Before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words & (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armour, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there & then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armour or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corset meant the incalculable. The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open, to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, 'I chose', yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand, I was aware of no motives. You could argue that I was not a free agent, but I am inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most I have ever done.

...Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about 'man's search for God'. To me, as I was then, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat.

...I gave in, & admitted that God was God, & knelt & prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected & reluctant convert in England. I did not see then what is now the most shining & obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms.

C.S.Lewis, Surprised by Joy, Glasgow:Collins Fontana 1955 pp.179,181-182

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Salvation is nothing but love conquering and entering into us; we have just as much of salvation as we have of love. Full salvation is perfect love.

Andrew Murray, Day by Day, Minneapolis,Minnesota:Dimension Books, Bethany Fellowship Inc., 1961, p.23

~~~

Faith begins as an experiment and ends as an experience.

Dean W.R. Inge

in Allen Andrews (comp.),Quotations for Speakers and Writers, London:Newnes Books, 1969, p.164