Conversion is a great and glorious work of God's power, at once changing
the heart, and infusing life into the dead soul; though the grace then
implanted more gradually displays itself in some than in others. But as
to fixing on the precise time when they put forth the very first act of
grace, there is a great deal of difference in different persons; in some
it seems to be very discernible when the very time was; but others are
more at a loss. In this respect, there are very many who do not know,
even when they have it, that it is the grace of conversion, and
sometimes do not think it to be so till a long time after. Many, even
when they come to entertain great hopes that they are converted, if they
remember what they experienced in the first exercises of grace, they are
at a loss whether it was any more than a common illumination; or whether
some other more clear and remarkable experience which they had
afterwards, was not the first of a saving nature. The manner of God's
work on the soul, sometimes especially, is very mysterious; and it is
with the kingdom of God as to its manifestation in the heart of a
convert, as is said, Mark iv. 26, 27,28, "So is the kingdom of God, a