself in service for others. But the two conceptions are entirely compatible. The Christian man at once sees the larger significance of his own life and its power for service. "It seems that the heightened worth of self and the altruistic impulses in conversion are closely bound up together, and the differences between them lie simply in the different content of consciousness, determined by the direction in which it is turned. The central fact underlying both is the formation of a new ego, a fresh point of reference for mental states." In a later study we shall discuss the new valuation which Christianity gives to humanity at large. Here we are concerned with the Christian man finding a new and exalted selfhood.

St. Paul at once saw that this new friendship related him directly to God and to Jesus Christ. He became a joint heir with Christ. This gave a new dignity and a new meaning to his whole personality. He was at once an heir and a coworker with Christ.

'Starbuck's "Psychology of Religion,” p. 129.

Just this same new appreciation of life comes to men today when they become friends of Jesus Christ. One of my good friends told me of such a change in his life. He had been planning to do a certain thing in life-honorable, but not large or commanding. Suddenly he awoke to the meaning of the Christ friendship-he became a Christian. After that his old ambition seemed to him entirely too small to satisfy. He immediately went to college to fit himself for a much larger career, which he has for some years been filling with great success. Suddenly a new ambition was created within him. Suddenly he began to realize that a larger thing was possible for him. Suddenly his own life took on a new meaning and new responsibilities. Something had really happened.

The psychologist explains this new appreciation of self, the exaltation of the ego, as the coming into consciousness of new centers of nervous activity. To quote Professor Starbuck again: "It is as if brain areas which had lain dormant had now suddenly come into activity—as if their stored-up energy had been liberated, and now began to function."" Later Professor Starbuck goes on to say that this latent or stored-up nervous energy might have lain dormant forever had not a religious awakening released it. Our observation goes to prove that precisely this is what is happening in thousands of cases to-day. Men are using only a part of their splendid capacities because they have never felt the contagion of the God life, which kindles into flame the smoldering embers of spiritual energy.

Something actually happens when a man suddenly awakes to the larger reaches of his own person. The psychologist has rendered us a great service in showing us just how the touch of the God life brings into the realm of conscious activity the latent energies of our soul.

Meditation: Are you living in such close conscious fellowship with God as to have all your powers of mind and heart alert and active? Are you satisfied with less than your best?

*Starbuck's "Psychology of Religion," p. 132.

STUDY II. WHAT REALLY HAPPENS WHEN A MAN BECOMES A CHRISTIAN.

"For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would. But if ye are led by the Spirit ye are not under the law." (Gal. v. 17, 18.)

"Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." (Rom. vii. 24, 25.)

PART 5. UNIFICATION OF PERSONALITY.

ONE of the most intense realities of life is the fact of struggle, the battle between the lower nature and the higher nature; or, if you please to put it so, the tug of two opposing worlds within the soul. All men are conscious of this double personality. This struggle, in which the lower nature seemed most frequently victorious, St. Paul expresses in the familiar phrase: "The good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practice." (Rom. vii. 19).

Now the psychologist accounts for this divided personality by the fact that the personality is dominated at different times by sets of ideas often diametrically opposed in tendency. These opposing sets of ideas, rising into consciousness, struggle to overcome each other, and a man finds himself drawn in two opposite directions. Groups of ideas concerned with good and evil, respectively, cause the most intense struggle because they are so absolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to each other. Hence it arises that the decision to become a Christian man may be accompanied with the most terrific battle that a man ever fights. It is the attempt of the Godward ideas to assume complete dominance over the evilward ideas. "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh."

When a man becomes a Christian he deliberately puts the power of his will on the side of the Godward ideas. He exalts them into the place of supremacy. He deliberately re